Friday, December 7, 2012

Sepia Saturday: Installing the new boiler

Keith and Neil Phelan, brothers, returned from serving in the Pacific in WW2 and were at a bit of a loss for a while as to what to do next. It turned out all right in the end but one of their business ventures, in 1952, was to take over a company that had been owned by other family members. It was a cordial factory, Euroa Cordials. They closed it down after a year or two because it wasn't profitable.

Here are Neil (left) and Keith (right) watching cheerfully while their father's first cousin, Ford McKernan (also a returned serviceman), does all the hard work! They're installing a new boiler.


You can.see more blogs on the Sepia Saturday theme here

13 comments:

  1. It's clear to me I know nothing about how things work. I wouldn't have thought a boiler would be outside. Such an interesting picture!

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  2. I do like "work photographs". they seem to give a much more accurate view of what life really like than all those studio set pieces. That photograph of yours is so full of information.

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  3. This is a great photo!

    When I think of "cordials" I automatically think of "Anne of Green Gables" and the cordial she and Diana got tipsy on.

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  4. That's a really interesting photo. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that was a still. But you don't think of concocting cordials in some illegal kind of way. Cordials sound so innocent. Too bad the business didn't work out.
    Nancy

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  5. I'm sure there is something brewing there. It makes me want to see a photo taken from a different angle.

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  6. Looks like a boiler to run some piece of machinery that's hiding inside the sheds...lots of wooden shipping boxes in the background, too. I'm with Bob here: "work photographs" show so much of life!

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  7. What a wonderful picture! They look happy. What kind of alcohol is in a "cordial" anyway? I will have to look that up.

    Thanks,

    Kathy M.

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  8. I think it's absolutely wonderful that you have this work photo. It's real life, so to speak, as opposed to pose photographs. I wish you would tell us more about the cordials they made.

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  9. The cordials in Australia are usually non-alcoholic soft drinks. I'm not sure whether this produced aerated cordials - I'll have to do some more research. And I don't kmow what flavours they produced either. Lemon would have been one.

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  10. Quite an interesting photo! I wonder who took it and why.

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  11. There's a sense of fun in this picture as if they are smiling less for the camera but more at a joke of some kind. I think they might be just filling a tub with hot water for washing up.

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  12. Being a former customs officer the photo looks like an illegal distillery to me. That activity is illegal here unless of course you pay excise. But apart from that, the picture is a gem!

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  13. i use to live next door to this factory as a kid I remember that boiler sitting there and my dad run trucks out of the yard
    The brick building i think is still there but after the school brought the land they pulled down the wooden shed behind the boiler and the cut down the side wall to keep as a fence to our place The shed was lucky to be still there then, as a kid i would light fires next to it in the grass and see if i could put them out as the fire got bigger

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I love to read your comments. Thankyou for your interest.

Lorraine

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