Lilly pilly tree. Photo Jacqui Newling © HHT
Meroogal has several productive fruit trees, including a native lilly pilly (or lilli pilli), which towers over the house on its southern side. You can see it just to the left of the house in this welcoming image. Continue reading
Amongst the collections provenanced to Meroogal is a very simple manuscript recipe titled ‘Bobs Pudding’. Its obvious restraint makes it intriguing, being devoid of butter, sugar or eggs, ingredients that the kitchen at Meroogal would always have had on hand. In this way it strikes me as being an ‘austerity’ pudding, suited to times or circumstances when access to fresh provisions is limited. It is quite unlike the other recipes in the family collection. Continue reading
An assortment of useful items from the Meroogal kitchen. Photo Kieran Larkin © HHT
Cooking was integral to the rhythm of day-to-day life at Meroogal, and we are fortunate to have original recipes from the family’s cookery books – most of them recorded by hand, transcribed into make-shift recipe books, but some were also published in the Shoalhaven Presbyterian Women’s Working Society cookery book, compiled in the 1930s. This diminutive cookery book demonstrates the strength of community that the Meroogal household was connected to. Continue reading
A barrow full of grapefruits from the Meroogal garden. Photo Scott Hill © HHT
Kennina Fanny McKenzie Thorburn, or as we know her, Auntie Tottie or Tot, was the youngest of the eight Thorburn children. Thankfully for us, Tottie kept diaries and the ones written between 1888 and 1896 provide us with a wonderful record of daily life in the late nineteenth century. They are rich with references to food and cooking, and reading them, you really get the rhythm of the daily domestic rituals of a young woman whose life centered around the home. Continue reading
A view of the garden path leading to front verandah of Meroogal. Photo © John Storey
Up before dawn, invitations to tea, aunt Tottie’s famous sponge cake, making seasonal jams and preserves: it can only mean one thing – this month we’re visiting Meroogal! Continue reading
When you visit number 60 at Susannah Place, the ‘front room’ is furnished as it might have been when first occupied in 1844. Step through to the next room and you are transported to the 1940s, when the Sarantides, an immigrant Greek family, lived there, from 1936 – 1947. Continue reading
View through the drawing room closet at Elizabeth Farm. Photo © Paolo Busato
Visitors to Elizabeth Farm this Sunday 7 April will have the opportunity to make curry powder from a Jane Austen family recipe as part of a Regency-inspired Vintage Sunday, the first of a new series of programs that take you back in time, to enjoy the simplicity of a by-gone era. Continue reading
Detail of a samovar spout, part of a table setting created at Elizabeth Farm. Photo © Paolo Busato
‘Gunpowder, caper and twanky’ – what on earth were the Macarthurs drinking? With Vintage Sundays: Regency taking place this Sunday at Elizabeth Farm, we thought we’d have a taste of tea varieties that were popular in the 1810s and 20s. Continue reading
'Scullery maid' Anna making bread. Photo Scott Hill © HHT
Getting into convict wear and kneading dough for a (very) early start last week gave us the opportunity to road test one of Isabella Beeton’s more obscure pieces of advice. Continue reading