ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Despite the obvious I was telling my grandkids about how we used to get our milk in plastic bags when we lived in Moura and the dairy used to sell plastic jug stands that you could sit the bag in and cut off the corner.

Was this unique to the local dairy ?

Bob

G'day Bob,

I recall milk in plastic bags. We didn't have them but I remember seeing them. I was thinking about the time (I was about 10) when I was often sent to the corner shop with a shilling (12 pennys and equal to 10 cents today) for a bottle of milk and had change of 1/2 penny with which I could buy 4 licorice blocks. That would keep my chewing all the way home. This usually applied except when I went for my Aunty. She wanted her change and you did it out of duty, not for the reward.

There were several types of lollies that you could buy at 8 for a penny. My favorite were the anaseed balls that were 4 for 1 penny. The top of the range were Cobbas at 1 penny each. when we went to the movies on Saturday afternoon I always bought a Choochoo Bar, for 3d, that lasted almost through the whole of the second movie. I also recall that chocollate coated heart Ice creams were the most expensive at 9d each. Paddle pops were 4d. You could get a tiny ice cream cone for 3d and a normal sized cone for 6d. I don't know why the symbol for a penny was d.

We had a trial run of those plastic bags of milk back in the 70's (I think) and they gave us one of those plastic jug things too, exactly like you mentioned. We were living just outside Brisbane at the time in the Pine Shire. I think from memory the milk was coming from a dairy at Caboolture, it might have been Jacaranda Milk. Our milk was still being home delivered at the time and they used to reckon one day they would just throw them over the fence like the papers. Yeah right, just try dropping one on the floor. They sort of exploded.

The milkman used to leave them on the bottom step in the early hours of the morning before we were out of bed and the local cats would come along, puncture the bags with their claws and lick at the milk. The trial was a total disaster and we went back to bottles pretty quickly for home delivery. I think they lasted a little bit longer in the shops.

You Queenslanders really live on the edge of fairyland!! Milk in bags, indeed!!!!!! Did your bread come in ice cream cones delivered by goblins? *Neil goes back to his traditional Victorian breakfast of bacon and easter eggs.*

Yep, and we're sort of proud of it too.

Nothing wrong with us Queenslanders

All the world is strange save thee and me and even thou art little queer. .....remember Dad saying this before the connotation on queer ever arose.

I remember Milk in those little bags with the blue plastic container to put them in as well from the Caboolture dairy - my sister used to work there. Never did like them, used to pour more milk on the kitchen bench than I ever managed to get into the cup.

I thought milk in bags referred to those things that dangled under the cows

Well yeeeeees Neville - it does, it can, but the correct terminology is udders for cows milk retaining equipment. But you knew that you were having a dig weren't you?

Breast milk is also available in bags . Tescoes and Sainsbury UK and Canada seem to embrace their milk in bags as a way to cut down on plastic packaging they say - how does that work?? Well apparently they use 75% less plastic than plastic bottles.

So how come we Aussies don't like them - maybe something to do with our heat here????

Well you learn something new every day. I've never seen milk in bags (about the same vintage as Marty) but then Wodonga is very close to the border Marty.

Agreed.