Month: May 2016

I dashed about Ruby’s garden before going inside to indulge in cake, coffee and stories! (and got so engrossed I forgot to get a photo of Ruby today!)

I was trying to get a sense of what life was like during the depression and war, in terms of things people had to go without, with the rationing.

It was a little hard to stay on track this afternoon…lots of sideline stories and memories!

Ruby was born in 1916 – Right in the middle of the Great War. People were just getting on track again when the depression hit, then of course right on its heels came the second world war.

Living in country Tasmania back in those days, things were never plentiful. Being remote from the rest of Australia as well as transport being scarce, people had to make do or go without! Nothing like the choices we make now to voluntarily reduce our crazy consumerism… it was just a way of life!

Ruby seemed to think that those in the country actually had things a little better than those in the city. If you were in the country, you could more easily feed yourselves via the vegetable gardens, chickens and pretty much everyone had a cow, which totally took care of the milk, cream and butter issue.

When the ships came into Burnie, Ruby’s Dad would load up the horse and take a couple of tons of potatoes into town, and do the shopping at the same time. Supplies would come in on the ships, so flour & sugar etc were bought at that time, and bought in bulk. (we are talking 70lb bags here! (30+ kilos)

Ruby was reminiscing about one particular trip where the whole family went into town (She had a sister and two brothers). Her mother did the rare thing of buying a loaf of bread, as she probably hadn’t had time that day to make one.  By the time they got home she found a completely hollowed out loaf!! Once the siblings started nibbling out the inside it seemed they couldn’t stop!! Just the crusts were left, which was what they had on the table that night!

Apparently (luckily) her mum saw the funny side!

Ration books were issued once a year. Coupons were cut out at the counter, and it was illegal to trade in ones that were already cut. However, people did – Ruby doesn’t remember anyone getting into trouble for it.

As the war started, Ruby began nursing. She said farewell to one of her brothers, who went to war and never came home. There is a beautiful photo of her and Syd in their respective uniforms that graces the wall in her lounge room.

The hospital wards were always short of supplies and it was a juggling act to provide patients with what they needed.

They were supplied with cots for the babies, but no mattresses or bedding! The nurses had to be creative. A spare bed was robbed of its pillows to make mattresses, blankets were folded to make soft borders around the hard edges of the cots, and napkins were used to fill in gaps to stop the draughts getting in to the babies!

The mothers understood the plights of the nurses and banded together to give them any spare coupons that they could lay their hands on.

Ruby and some of the other nurses got permission to use the coupons and given money by the hospital board to purchase materials. They then set about slowly (and in their time off) sewing up the things needed to make their patients lives more comfortable.

Ruby was so mortified that these new mothers were being served dinners off these terrible old tin trays instead of nice plates!! (even though she insists the food was good!)

Ruby remembers her other brother Col, when spending time with his friends, that they would go to the shop and see what they could buy for a treat. Usually it was cheese!!! Imagine that! Buying a lump of cheese to nibble on as a treat from a shop!

How our worlds have changed!

And really – the most important question in my mind was “What about chocolate??”

Gosh! Chocolate was a rare rare treat! If you were lucky (and it was available) you might get some on your birthday, or some at Christmas! Ruby’s eyes lit up – “It was a real ‘red letter’ day if you got chocolate!”

Boiled sweets were more common, but still a luxury. Sugar wasn’t so plentiful that you could go making sweets for the kids, and as Ruby pointed out – there wasn’t that much time for such frivolities!

I don’t think people know how fortunate we are to live in our worlds where so much is at our fingertips!

I asked Ruby if the people in the city found the rationing more difficult as they were maybe more used to having things available, but she thought not, simply because people just didn’t have money and so were used to going without.

I can only imagine the vast majority of us in first world countries would take things very hard if we suddenly got super restricted on our basic foodstuffs, never-mind all the luxuries!

Well – I have two pieces of chocolate left that I am about to indulge in. However, I won’t take it for granted. I will appreciate it that little bit more tonight!

Cheers

When I am writing down various “Ruby Stories” I feel sad I can’t get into a time machine with my camera and snap some photos of the people, places and events that she talks about. To have a photo of the Chinaman who delivered vegetables by horse and cart to the more remote farms, or capture an image of ‘Toddler Margie’ being wheeled down to the blackberry patch in a barrow, because Ruby had a taste for blackberry pie that night, and the path was no place for a proper pram!

So as I tell tonight’s story, I’ll just have to run a tandem picture story of the current events in Ruby’s garden!

When Ruby was about 14 years old, the property they lived on had (among other things) around 50 chickens. There were always hens and young roosters, plus plenty of chicks. Eggs were plentiful, and a fresh chicken dinner was a much welcomed change from corned meat.

Remember – no fridge to store meat for longer periods of time like we enjoy today!

At this particular time, Ruby’s Granny had fallen ill, and Ruby’s mother made the trip over the water (to Melbourne) to take care of her for a short while.

Well, Sunday rolled around, Mum wasn’t home and the usual roast chicken dinner was in danger of not happening because Ruby’s father was much to busy to sort that kind of thing out. The kids (Ruby, her sister and two brothers) were not keen on missing out on their fresh roasted chicken dinner.

They convinced their father that they could do it because “they knew everything” (don’t we all at 14 years old?)

So between a visiting girlfriend of Ruby’s and the two boys, they ran down a fat healthy rooster, dispatched, plucked and cleaned – just as they saw their mother do!

Unfortunately at this point Ruby realised that she didn’t know how to do the stuffing and came to the conclusion that you can’t actually bake a chook if it didn’t have stuffing!

Enter plan B.

Boil Chicken.

They knew enough to put some vegies in the pot with the chicken – some onion & carrots.

Ruby’s dad got in and checked on progress – only to find wheat floating around in the water with the chicken & vegetables! “What did you put in it??”

Turned out, even though they did a great job of cleaning the bird, they didn’t take the crop out so the unfortunate chickens last breakfast was now floating in Sunday’s dinner.

Ruby can’t recollect how her Dad saved Sunday dinner – she suspects he threw out the water and started again.

Things were totally fine until her mother returned from Melbourne and couldn’t seem to locate her recently purchased prize breeding rooster!!!!

There were scolding’s all around, but most of the heat was taken by her father for not supervising the children well enough!!

Apparently they were not popular!!

I wondered what they did with all the eggs. 50 chickens really means a lot of spare eggs, and because all the nearby farms had their own poultry as well, you couldn’t give or sell them to your neighbours.

Apparently, once motor vehicles were a bit more common, a fellow with a truck did the rounds of the out of town properties with groceries. You could make an order with him and he would deliver to your door. At the same time you could offload all your excess eggs as well – which would reduce your grocery bill

It was the job of the kids, of course, to collect the eggs.

After school, eggs needed collecting, someone needed to gather the ‘morning sticks’ (kindling to start the fire the next morning) and someone needed to bring the cow in.

Bringing in the cow really was the most sought after job because you got to ride the pony!! A few sibling squabbles took place over this, even though they were meant to take turns.  Really – some things never change no matter what decade we live in!

I enjoyed my cuppa with Ruby and writing the story down – she had a real chuckle when I told her I wanted the story of cooking the wrong chook!

I left her in her warm lounge room with her knitting

Cheers