Ewers

This week it is a whole group of objects, rather than a single Object of the Week. It is Ewers, those large jugs that people used before there were bathrooms inside houses. They had a Ewer and Basin (sometimes in a specially made cabinet), in the bedroom, where they were used to wash. More common was a simple wooden dresser with a hole in the centre were the bowl was housed. Some had a rail on the back for a towel. Showering and using a bath was nowhere near as commonplace as today. The hot water was collected from the kitchen in the Ewer, taken to the bedroom, and there ablutions took place.

The one above is in Bushy Park. The full-size photograph is HERE. There are 11 of them in the collection, some beautiful and perfect, some a little damaged, and many with mis-matching basins. They are common in community museums, probably in the class of sewing machines and flat irons, which tend to also be collected in multiples.

But they can also be very beautiful. The one below, for example, is displayed on the mantlepiece in the Cobb & Co room. There is no way that it would have been placed there in the past, but it has had a respite for a time, as it is so ornamental. Sometimes we have compromises like this in displays.

The larger size is HERE. And it does not have a matching bowl, as this one does in Ashdale, displayed in the main bedroom.

The larger view is HERE. This one is also interesting as, apart from bowl and toothbrush holder shown, there is a matching chamber pot.

That may sound good - but this one has two matching chamber pots - his and hers?

There is a matching bowl for the Ewer, plus a soap holder. It is in the bedroom behind Cobb and Co, the larger size is HERE.

Some are so simply elegant, there is no need for decoration, such as this one in the back bedroom in Loren:

Or, finally, they are pressed into use as flower vases - this one is in the Funeral Director's, and is one of the oldest in the collection, from the 1880s. It would have been wonderful to have seen its matching bowl, and know if there were any other accessories.

The largest size is HERE.

We definitely have more Ewers than we have Bedrooms (and they would not be in the Yallourn House anyway), so we hope we can be forgiven for occasionally using them as a flower vase.

Emden Steam Whistle

This week marks the 95th Anniversary of the capture by the Sydney of the German Raider Emden.

This is widely seen as the first significant Australian naval victory in World War I.

In 1915, the whistle was salvaged from the Emden's wreck, and was obtained by Sir John Monash, first Chairman & General Manager of the State Electricity Commission, during 1918 (after Cessation of Hostilities).

The whistle was then fitted to the top of number 1 'A' Power Station at Yallourn where it was used as a signal for starting and finishing work, lunch breaks etc. It was blown at 7am to indicate that the work day was soon to start, 7:30am to start work, 12 midday for lunch, 12:45 to return to work and at 5pm for the end of the day's work.

It was also used as the warning device for fires and floods of 1934, which saw the open cut mine completely submerged beneath 60 feet of water. The whistle was also used to herald the incoming New Year for many years. It was taken out of service and donated to Old Gippstown by the S.E.C.V in 1980. It is now the centrepiece in the Military Exhibition.

The Ducks

The Cataloguing Team has been working in Sunny Creek School, doing the last audit against the 1990s cataloguing. So this is the first time we have had a serious look at THE DUCKS.

These are a little iconic, as they are the first purchases by the newly formed committee in 1968. The Chairman bought two stuffed ducks for $14.00. In return he got the ducks, plus a "gift and stuffed snakes and lizards". It is interesting to think that this is what was then seen to be the important types of exhibits to acquire. This was in a time when everyone who went to Melbourne went to the Museum and looked at dioramas of stuffed animals (or were they models?). If we were going to be a real museum, we had to have stuffed animals.

Time moved on, and many more animals were acquired, and were still in the school room in the 1990s, although there are not so many today. Which is just as well. I have to admit I was a bit disparaging about them (and they were looking a bit tired and dusty), until School Ma'am Sue explained how she takes her classes through Nature Study, and the equivalent of having a Nature Study Table. She loves the snakes and lizards. And suddenly, we started to like them too.

It is all about context.

Here is another one of the critters. He was in the catalogue as a Goanna, but he is definitely an Eastern Water Dragon - found from the Macalister River to the far east in Gippsland only. He is the Iguana after which Iguana Creek was named. We have a building, Callegero, from Iguana Creek near Lindenow.

We can deal with his dusty rock, but are a bit worried about how to dust his skin - he is very brittle. If anyone has any suggestions (apart from a small and very soft paint brush), we would really like to know.

How to Name Coffin Plates

The Cataloguing Team has been working in the Funeral Parlour, and was quite impressed when they found this. It is a set of letter and number punches, and a jig that allows two lines of text and dates to be stamped onto a standard coffin plate.

The coffin plate was placed on the copper guide (which is on a verrry heavy lead base). The appropriate letters are selected, and placed by turning the small handle that moves the holder along a threaded bar.

The plate with the machine appears to be one from 1960, where a mistake was made. It was then used for practice. These days the plates for coffins are engraved, so it would be interesting to know when this was last used.

It is currently stored in the Funeral Parlour - we hope to have it out on open display soon.

Dress Baskets

We have been looking around at our Dress Baskets. These were once common, but we think we only have five of them.

This is the largest, and is, for me, the size with which I grew up. They were used to store whatever clothes or bed linen had overflowed from elsewhere. In earlier days were often taken to to local dances with a bit of bed linen, and used as temporary beds for very young children while the dances went on. In one town, they were placed behind the piano, and someone kept an eye on them. This one is 60cm long, and is in Ashdale.

This pair, above, is also in Ashdale, and they are 53cm and 55cm long respectively. While also used for storage, they often came into service to bring new babies home from hospital.

And, as shown by this pair in Bushy Park, they were often placed one inside another to form a closed storage area. Useful if there were birds around!

But they had other uses. I was cataloguing one in another local museum, and one of the older members became quite upset about it. When I gently enquired, I found that in her family, the basket had been used to hold the items used in the family to lay out the dead. She had, as a young woman, been involved in one such occasion, and was still distressed by it fifty years later, and it only took the sight of one of these baskets to bring it all back to her.

We should always remember that the most mundane of articles can hold all sorts of memories for people.

Sunny Creek School Honour Roll

The Sunny Creek School, originally known as Yarragon East, had a number of its past pupils enlist in World War I. This Honour Roll was compiled as a result - one of the rare examples with photographs of the men, at a period when most were just names on timber honour boards.

This one is special in that not only do we have the honour roll, we also have the school in which it was a central feature. We have recently returned it to display after conservation work.

Those listed on the Honour Roll include four men killed in action:

Private Stephen Rizzi
Private Patrick Curran (Killed in Action)
Private Aubrey Dalgleish (ANZAC)
Private Michael Byrne (Killed in Action) (ANZAC)

Private George Atkins
Private Stanley Rankin (Killed in Action)
Private Charles Heywood (ANZAC)
Private John McGrath

Midshipman E.S. Nurse
Private Percy Martin
Private Frank Dineen
Private William McGrath
Private A.E.Gunn (ANZAC)

Private Fred Heywood (Killed in Action) (ANZAC)
Driver Harold Perrior
Lieut H.S. Nurse
Private Matthew Faulkner
Private Michael V.Whelan

Sergeant William Skinner
Private Elgar Mann
Private William F.Gunn

Willow Cook Book

We do not have a lot of cook books in our collection, although there are some in the Narracan Mechanics' Institute Library. They are useful (if you can date them), to show the diet of the average family at particular times. This one is possibly from the 1950s, and came with (or at least from) Willow cooking ware. Willow made a number of items in our collection - including mess tins, billies and a bucket, as well as cook ware.

This book has been well-used, and several favourite recipes have been pasted in.