Roll, Crush, Whack

Close up of pale wooden rolling pin with long thin handles

In a kitchen on the NSW South Coast, probably in the early twentieth century, a woman used this rolling pin almost daily for making her family’s meals. Before pastry, scones, and biscuits could be bought ready-made in supermarkets, the kneading and flattening of dough with a rolling pin was an everyday ritual in most kitchens. […]

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Metal in the Mix

If you were a tea drinker in the 1920s, you probably would have begun making your morning brew by boiling water in a kettle just like this one. When you heard the water bubbling inside, you would pour it out into your teapot and wait for your Bushells tea leaves to steep. If you didn’t […]

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The Heart of the Kitchen

In someone’s kitchen, from about 1900, a hearty stew may have been bubbling in a cast iron pot on the hot plates of this stove. Perhaps a loaf of crusty bread was also baking in its oven on the right, and the cook, most likely a woman (since at the time cooking was considered women’s […]

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Marking Time

With smoke billowing out throughout the day, the red brick chimney of the Maitland Gaol cookhouse towered over the perimeter walls, serving as a focal point for the people of East Maitland. This date stone installed on the chimney and marking the year it was built, is now all that survives of the cookhouse (demolished […]

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