From picnics to barbecues

 Large group picnic: With limited entertainment options, picnics were central to Australian life.

Growing up in Armidale during the 1950s, picnics were an essential feature of life. They could be family picnics held at a particular location such as the Gwydir River or a group activity such as Sunday School picnics.

The word picnic first appeared in the English language in 1748, drawn from the French pique-nique. The practice seems to have been first adopted by the upper classes who saw it as an elegant meal eaten outdoors. However, it spread into other areas of society as more leisure time became available.

I am not sure when the term was first used in colonial Australia, that is something I have to find out, but references to picnics occur quite early.

Entertainment in colonial society was largely self-made. The picnic provided an opportunity for family or group to move away from the daily round into a new space.

In Europe, the development of parks and the opening of estates to the public created the opportunity to experience not just the joy that comes from gatherings, but also the opportunity to see new areas, beautiful gardens and grounds.

In Australia the landscape, was rawer, less cultivated. Some of the early photographs show people picnicking amongst tree stumps!

Better transport including the railways encouraged the picnic habit. Railways, country and city, allowed people to travel on day excursions. With the car, life became easier because you could place the picnic basket or fruit case (fruit cases were commonly used on the New England after the establishment of orchards) in the boot and go.

Travelling by road, there were very few services stations or service centres of the type we know today. With rougher roads and slower travel times, it became normal practice to have picnic kit in the car and stop for morning tea or lunch, picnicking by the side of the road.

This is harder to do today with bigger roads and smaller verges.

By the 1890s, all the major department stores carried picnic kit including wicker ware picnic baskets and lighter weight cutlery and crockery. The baskets are almost identical to those you can buy today.

Unlike the later BBQ, picnic food was generally cold, although it was not unusual pre the vacuum flask to have a billy to heat the water for tea.

Depending on the money you had, the food and drink could be quite ornate. However, for most it was simpler fare, things that would not easily spoil and could be easily carried.

From the 1950s the BBQ began to supplant the picnic, yet it remains as a constant thread in our history.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 2 October 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019    

Reflections of Christmas past and the season of homecoming

Stand and deliver: The Belshaw boys, Mann Street, Christmas 1951. Cowboys and Indians were all the rage.

Christmas is a very special time for all of us, marked by our own family rituals.

Growing up, Christmas began with a pine branch buried in a pot. Downtown, brother David and I visited Coles and Penneys with our money clutched in our hands to buy presents.

On Christmas Eve people came round to our house for drinks. We had to go to bed, but were allowed to stay up for a while to meet people.

Christmas Day dawns. On our bed is a Santa sack full of presents. We play with these waiting for our parents to wake up. They do, and we get our presents from them.

Mid morning and we go down to Fa and Gran’s, a block away in Mann Street. This was always open house for our grandparents’ friends and electorate workers. The Mackellars who managed Forglen, Fa’s property, were always there with eldest a little older than me. We talk to people and go outside to play.

Once people have gone, we get another set of presents from our grandparents and aunts. Then to Christmas lunch, always a roast chook. We kids sit in a little sun room off the main dining room.

After lunch we play, rolling down the grass slopes. Sometimes there are special events. I remember one Christmas a piper played, striding up and down the lawns at the back of the house.

Later we go up to the Halpins for late afternoon Christmas drinks.

Time passes. I am living in Canberra, part of the great New England Diaspora. By car, train and plane many of us try to come home, meeting family and old friends, revisiting old sites.

This pattern is replicated across the greater New England. Les Murray’s great poem The Bulahdelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle, vividly describes the return of the kids from the city.

The last time I saw Zeke was on the Christmas train. Zeke and I were in scouts together, 2nd Armidale Troop. We were friends.

I suppose that 2nd Armidale still has a bob a job week equivalent. That year Zivan and I decided to clean shoes in Beardy Street. We stood there, but no one came up to us.

Finally we overcame our shyness, started spruking and approaching people. The cash rolled in. I think that we both learned an important lesson, the way in which you have to stand outside yourself to be successful.

