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.
Captain James Cook was a skilled sailor who had explored more of the world’s oceans than anyone before him. But his success was not just based on his seamanship; he also understood the importance of maintaining the health and well-being of his crews. Over the course of his three famous voyages to the South Pacific,…
The book is now available from the City of Canada Bay Museum, 1 Bent Street, Concord at a cost of $20.00. We are open every Wednesday and Saturday from 10:00 am to 3:30 pm. It’s a great read and would make a unique Christmas present. The following article tells of how the Commonwealth Bank dealt…
We all have some possessions, collected through the years;Some bring happy memories, others bring the tears.Not many from our childhood, we didn’t bother then,We were far too busy learning and counting up to ten. When maturity came through we started to collect.Some we threw away later, the special ones we kept.And as the years went…
As a tribute to the 20th Anniversary of the Sydney Olympic Games our museum had planned a special display. Unfortunately, COVID-19 intervened and we had to postpone it. However, with things improving and the upcoming Tokyo Games we will now go ahead as planned in July. Our guest speaker for July will be Kerrie Quee,…
Bundy Clock from the Australian Gas Light Company In November 1888 Willard le Grande Bundy, a jeweller in Auburn, New York patented a timepiece to track the hours worked by employees and to calculate pay. The device was powered by mechanical and later electrical means. A year later his brother Harlow founded the Bundy Manufacturing…
Englishwoman Hannah Snell, who could neither read nor write, joined the army in 1745 under the name of James Gray. Later she joined the navy as a cook’s assistant and then became a common seaman, spending a total of nine years at sea. She fought in naval battles and was considered a courageous sailor. Snell…
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