No. 4 (detail) from [Five stages of inebriation, ca.1863-1868] by Charles Pickering. State Library of NSW PXB 503
Happy New Year! In the event that you’re nursing a hangover, read on! It won’t cure your headache, but it will give you an amusing word of the day for later. Continue reading
The Cook and the Curator at Christmas Fare, Hyde Park Barracks Museum. Photo Alysha Buss © Sydney Living Museums
Wishing you a very happy Christmas day from The Cook and the Curator!
Handmade Meroogal sponge cake. Photo © Sydney Living Museums
Today is #MusCake museums’ cake day! And there is plenty of cake to go around at Sydney Living Museums! The number of cakes consumed on our properties – historically and today – is countless! And there are dozens of cake recipes in our house museums and Caroline Simpson Research library collections – so the cry today is ‘let us eat cake!’ Continue reading
A dairymaid at work.
We’ve all heard the expression ‘there’s no use crying over spilt milk’ but there were more than tears on June 5, 1788 when a somewhat catastrophic event occurred. Continue reading
Convict Barrack Sydney N.S. Wales by G W Evans (attrib), c1820. State Library of NSW: PX*D 41
June 4, the King’s birthday was a big day in the diary in the Georgian and Regency period. The day traditionally brought a great level of feasting and revelry, even in far-flung Sydney. But there was double celebration on this day in Sydney 1819, when Governor Macquarie presided over the official opening of Hyde Park Barracks, putting on a feast for its new ‘house mates’. Continue reading
Tea cosy embroidered with the Rising Sun badge. Sydney Living Museums R87/103
This handsome handmade tea cosy was made from a black silk skirt panel that belonged to Bessie Rouse (b.1843, d.1924). The cosy, and remarkably, the remnants of the skirt, complete with tea-cosy-shaped hole in it, remain in the Rouse Hill House and Farm collection. The tea cosy is an example of commemorative craft from the first World War period. It honours the 54th battalion which was active in Egypt and France between 1916 and 1918 and depicts the official design of the Rising Sun emblem that was used between 1904 – 1949.
The other commemorative craft that survives today is of course, the Anzac biscuit. Continue reading
Front cover (deatail), State Banquet in commemoration of the first hundred years of Australian settlement, 1888. State Library of New South Wales: Ephemera/Menus/1800- / Box 1
On this day in 1888, Sydney was caught up in celebration of the first hundred years of British settlement in Australia. Continue reading
[The house at Vineyard, Parramatta] (detail), Conrad Martens, 1856. Caroline Simpson Collection, Sydney Living Museums
This week in 1836 Maria and Hannibal Macarthur entertained a notable guest at their home, Vineyard – Charles Darwin! Continue reading
A day’s picnic on Clark Island, Sydney Harbour (detail), Montagu Scott, 1870. State Library of New South Wales: ML3
While many Sydney-siders gather around the harbour for New Year’s eve celebrations, New Year’s Day was often spent in public celebration in colonial times in the form of a foreshore picnic. Montagu Scott’s extraordinarily detailed depiction of such an event gives a brilliant ‘snapshot’ of revelers and their antics in 1870. Continue reading
Tiny hand-drawn Christmas card from Robert Barnet and his brother Don to their grandfather Roderick Macgregor, c1906. June Wallace Papers, Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums
Happy Christmas from the Eat your history team and Sydney Living Museums! Continue reading