Those Christmases were very special times as those dispersed over tens of thousands of miles came back together. I hope that you and yours had a very Happy Christmas.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column, the first for 2019 in the Armidale Express Extra on 9 January 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019  

New England history: Personal stories reveal times of change

War photographers, New Guinea: (Back left) Damien Parer, Frank Hurley, (front left) Maslyn Williams and George Silk. This the first of a six part series on growing up on the Northern or New England Tablelands

My writing on domestic life and childhood has taken me deep into nostalgia territory, as it has for some of my readers. This has not been helped by the Armidale Families Past and Present Facebook site!

Founded and moderated by Elizabeth Pollard, the membership has exploded to almost 2,200. The majority of members no longer live in Armidale, but are enjoying exchanging reminiscences and sharing photos. It is, all agree, quite addictive.

From my viewpoint as an historian, the site and others like it add to the already great depth of historical material on the broader New England. We need many more historians if we are to capture and present the story of our past over the last 30,000 years to the level that it deserves.

That requires broader action. For the moment and to continue the childhood and nostalgia theme, I thought that I would share with you over coming columns five stories about growing up or coming of age on the Tablelands during the twentieth century.

"They are stories of personal and family change set against a backdrop of major change at local, regional and national level". 

Four of the five are based on autobiographical pieces. The writer’s age varies, although all were born before the Second World War: Maslyn Williams was born in 1911, Judith Wright in 1915, Binks Turnbull Dowling in 1923, Judith Wallace in 1932.

To their stories I have added a fifth, that of Peter Woolnough, better known by his stage name Peter Allen. Born on 10 February 1944, Peter carries our coverage into the 1950s.

Four of the five were born in New England, the fourth (Maslyn Williams) was born in the UK. Three of the five became writers, the fourth a songwriter, singer and cabaret star. The fifth (Binks Dowling) was the daughter of a writer. Of the five, only Binks Dowling remained in New England.

Each story is different, describing different aspects of life during formative periods in the subject’s life., They are stories of personal and family change set against a backdrop of major change at local, regional and national level. Yet there are similarities between them.

All four have an element of nostalgia, a feeling of looking back. Four of the five have an element of loss. Only one, that of Maslyn Williams, is totally sunny. Only one, Judith Wright, involves an explicit and sometimes acerbic rejection of a past that yet retains its hold over her.

In the short compass of these columns with my 500 word limit I can do more than sketch a few key elements in each story. Still, I hope that they will be of interest and encourage you to read further into the fascinating story that is New England’s past.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 13 June 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018  

The high country flick - Enjoying the warm heart of the family home

All smiles: The kitchen in Marsh Street, Christmas Eve 1979. Kathleen Vickers is on the left, and Jim Belshaw Snr is washing up.

I suppose that we might call it the high country flick. The girls would come into the kitchen, stand with their backs to the stove and flick up the backs of their skirts to allow the heat to penetrate.

As with so many homes, the kitchen at 202 Marsh Street was the family centre. It was neither a big nor a posh kitchen. Few were at that stage. It was, in fact, extremely poky. Later when we sold the house, the first thing the new owners did was to rip it out.

Despite its small size and sometimes crowded nature with people perched around the small kitchen table, it had a warmth. That was partly because it was warm., no small plus in a New England winter, at least as much because my mother created a welcoming space.

In it’s own way, that kitchen was a microcosm of our shared history.

The kitchen benches were low, too low for me. I had to stoop to use them. They were low because people were shorter when they were built.

People are just much taller now, an increase that has happened over many generations. When I played rugby at school I was taller and heavier than average. Now I am dwarfed by the average rugby player.

The sink had two cold water taps. One was for town supply, the second from the tank. Because town water was so hard, tank water was used to make tea or coffee or for cooking.

On the sink sat a tin with wire on the top and holes punched in the bottom. In the tin sat a bar of sunlight soap. Hot water run through the tin provided suds to wash the dishes. I don’t think we ever used commercial dish washing fluid.

The stove was the nerve centre. When we first moved into the house this was an old iron range. Then a new rayburn was installed. This gave a constant supply of hot water and was wonderful for cooking, if sometimes a bit cranky. .

The firebox was on the right. The temperature of the whole stove could be controlled by varying the intensity of the fire through a combination of fuel and dampers. The hot air ran along the top of the stove from the fuel box to the chimney on the left.

