ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Well Neville and Henry I guess we all used the ole’ bar soap but we were to poor to have wire basket, we had an old jam tin full of nail holes in the bottom and a bit of wire on the top so you could take it out of the sink.

TTFN

You'd probably even be hard pressed to up find jam tins these days, Dave. Jam seems to mainly come in glass jars or plastic containers.

Your right about that an' her indoors makes all our jam anyway. So even that comes in jars.

TTFN

I remember my grandmother having a washing up dish made from an old kero tin. The square tin had been cut diagonally through three sides with one side left intact so that it could be opened up and bent into two joined triangular dishes which had a piece of timber nailed along the top edges of both sides to strengthen it.
The dishes were washed in one side and rinsed in the other. In those days the washing up was always done in these dishes placed on the kitchen table with a tin tray beside them to receive the washed dishes. The sink was far too small for the task.
With three kids in the family one would wash, one would dry and the other would stack 'em. It was generally accepted the eldest would always wash but there was many an argument over who would dry and who would "put away."
No running hot water in those days. We either boiled the kettle on the gas stove(electricity was far too expensive) or when we where at Nan's got it from the "fountain" on the fuel stove.

Vic

Vic Jefferies wrote:(electricity was far too expensive)

Some of the pampered users of mod cons might have to learn a bit of adaptation when the "carbon" taxes bite into us more and more.


A familiar routine Vic, my sister and I used to squabble over who would wash or dry and put away. I was the eldest and biggest

Neville I've got six sisters five of them older then me and a big brother who was a Wrestling fan.


Now who do you think got to do all the chores ???

Bob

Good On You Neville and Bob. Does anybody else remember the kero tin washing up dish I mentioned?
These days I expect there are arguments about who is going to load the dishwasher and who is going to unload it!
Bob would have been worse if you had all sisters and had to have worn hand me downs.
The carbon tax, the jolly carbon tax! What an absolute nonsense it is beginning to become, but you are right Neville there are going to be a lot of very surprised and upset people when we have to revert to how we lived when you and I were kids. Electricity was very expensive and was never wasted (at least where I lived.) I remember battling on for years with a chip heater to heat the water for a bath because electricity was too expensive for our family. A light was never turned on in a room until it was absolutely necessary and never ever left on when the room was empty. In the summer we sweltered, no thought of running an electric fan and in the winter we lit fires in the fire place, before the advent of the kero "Fireside" heaters. We now take electricity for granted and our lives are
geared accordingly but when the carbon tax and the other increases to our power bills begin to bite their will be a great awakening for very many surprised people.

Vic

That scenario is fine Marty, just remember that the local pub and the local shop have to spend a lot money on power for refrigeration, who's gunna pay for the increase there ?? that will hurt, you wait and see.
Plus the increased cost of home refrigeration, unless you enjoy warm beer, sour milk and rancid butter

Marty, wherever we are going, I guess we are on the way like it or not.

You've got enough material in that last post for a topical verse.

Rancid - now there's a word you don't hear very often any more!