Imagine their curiosity, in about 1910, when young sister-spinsters Ada Maud (1888-1970) and Ella Mellshimer of Ulladulla learned that a self-heating fuel iron was available. They had grown up doing the ironing the hard way. Ironing had always been exhausting work, and hot. Maud and Ella had seen how their mother Mary smoothed the wrinkles […]
Gone were the days of sweating by the wood fire stove in summer while waiting for a flat iron to heat. In the 1930s, this Coleman Self Heating Iron Model No 4A, with ‘Cool Blue’ enamel was the state-of-the-art ironing aid that every home needed. Heated with a gasoline fuel burner, which lit instantly and […]
At 6.50pm on a Tuesday evening in May, 1931, Henry Bewes, a track interlocking inspector on the South Maitland Railways was found lying between the lines near the Weston Station signal box, shockingly injured and unconscious. Inside the signal box, these contraptions, with their dials, wires and bells, and the 20 signal levers they operated, […]
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