A hot plate ran the length of the stove with heat gradually diminishing towards the chimney. This allowed food to be cooked and then moved to a cooler place to set or stay warm.

The ever present kettle could be moved from the left of the stove to the hotter right where it quickly boiled. The oven was on the left with a warming oven below. This allowed food to be kept warm or plates to be warmed before serving.

I still miss that stove!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 13 June 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 

Hidden stories and the respectable art of sticky-beaking

Paul Gavarni, La Flâneur 1842: To be a flâneur is to idle without purpose, interested in what you find

I was introduced to the art of flânerie by John Baxter’s book The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A pedestrian in Paris. 

Baxter, an Australian born writer, journalist and film maker, has lived in Paris since 1989.

There, by accident, he became a guide taking walking parties on literary tours through the streets of a city that he had come to love. The book describes his experiences in that role

I enjoyed it in part because I have been to Paris several times and so knew many of the places and some of the stories he wrote about. It’s a well written easy to read book. I was also interested in a professional sense since I see part of my role as a story teller. 

"The term itself derives from the Old Norse verb flana “to wander with no purpose”.

Baxter used the concept of the flâneur - literally the stroller, lounger, saunterer - to introduce his view of the pedestrian in Paris. The term itself derives from the Old Norse verb flana “to wander with no purpose”. However, it was in 19^th century Paris that the flâneur became a cultural icon, someone who wanders the streets as an observer and philosopher, an urban explorer, a connoisseur of the street.

I was immediately attracted to the idea of flânerie. It provided a perfect justification for my habit of just wandering, following my nose to see what I could find. It justified a sometimes insatiable curiosity that could verge on sticky-beaking. I was now engaged in a respected cultural practice! Most of all, I liked the idea of combining history with current observation.

We are surrounded by history if only we could see it.

The drive between Armidale and Sydney via Thunderbolt’s Way is a fascinating history lesson in its own right, embedded as it is in 30,000 years of human history. The streets of our towns and villages, the country side itself, are full of hidden stories.

To discover those stories you need to stop, to stroll, to observe and then to investigate. In fact, you need to become a flâneur!

In recent columns, we have been talking about aspects of domestic life, most recently Australian’s love of meat.

In the days before refrigeration, meat had to be killed locally to ensure that it did not spoil. Well, perhaps not spoil to much, for by the end of a hot day the meat could already be spoiling, beginning to turn black!

Animals might be killed just outside the town or on the butcher’s premises. The demand for meat meant that there were multiple butcher’s shops often co-located with a small general store, each one strongly favoured by particular customers.

Most have gone, victims of changing tastes and the rise of the supermarket. Still, if you walk your town you may be surprised how many of the buildings themselves survive. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 6 June 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 

Settlers board the gravy train

Scottish immigrants Morris Drummond and wife Catherine 1882. Morris was struck by the availability and cheapness of food in Australia.This is the fifth in a series on domestic life and the rhythms of childhood  

Two things impressed Scottish stonemason Morris Drummond on his arrival in Melbourne in March 1879 on the way to his new home in Sydney. The first was the stonework, the best he had ever seen. The second was the food.

“Meat is cheaper than at home”, he wrote in his diary. “we had a good Dinner for sixpence I will give you an idea of it had soup and Bread Mutton Potatoes & Cabbage and Plum pudding for a Desert” Tea was just as cheap: “we had our Tea for the same amount and as much as we could eat and fruit is cheap.”

This picture of the Australian colonies as places with plentiful cheap food is something repeated in many immigrant accounts. Australians had a particular love of meat, something that Sydney doctor and nutritionists Philip E Muskett complained about in 1893. Australians should, he suggested, eat more vegetables for health reasons.

There were good reasons for this love of meat. Livestock was readily available and could be driven to market over considerable distances. New England beef helped feed the diggers on the Victorian gold fields.

By contrast, vegetable had to be carted at considerable expense or grown on home or station gardens. The expansion of the railways allowed fruit and vegetables to be brought to the cities more easily, but the love of meat remained.

"Now that meat was cheap and freely available, they consumed it with gusto."  

