Recalling the faded household gems that brightened Aussie homes
THE items we relied upon every day can fade into disuse as timemarches on and technology and fashions change. These are a few favourites we remember.
Best of Melbourne
Don't miss out on the headlines from Best of Melbourne. Followed categories will be added to My News.
IT’S funny how times change, and the items that once were so much a part of everyday household life somehow end up on the scrapheap of life.
From aluminium cups to dripping containers and teledexes, here are some of the once common household items that are seldom seen in modern Australia.
RELATED CONTENT:
HOW VICTORIANS ARE SPENDING THEIR MONEY
THE BIG AUSTRALIAN BRAND IDEAS THAT BOMBED
PLASTIC STRIP BLINDS
Once the gold standard for keeping flies, mozzies and other pests out of our houses while letting air circulate in the warmer months, the faithful, multicoloured strip blinds we used to fit to our doorways have fallen out of favour.
These days, you’re more likely to find a fly screen, a security door or an insecticide dispenser where the straps used to be.
PUMP-ACTION INSECT SPRAY
Once upon a time, your Mortein was delivered with a device that looked like a bicycle tyre pump with a large can at the end.
A few pumps of the handle would mix air with the insecticide inside the can, delivering a fine mist that sorted out whatever creepy crawly you wished to eliminate.
Although the ozone layer is still reeling from the shock, aerosol cans consigned pump-action insecticides to history.
WAXED KITCHEN PAPER
Before cling wraps and zip-lock bags, waxed kitchen paper was the most convenient way to make sure your sandwiches stayed fresh.
It also made great tracing paper for the kids’ drawing projects at home.
BOXED ICE-CREAM
Once upon a time, if you wanted to buy ice-cream from the supermarket to take
home, it came in waxy cardboard boxes.
These didn’t necessarily provide an airtight seal though, and the rise of plastics saw cardboard ice-cream boxes chucked in the bin for good by the 1970s.
Don’t believe me? Here’s Graham Kennedy and his 3UZ radio partner “Nicky” Whitta in a 1956 advertisement for a long, lost Melbourne-made ice-cream brand, Sennitt’s, featuring the entire range including the Family Brick.
DRIPPING CONTAINERS
Once upon a time, every Aussie kitchen had a dripping tin.
That greasy, sludgy collection of animal fat kept kids fed with bread and dripping and made the crispiest roast potatoes and the richest gravy for roasted meats.
But when saturated fats became a dirty word for nutritionists and the medical profession from the 1970s, dripping began to disappear from out stove tops and fridges.
CARPET SWEEPERS
When brooms failed to sweep clean and vacuums were expensive and heavy to drag around the house, carpet sweepers were the ideal stop gap.
They would glide along the floor with an easy push that would turn wheels that drove a series of bristled rotors to collect dirt and grit.
All that crud would collect inside the case so it could be tipped into the bin. No more dust pans and brushes for us!
Maybe it was 1970s shagpile carpets that spelled the end for carpet sweepers.
Maybe it was better vacuum technology. Maybe it was the persistent efforts of Godfrey’s to convince us that we needed to shell out are hard-earned for the latest Hoover. Whatever it was, we’re not such fans of carpet sweepers any more.
TELEDEXES
Often made with a grainy fake wood cover, the teledex was a lifeline for Aussie
households.
Inside them were the cards that kept us connected to the outside world — the names, addresses and phone numbers of loved ones, friends, business associates an, local traders and anyone else we wanted to contact, and lists of all our significant dates.
The sliding index down the right side of the teledex gave us handy, alphabetised access to the cards and were the source of endless fascination for many kids, including me.
Who needs them now, though? Mobile phones store all those details these days, and social media reminds of special dates.
TELEPHONE TABLES
These were the natural home of the teledex — a tiny laminated table large enough for your phone and your teledex, with basket underneath for telephone books (remember those?) and a padded vinyl seat so that you could rest your legs and sit through as lengthy call.
Cordless phone and, later, mobile phones spelled the end of the telephone table.
Why sit on that poky little seat to make a call when you can do it from the comfort of your lounge?
They are rare as hen’s teeth these days but can still attract a decent price at retro furniture shops.
MILK BOTTLES
Remember the days when your local milko delivered foil-topped glass bottles of milk each morning.
Before the advent of homogenisation, the cream would separate on the milk and we’d delight in spooning it from the top of the bottle.
Home milk deliveries are a rarity these days. The vast majority of us buy our milk from the supermarket in opaque plastic containers that don’t expose the milk to so much light.
MERCUROCHROME
Once found in just about every home, school sick bay and first aid kit in Australia, mercurochrome has fallen out of favour as a topical antiseptic for our cuts and scrapes.
Schoolkids with skinned knees used to wear those reddish-purple mercurochrome dabs like a badge of honour, an official adult acknowledgment that our wounds were bad enough for medical treatment (no matter how minor).
It’s not without its drawbacks. If misused, it can be toxic, and although still available in Australia, it has been banned from sale in some countries.
