A day out

 (the kitchen)

This week, Miss Moo Moo and I went on our very first school excursion together. It was perfect, a visit to one of my favourite places, Pioneer Cottage.

It was nice to see her in a different environment, riding the bus and chatting with friends from her class, some I knew and some I didn't.

With a few groups to go through the tiny cottage, some of our time was spent playing old fashioned games in the wonderful winter sunshine. Games like, 'drop the hankie', transported me right back to the playground of my own grade one years. At once, I remembered my friends and I sitting in a big circle playing this game in our lunch break, it was one of our favourite things to do. Hardly any of the children had heard of 'drop the hankie' and I wondered, what do little grade one girls play at lunch time? I was reminded once again that while some things will be the same for my children, some things will be different. I need to remind myself, that is OK, each day they are creating there own memories. All I can hope is that they are happy ones.

These photos where taken about 6 months ago when we visited Pioneer Cottage as a family. I forgot my camera this week, not that I would have been able to take photos of wallpaper detail and rag rugs while looking after my little group of grade ones.

(the entrance hall)

 

 (the sitting/music room)

  (the dining room)

 (the bedrooms and bathroom)

I think I could easily move into this house tomorrow, in fact, I think I wrote those very words in the visitors book, when I first visited here, years ago. 

If you love historic houses as much as I do, you might also enjoy this, this and this post.

Do you like to step back in time?

Do you think you where born in the era?

If so, then which era would you liked to live in?

Going back in time - part two

I went a little crazy taking photos in the early settlers slab house, at the historical museum.







The house is original was moved from a property about 20 minutes away, it had been rebuilt about 10 years ago.





 I really liked the quirky touches at this museum.

After receiving a recent donation, the museum folk where able to built a replica outside kitchen,

and bathhouse.

Oh, it is so fun, stepping back in time.

Going back in time - part one

On the way home from my Dad's we stopped at a historical museum, I love places like this, do you remember this post.

I have heaps more photos to share tomorrow, but this post is for my cousin.






Karen, do you remember playing on these up in the top paddock of Nana's farm?

And how about this old dunny?

I explained to my children how I had once used a dunny/thunderbox toilet like this. They were horrified. From memory, I used to be horrified whenever I had to use it too. I was terrified of red-back spiders and lets not even mention the smell!

But many years later, after my grandfather got sick and my Nana moved from the big house to the farm cottage, that dunny was just an empty box. It soon became 'the girls' (that included my younger boy cousin, myself and my cousin) cubbie. I told this story to my kids, they looked at me with blank looks. I went on to explain that my older two boy cousins, built us a second level out of the old door that had blown off in the wind, so we had upstairs and downstairs. I continued telling them that we would drag great sheets of corrugated iron to extend our cubbie, two and three rooms would extend our cubbie out the front, old carpet or towels went on the ground and old curtains were passed on for us to use to separate each room. They listened in wonder. After I had tried hard to explain how you could, indeed, make a great cubbie house from this old toilet, Miss Moo Moo asked:

"But who was supervising?"

I couldn't stop laughing, she looked upset at that. I told her no-one needed to supervise us. She didn't understand. I felt so sad that her childhood is so very different to mine. Those days building and playing in those cubbies were the some of best of my life.

I didn't tell them that nearly every time we came to the farm, the wind had taken part of our cubbie house away and it always being adjusted and remade. I didn't tell them that the big boys had a cubbie house made in an old chicken coop that we were not allowed to go into. And I definitely didn't tell them that it was the place where I had my first, and only, cigarette. Actually, it was a cigar, I had two puffs and never smoked again in my life! but that's a story for another day!

Pretty lace in the old restored church at the museum.