In the home countries, meat had been expensive, a luxury. Many families rarely tasted meat in their daily diet. Now that it was cheap and freely available, they consumed it with gusto. It was, suggests historian Geoffrey Blainey, more than a food, more than an incessant topic of conversation. It had become a way of life.

Outside sheep country, beef was more popular and freely available than mutton. Pork became readily available from the 1890s linked to the spread of dairying. From the 1870s rabbit meat was being sold, initially as an expensive luxury. By the 1890s, rabbit had become the cheapest meat. The humble chook was available but remained expensive.

In sheep country like the New England, mutton dominated. The weekly rations of a station worker could include close to 6 kilos of mutton a week, more meat than some immigrant workers had eaten in six months or longer at home.

There were some complaints, but most settled in happily eating three meals of meat each day and talking about their good fortune in letters home.

Although Australians remain great meat eaters, the earlier meat based diet with its English overtones now seems old fashioned, even unhealthy. The idea of meat and three veg, itself a later model, has been replaced by a melded perception of food attributed to the migrant intakes after the Second World War.

There is some truth in this stereotype, but like most stereotypes it is only partially true. The reality is far more complex.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 30 May 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 

The custom of the good Aussie cuppa

Billy Tea advertisement: Advertising always reflects current tropes. This ad plays to national themes in a way intended to present the brand as uniquely Australian.This is the fifth in a series on domestic life and the rhythms of childhood  

In 1893, Sydney doctor Philip E Muskett, one of the first Australian nutritionists, attacked Australians love of meat, tea and tobacco.

Australians would be healthier, he suggested, if they ate more salads, drank more wine, substituted a small cup of coffee for tea and walked six or more miles a day. This advice was largely ignored.

By 1893, Australians had become the world’s largest per capita consumer of tea with their own tea culture. .This love emerged in the early period of European settlement and for very practical reasons.

The East India Company ships that carried first convicts and later free settlers to NSW went on to China to load tea for the British market. Some of that tea was left behind in Sydney on the return journey to meet local demand.

Unlike England where high taxes on tea limited consumption, tea was a freely available relatively cheap product in NSW. 

"'Would you like a cuppa' or 'I will put the kettle on' continue as Australian welcoming phrases."

Its low bulk and high value allowed it to be distributed easily across an increasingly dispersed settlement. It disguised the taste of often muddy water and replenished fluids lost in heavy work in high temperatures.

Green tea was initially popular. Then came black Chinese tea. Later still, came black tea from India and Ceylon.

Green tea was largely drunk unsweetened. Sweetened tea became popular with black tea. The rations provided to agricultural workers came to include a mix of meat, flour, sugar, tea and salt.

Today, we are used to tea made in pots. However, while teapots appear to date back to the Chinese Yuan dynasty founded by Kublai Khan in the 13^th Century, they were not common for ordinary people until later in the Industrial Revolution when cheap mass produced versions became available.

Initially, tea was brewed in quart pots and then in that universal Australian icon, the billy.

The billy offered several advantages. It was lighter, you could fit a smaller billy inside a larger one and attach both to your swag via the metal loop at the top. That loop also made it easier to place the billy on or remove it from the fire. You could also carry water in the billy for later use.

In 1883, Alfred Bushell established what is claimed to be Australia’s first teahouse in Queensland. It is no coincidence that when his sons took the business to Sydney in 1899, they created Billy Tea as the new firm’s central brand.

Today coffee has replaced tea as the dominant Australian drink. However, tea’s dominance survives in morning tea, afternoon tea or just tea for the evening meal.

“Would you like a cuppa” or “I will put the kettle on” continue as Australian welcoming phrases. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 23 May 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 

Bathing becomes a warmer prospect

A new, more comfortable, era: Enjoying the luxury of hot water in an early advertisement. This is the fourth in a series on domestic life and the rhythms of childhood  

The hot showers or baths that we take for granted today require water, a way of transporting and heating the water, a way of disposing of the waste water

.The first instantaneous hot water heater – the geyser – was invented by an English painter Benjamin Maughan in 1868. In 1889, the first storage hot water system was invented in the US. In 1915, Dux started making electric hot water heaters in Australia,

By 1900, some big New England homes or institutions had boiler systems that provided heating and hot water. However, the new domestic systems were slow to spread because they depended upon money and access to electricity or gas that was in limited supply outside urban areas.