CHEQUE BOOKS and PASSBOOKS
Back when banks opened for shortened days only on Monday to Friday, cheque books and passbooks were the only way to bank.
Your passbook recorded all your banking transactions and your balance after each.
Cheque books allowed to pay bills without the need to send cash. There was once a time when sending a bad cheque — promising payment for a sum of money that you did not actually possess — was punishable with jail.
These were the only ways to keep your finances straight, short of keeping wads of cash under your bed.
Nowadays, banks aren’t so keen to serve customers face-to-face and would much rather we all embraced the many electronic banking options now available.
TIMBER RADIOGRAMS and TELEVISIONS
Once, buying an appliance like a television set wasn’t simply an appliance purchase.
It was like buying a new item of furniture.
Proper timber, not just a cheap and nasty laminate, encased television sets, giving them a feel of sturdiness and quality that by the ‘80s gave way to cheaper materials in the ever-present drive to reduce prices.
Radiograms were similar. As late as the 1970s, many homes boasted these polished timber units, a combination of a record player with stereophonic speakers with a flip-top timber lid that concealed the turntable, the controls and an AM radio tuner.
These often had the call signs of each station listed by state rather than a tuner based on frequencies so you could always find your favourite tune.
Those timber cabinets, like the TVs best kept shiny with a weekly squirt of Mr Sheen and a wipe down, gave those AM signals a rich sound that modern equipment can’t match.
MICROWAVE COOKING EQUIPMENT
At the dawn of the 1980s, there was an attempted coup in Australia.
Someone, somewhere decided that the time was right to chuck our electric or gas ovens and use the magic of microwaves for all our cooking needs.
This required a raft of beige-coloured plastic cooking equipment and a strong stomach, because even the “treats” on the covers of all those microwave cookery books — grey roasts with a raft of dodgy-looking vegies, for example — didn’t measure up when they landed on our plates.
The fan for all that microwave cooking gear faded into obscurity with good reason.
We could only get excited about spongy zucchini slices, ring cakes and insanely hot jacket potatoes for so long.
VERTICAL GRILLERS
In a time when George Foreman was known only as a boxer and not a purveyor of semi-useful kitchen appliances, we had the vertical griller.
Take your favourite cut of meat, jam it between the grilling plates and turn it on and let the electric elements heat your meat as the fat (and often, all of the moisture) dripped into a small basin at the bottom. Simple.
But vertical grillers take up a load of space. They became grotty quickly. And we know that quickly searing a steak at the start of the cooking process makes for a much better meal.
JAFFLE IRONS
Still popular with campers, the humble jaffle iron was once a Sunday night staple in many homes, when families ate crunchy sandwiches toasted on the stove top in the jaffle iron with a bowl of soup while watching an episode of the Wonderful World of Disney that had been repeated for the umpteenth time.
Nothing beats a jaffle make in your own cast iron jaffle iron, but many folks have traded up to fancy electric toasted sandwich makers.
ALARM CLOCKS and CLOCK RADIOS
There was something comforting about the sight of an alarm clock in the middle of the night, that familiar cluster of glowing jewels the only source of light in the pitch darkness.
The jingle of bells in the morning seems these days to be a much less distressing way to start the day.
Later, alarm clocks came with a bank of spinning digits, or numbers that filled like as set of flash cards, to tell us the time and let us wake to the sound of our favourite radio station.
There’s not much need for alarm clocks these days when our mobile phones can tell us the time and when to wake up, and can do it with any song we want.
ANODISED ALUMINIUM CUPS
Who grew up in a house that didn’t have a set of anodised aluminium cups, or didn’t know of someone who did?
The bright little pieces of mid-20th century charm came in a rainbow of colours and were popular on the kitchen tables and picnic rugs of the nation. They often came in leather pouches to keep them like new for the family on the go.
Their nemesis came in the 1980s with the rise of the dishwasher.
Caustic dishwashing powder took the colour and the shine out of those gleaming cups, sending many sets to the tip.
A vintage set of aluminium cups will set a kitsch lover back a small fortune today, and reproductions are both pricey and popular.
AIR COOLERS
When the summer heat set in and the pedestal fan just didn’t cut it, many lashed out and bought a water-based air cooler for some relief.
Users poured water into a basin in the bottom, which would be used to dampen straw-like material in the back. The unit would suck air through that material, adding moisture to the air, which was then pushed out via a fan at the front.
The trouble was that they chewed through a load of water and electricity, spills were common as we used buckets to fill the coolers and they often spat excess water back towards us as we laid like grease spots on the couch.
Besides, modern airconditioning is much cheaper and more effective these days.
How to plan a post-lockdown Great Ocean Road getaway
The regional border has lifted, which means we can plan a trip to the Great Ocean Road. Here’s where to eat, stay and play.
‘I wouldn’t even s*** that’: What you missed on Wentworth
Wentworth does WikiLeaks in the third episode of the new season, as the Foxtel drama welcomes a new face. And there’s drama for Reb and Lou. Warning: Spoilers.