Two Australian icons

Family holiday snap, Gundagai c1962

Ask any Australian if they know Streets Icecream and the answer will be yes. And ask any Australian if they know about the dog on the tuckerbox and the answer will be yes. They are two Australian icons. But ask any Australian about the background story of the icons and you'll be met with a blank face or a shoulder shrug. Here they are in the same family holiday snapshot taken near Gundagai, New South Wales in about 1962. There's the dog on the tucker box and parked nearby is a Streets Ice Cream delivery van.

The life-size statue of a dog was unveiled by the Prime Minister of Australia, the Right Honorable Joseph Lyons, in 1932. It is a memorial to the pioneers of the Gundergai district.

The Dog on the tuckerbox kiosk at Snake Gully
showing the Dog on the Tuckerbox statue in front. Gundagai, New South Wales, ca. 1970
[NLA P805/1732 Album 1139] 

Photo taken c2010. Same building, same dog.

Between WWI and WWII, Edwin (‘Ted’) Street with the help of his wife and brother laid the foundations (in Corrimal, NSW) for what would ultimately become Australia’s biggest and best-known ice cream manufacturer. Streets ice cream was originally made in the back shed by Ted. He would then sell these to neighbours along with sweets, cakes and lemonade. Popularity grew and he soon used a cart, then a one-horse- power motorbike to sell Streets ice cream. It continued to grow and today Streets ice cream is sold throughout Australia and New Zealand with well known brands such as Magnum, Paddle Pop and Blue Ribbon. [http://www.streetsicecream.com.au/ShareHappyFlexible/AboutStreets.aspx]

The statue was inspired by a bullock drover's poem, "Bullocky Bill", which celebrates the life of an allegorical drover's dog that loyally guarded the man's tuckerbox (an Australian colloquialism for a box that holds food) until death...Bullocky Bill was written by an otherwise unknown poet who used the pen name "Bowyang Yorke" and first printed in 1857. A later poem by Jack Moses drew on the Bowyang Yorke poem for inspiration and was published in the 1920s. The latter poem was very popular and was the inspiration for the statue. Moses's poem, Nine Miles from Gundagai, was first published in 1938, several years after the statue's unveiling. Jack O'Hagan's song, "Where the Dog Sits on the Tuckerbox (5 miles from Gundagai)", was published in 1937. [Wikipedia]

You can hear another Aussie icon, Slim Dusty, singing the song here.

Sepia Saturday: A set of wheels

Tricycle plus wheelbarrow. It might work.

This photo is a scanned family slide from a about the 1960s. I think the child is my husband's younger sister Kay. I like the creative thinking of the children at play. It looks like the arrangement of tricycle towing a wheelbarrow complete with passenger would work. And obviously an adult has taken the photo so they couldn't have been too worried about consequences.

This post is in response to the Sepia Saturday theme image. You can read other responses over there.

Sepia Saturday: Swimming in the '20s

Swimming in the 1920s, probably at Kow Swamp.

This week's photo is in a family album but I don't know who the people are. I think it was taken at Kow Swamp in the 1920s.

Kow Swamp is a shallow freshwater lake in northern Victoria near Gunbower now used for water storage and some recreational activities such as fishing and birdwatching. It is also a significant archaeological site of Aboriginal heritage and history.

You can find more responses over at Sepia Saturday.

Sepia Saturday: McKinnon's farm, Homerton

In 1952 my parents moved from a wheat farm in the Wimmera to a dairy farm at Homerton on the south coast of Victoria. I was three years old and my younger brother just one.

Our parents owned the farm for about 35 years so I grew up there and have many happy memories of the farm and the district.

Just a few years ago I met a lady by chance who, as a child, was friends with the girl in the first photo below, Heather McKinnon. The McKinnons had owned our farm before us and I was delighted when Heather gave me some copies of old photographs she had of the farm.

It's been interesting to compare what the farm looked like in the 1930s and as I remember it from the 1950s. Some of the buildings were still there, some not. Dad used a tractor rather than horses. Even the trees and vegetation in the background are interesting.

The three photos below were taken on different occasions so I think the cream cart must have been used to entertain visitors as well as their real purpose of taking the cream cans to the end of the lane for pickup and probably for carting other items around the farm as well. Heather was an only child so I imagine she was very skilled with horses and other farm work.

 

Heather McKinnon with her dogs on the horse-drawn cream sled.

Visitors with the dogs on the cream sled.

When we bought the farm we moved into the McKinnon's home (in the photo below) but it was quite old and we only lived there for about three years before my parents built a new house. Some of the garden trees still exist but the house in this photo is long gone.

Visiting children on the cream sled.

This post has been in response to Sepia Saturday's theme photo of dogs. You can see other responses here.