In Australia and New Zealand, the invention of the chip heater from the 1880s provided a partial solution to the heating problem. This consisted of a cylindrical unit with a fire box and flue, through which a water pipe was run. Water was drawn from a cold water tank and circulated through the fire box. When heated, the water was drawn off to the area where it was used, typically in a bath.

Heat was provided by paper, chips and often pine cones. This could heat the water quickly, but would go cold if too much was run off. A careful balancing act was required to draw of the water at the right speed. A bath could take quite some time to prepare.

One common memory among those who grew up with chip heaters is the sound. They roar from the sound of the fire and boiling water.

As late as 1958, many houses in New England towns were not connected to either town water or electricity.

“We didn’t have electricity, we relied on tank water and our bathroom contained a chip heater, clawfoot bath and a cement floor” one New Englander recalled of 1958 weekly bath nights. .

“We would collect chips from the woodpile in a bucket and on Sundays Mum or Dad would light the chip heater and run a bath. Dad would add paper and chips and a dash of kerosene and the chip heater would roar and spit out boiling water. Very scary!”

“The kids bathed first, followed by Mum and Dad. As the only girl I got to bath first. About three inches of water in the bottom of a huge bathtub wasn't a lot. After I finished, more water was added for each person.”

“After our bath Mum would always check behind and inside our ears and the bottoms of our feet to make sure we had washed properly.”

“I so envied the full bath that my Dad used. Never even considering that five other people had bathed before him!”

The tone is nostalgic, but you can see why so many older New Englanders still regard hot running water as the ultimate luxury. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 16 May 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 

Cold Comfort of early days

Big day: Opening of the Armidale electricity works in 1922. Even by the early 1950s, many homes did not have access to either electricity or town water.This is the third in a new series on domestic life and the rhythms of childhood  

One of Australian poet Mary Gilmore’s poems is called The Saturday Tub. The poem is a nostalgic look at childhood. The writer, dreaming by the fire, is thrown back where I used to be in eighteen hundred and something three.

The children line up to take their turn in front of a bath the size of a churn. It was, 'where's the flannel?" and, "Mind the soap!" Slither and slide, and scuffle and grope. Clean, they are dried, dressed in a night dress and packed of to bed with a prayer.

Today, we take a hot shower for granted, a necessity to get our day started. We forget how recent this is. Perhaps we only learn this when people start reminiscing.

A hot shower or bath is actually a complex process.. It requires water, a way of heating and transporting the water, a way of disposing of the waste water.

In most of the early town in New England and Southern Queensland water came from local streams, from wells, from the sky as rain stored in tanks. It was in short reply and not always very good.

At Hillgrove where water was always short, run-off from Bracken Street carried filth and rubbish accumulated from homes and businesses down the ridge to form putrid pools. At Inverell, the shallower town cesspits polluted the deeper water wells. In both cases, disease and death resulted.

The newly formed but short of funds municipal councils looked to improve the situation.

In Armidale, the council first developed a well in the market square, but was then forced to look for a bigger solution. The result was the Dumaresq Dam. and the first municipal water supply in 1897. Glen Innes was slower, developing a scheme to pump water from the river in 1918.

Other towns came along in their own way and at their own pace, with water supply depending upon the precise geography of the area as well as available funds. Outside the towns, the small settlements and farming properties remained dependent on tanks, dams and streams.

First gas and then electricity did spread, but the process was slow and variable. Wood remained the dominant fuel for cooking and heating in the towns and countryside and still does in many places.

As late as the early 1950s, some houses in Armidale still had no electricity nor access to town water. Other towns were in a similar position.

At Marsh Street in Armidale where I grew up, we had both electricity and town water. However, wood was still our main fuel. The house well had been filled in, but we had two big tanks, one providing water to the house, the other to the out-door laundry with its big copper and the garden.

In my next column, I will share with you some of the nostalgic memories of the days before hot showers were possible.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 9 May 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 

Labour of the laundry cycle

Lighter work: A 1954 washing machine advertisement. The new washing machines came as a great relief to most. This is the second in a new series on domestic life and the rhythms of childhood  

I briefly mentioned coppers and the washing cycle in my last column. Today we forget just how much labour was involved in ordinary domestic life.

