Bright, shiny and new! Photo Scott Hill © HHT
Technology in our houses today is ever present, but it’s built-in and generally taken for granted. A light pops out of the ceiling, connected by hidden wires to a switch for example. Continue reading
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
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
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
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
Eggs from the chickens at Rouse Hill House and Farm. Photo Scott Hill © Sydney Living Museums
Egging? Get it? I know, that was a crack up! Anyway… being Easter time our attentions naturally turn to that most biologically challenging of animals, the Easter Bunny, and eggs! Continue reading
Iceman, Frederick Danvers Power: photonegatives, 1898-1926 (detail). State Library of NSW: ON 225
Not everything was sold in corner shops. The familiar sounds of horse-driven carts and the street traders crying their wares were part of the rhythm of daily life at Susannah Place well into the 1950s. Continue reading
Herbert, Hugo & Jenny Ljunggren (Youngein), c1910. Susannah Place Museum Collection © Sydney Living Museums
Dolly’s ‘Cooking homework book’ is 101 years old. Jenny (known as Dolly) Youngein (pictured, right) lived in Susannah Place at 64 Gloucester Street, where her parents ran the corner shop from 1904. Dolly was 12 years old when she created the book. It is still in her family’s possession and is a treasured memento of her childhood. Continue reading