Imagine Dan Alderson’s surprise when he found this ‘Woods Australian Diary’ from 1930 stashed behind the safe at Tamworth’s Theatre Royal. It was not just a plain old diary – when Dan opened its cover, he discovered that its pages were filled with handwritten notes revealing the titles of films screened decades before at the […]
The mid-nineteenth century gold rush brought smiths and jewellers to Australia intent on reaping the benefits of a newly prosperous Australia. In 1858, Henry Steiner (1834-1914), a German silversmith, immigrated to Adelaide, South Australia, for that very reason. Now known as one of Australia’s most prolific silversmiths, much of his success was made possible by […]
With its red indicators left in the positions selected the last time it was used, this early twentieth century grocery reminder card is frozen in time. It seems to be a snapshot of what its owner intended to buy that week at the grocery store, and their choices are clearly marked. And curiously, as written […]
Comic books started to appear during the 1930s when the increasingly popular weekly newspaper strips were collected into booklets and resold. The Second World War saw a boom in the popularity of comic books along with the moral outrage against them. Due to the war, the Australian Government enacted the National Security Act of 1939. […]
This machine is a Siemens Telegraph Register. It dates from around the 1850s, no later than 1860. The reason for this date is that this machine records the message onto a paper tape, storing a permanent record of the Morse code message. This was the earliest version of how the messages were received before Alfred […]
Occasionally, objects that are handed down to us from previous generations keep their life stories secret, hiding who made or used them. But, a few feint scratchings and ghost letters can reveal a few clues. The combination of permanent writing lines incised into the slate and the remnants of letters written in chalk confirm that […]
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. […]
In the early twentieth century, an amateur Australian artist picked up a nail, knitting needle, or knife, heated it in the fireplace and burnt the designs of Eucalyptus leaves and nuts into these wooden napkin rings. At the time, creative Australians loved the art of pokerwork, also known as pyrography, and burned designs into any […]
Kangaroos may have grazed on the sandy dunes and seabirds soared overhead on the day in 1967 when Jack Thompson (1908-1996) explored the Murramarang Point headland, between Ulladulla and Batemans Bay. While strolling, he came across the remains of roughly-made slab huts – the timber parts having long disappeared. Curious, Jack picked up these bricks […]
Imagine the sound of thick, rich cream splashing and slopping against the insides of this glass jar, as one of its owners, Ella or Ada Mellshimer of Ulladulla, wound the handle to move the paddle inside. Nearly every kitchen in Australia had a butter churn in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and this […]
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