We also forget just how structured that life was. It had to be to fit everything in.

In many household, Monday was wash day, Tuesday was ironing day, Wednesday was mending, sewing and baking day, Thursday was cleaning day, Friday was shopping day, Saturday was for sports while Sunday was for worship, church and visiting friends and relatives.

Garry Mansfield remembers the washing routine in his own household just before the first washing machines became common. On Sunday, he would have to chop kindling and “second wood” and set the fire under the laundry copper ready for the Monday.

The copper might be found in a laundry at the back of the house or sometimes in a small building separate from the house. The copper was set into a brick surround with a fire box at the base and a chimney to carry the fumes away.

Next to the copper would be two or sometimes three cement tubs, a vital component in the washing process. You will still find these in some of the older houses.

Early on Monday morning the copper had to be filled, usually from the tank, ready for sheets and whites to be boiled first. Soap or soap powder was added to the water. As the water boiled, a smooth copper wood stick was used to stir the clothes around. The sticks became very smooth and whitened from constant use.

Once the clothes were ready, the stick was used to transfer them to the rinsing tub and then as appropriate to the third tub which might contain Reckitt’s blue bag for the whites. In some cases, a mechanical mangle was used to wring the clothes before their transfer to the washing basket.

The whole process was reasonably complex and involved a production line. While the whites were boiling, stained clothes might be soaked and scrubbed in the rinsing tub to be ready for their turn in the copper. Then the first load would be hung out to dry while the second was heating.

With bigger families, multiple washes were required making for a very hot and steamy laundry.

That Australian icon the Hills Hoist was invented in 1945, most washing lines were still strung between poles in backyards. Once the washing was hung, forked sticks were used lift the lines to gain maximum exposure to sun and wind.

As the washing was brought in, another production line began. Clothes requiring ironing were damped down and the rolled up so as to be ready for the Monday iron.

The new washing machines that became more readily available in the 1950s had their own problems, overload the wringers and they would jam or come apart, but they were a welcome relief to the overloaded housewife! 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 2 May 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018 

The rhythm of craybobbing

Family excursion: Cray bobbing near Armidale. This is the first in a new series on domestic life and the rhythms of childhood  

For many of us, to grow up in New England is to leave because of lack of jobs. But we all retain memories of the place that was.

Each place in New England has its own unique rhythm, the pattern of life that reflects that large world we saw as children and young people. This is a story of one such rhythm, a war over words..

It’s an Armidale story, but one that would apply to many other places.

It all began innocently enough. In a comment on a post in the Armidale Families Facebook page, I said that we used to go yabbying in the dam on the old police paddock.

This led to an immediate riposte. It should, multiple respondents said, be called cray bobbing. Others came to my defence saying yabbying for ever, although we were a little outnumbered. But in all this, what did come through were the memories of child hoods past.

As the comments came in, I tried to map the favourite yabby holes across old Armidale.

There was the police paddock with its stream and dam. There were the old brick pits, the dam in the east now occupied by Bunnings. There was a dam on the eastern side of the golf course, the dam off Donnelly Street where Autumn Lodge now stands.

So how did we catch and eat then?

Some like my brother and I just used a bit of string or cotton thread with meat at the end. Others used the same technique but added a net to catch the yabbies at the end. Still others used more sophisticated techniques.

One was using a drum or kerosene tin with holes punched in the bottom. You added some meat to this, submerged the drum or tin, then pulled it out of the water.

And what did you do with the yabbies once you caught them. We had so few that we used to just throw them back. Others followed a different approach.

Over at the brick pits, some would just throw them in a billy of boiling water and then eat them on the spot, muddy taste and all. Others would soak them in cleaner water first before cooking.

One respondent would rough rinse them and then take the haul for her mothers to cook in the laundry copper. Now there is a blast from the past.

Today we have washing machines. Then there were laundry coppers, containers with a fire underneath.

You would add water, light the fire, add soap and clothes. then stir the clothes around with a stick as the water boiled. Once washed, you might wring them and then carry them to the line in the backyard.

I wonder. Do kids today still catch yabbies? And what are they called, yabbies or craybobs?

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 25 April 2018. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018