Blue Bag
Before we had modern laundry detergents with optical brighteners, there was a mysterious little blue bag that was stirred around in the final rinse water on washday. This was laundry blueing or blue.
A factory-produced block was the “modern” (mid-19th century onwards), commercial version of older recipes for whitening clothes, with names like stone blue, fig blue, or thumb blue.
It disguised any hint of yellow and helped the household linen look whiter than white.
Without television, and before the days of wireless, family games were high on the list of favourite pastimes. Classics such as draughts, ludo, chess, snakes and ladders, checkers, dominoes and lotto occupied many a rainy day and lamplit evening. Cards and games generally were ideal pastimes for evenings, both in the home and at public…
March 1, 1975: COLOUR TELEVISION officially began in Australia. The ABC launched colour TV with a 5-minute special, AUNTY JACK INTRODUCES COLOUR.March 3 – 1911: PALMERSTON in the Northern Territory was renamed DARWIN in honour of Charles Darwin.March 5 – 1854: ST VINCENT DE PAUL SOCIETY was established in Australia.March 8 – 1828: AUSTRALIAN STAMPS…
BURIED IN BUSH AT CABARITA Two Aero Club pilots, F.R. Maguire and J. Pollack, had an amazing escape this afternoon when a Moth plane they were flying crashed on to a narrow strip of scrubland at Cabarita Point. The plane came down within a few yards of the roadway and narrowly missed diving into Kendall…
In response to our article in the October Nurungi, we received the following note from one of our members. I enjoyed your article on HMAS Sobraon, giving me more details of the ship and its final purpose. My great uncle Reginald Wallgate (last of 8 children) ended up as a boy committed to that ship…
Louisa Lawson: Henry Lawson’s crusading mother This book, written by Lorna Ollif, tells the story of Louisa Lawson (nee Albury). who was born in 1848, near Mudgee. In 1866 she met and married Peter Larsen, a Norwegian seaman – she was only 18, while Peter was 14 years her senior. Peter was a gold prospector…
Catering for the swimming fraternity in the days before Environmental Impact Statements were invented wasn’t a difficult matter if the enterpreneurial activities of the Fisher family at Five Dock Bay are any indication. The fabulous story of Five Dock Bay’s famous floating baths has been told before in District News, however the full photographic splendour…
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