Gunning Public School visited Pye Cottage Museum in 2019. Forty students from years 3 and 4 kept their guides busy as they studied the displays and asked questions about family life in a four-roomed, slab-walled house. Before 1867, there were only two rooms - a kitchen/dining room and a bedroom. When the children entered these first rooms, they tried to imagine how the "folk" who lived in this tiny house kept warm and clean, how they cooked their food and how they relaxed at the end of the day.
A PYE RETURNS TO PYE COTTAGE
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| Nicholas Pye and Harrison Picker at Pye Cottage Museum Photo G Dickson |
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| Pye Cottage showing the original two rooms. Photo RA Spiller |
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| Photo G Dickson |
We need the magnifying glass to read the tiny script in the Rules book! The game is complete, with no pieces lost down the back of a couch. Halma is the Greek word for “Jump.” A board marked like this one goes back to the 1700s. 1. Wikipedia thinks it was invented by George Howard Monks, a US thoracic surgeon at Harvard Medical School, based upon an earlier English game called Hoppity (1854).
Australians know Draughts and Chinese Checkers, and maybe Grasshopper. In all of these games, part of the winning strategy is to “leapfrog” your own and your opponent’s pieces. A German business was the first to create “Star Halma” which was then copied by a US marketer as “Checkers” on the same star layout. It was given an exotic appeal by calling it Chinese Checkers, though it was never a traditional Chinese game! My own copy has pictures of Chinese children on each of the starpoints.
On their visit, the local children were amazed at the tight sleeping arrangements - parents in the "big" bed, newborn in the tiny birthing cot, probably two young ones "top to toe" in a single bed with its corn hush mattress. As the family grew, the house grew with the addition of a "boys" bedroom and a "girls" bedroom. The kitchen was moved to a separate building, together with a bathroom, laundry and store rooms.
PRECIOUS THINGS, WRAPPED IN TISSUE
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| Bodice of the 1905 wedding dress, ready for storage Photo LA Bush |
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| Halma original box inside an acid-free sleeve, ready to store Photo RA Spiller |
A GAME AND A BOOK FROM OVERSEAS FOR THE LOCAL KIDS
The Adventures of the Noah Family created by JT Horrabin, was run in English newspapers as a cartoon strip from 1919 to 1952. It told of a suburban family.
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| The NOAHS on holiday with Japhet Photo RA Spiller |
Many of the Noah family strips were collected into hard back books as Annuals and Summer Books. Australia’s own Ginger Meggs also started life as a cartoon strip, Us Fellers, in 1921. The annuals (starting at least as early as 1926) were also bound collections of the strips. Perhaps the inner suburban, working class lad might not have had the same appeal to girl readers or to the country parent who made the purchase. Perhaps the Gunning and Goulburn stores knew that their claim of “imported” signalled “good taste.”
The Noahs on holiday with Japhet, is a story featuring the family from the cartoons, with some half-page black and white illustrations. The author, JT Horrabin, was a newspaper Art Editor, the illustrator for H G Wells’ Outline of History, a map maker, a text book writer, and a Labour Party MP, among other accomplishments.
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| Photo RA Spiller |
Nancy’s sister inscribed her name. We thank her for fixing the date for us. The book seems to have been well-read. Repairs made by the family to the book and to the box of Peter Coddle have been retained.
Peter Coddle’s Trip to New York “was all the rage at parties and social gatherings in the late 1880s” and it was not just a children’s card game. 2. Part of its appeal was the idea of the “country bumpkin” getting into trouble in the “big smoke”. This game was mass produced by several companies in an era of growing urbanisation when country workers were moving to the cities for work and a better life. Clearly this struck a chord with the Australian audience.
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| Peter Coddle cards and rule book Photo RA Spiller |
The aim was to submit “laughable and ridiculous combinations” of words and phrases into the script, as the player drew from the deck. There were no winners or losers.
AN ALL-AUSTRALIAN GAME?
Animal Antics is a marbles skittle game. As well as the proud Australian made boast, another side of the lid says, “A Winna Production.” In late November, 1943, Hobart Mercury readers were advised to hurry in to Fitzgeralds to buy WORD-BUILDING GAMES. This seems a bargain at 6 1 /2 d (d = pence, so just over five cents).
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| Not so many "Australian" animals? Photo RA Spiller |
The advertisement continued: Educational. A fascinating “Winna” product” from Fitzgerald’s “coupon-free” gift bar. In early December, 1943, John Martin’s store in Adelaide included a “Winna” crayon set 1/- in its ad. (Numerous examples of Winna advertisements can be found in a Trove search.)
During the 1940s, advertisements appeared regularly including for employees for Winna Motor Products, and offering builders and plumbers metal products, such as staircases. Other advertisers advised their shopfront location by its nearness to Winna, so it must have been impressive. Winna Products Pty Ltd appears to have operated at 110-112 Redfern Street, Sydney. 3. This business went into voluntary liquidation on 23 November, 1973. 4.
THE OLDEST KNOWN METHOD OF FORTUNE TELLING IN THE WORLD also "Made in Australia"
The interpretation of dates may go back to an ancient Chinese book written in the 3rd century AD. 5. In 1915 “CHI CHI” was first sold in San Francisco to the large population of Chinese immigrants. The Bladwell version of “lottery poetry” or Kau Chim, also dates from 1915 by a Sydney copyright holder, printed in Sydney.
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| Numbers 41 and 51 are visible on the ends of the bamboo sticks Photo RA Spiller |
This version (proudly called THE CRAZE OF THE ORIENT on the reverse cover of the booklet) should contain 78 sticks, though there would usually be 100 in temple sets, together with the sheets of poetry to guide the interpretation.
LET THEM LEARN MUSIC!
Ethel Daisy Bladwell (nee Wheatley) studied music in Gunning and she ensured that her children were introduced to music and art. The certificate for her music examination (100%) is displayed in Pye Cottage Museum together with studio photographs of her parents. They were a well-to-do family who started in Gunning, not far from the site of this cottage.
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| Proof that recorders were played by youngsters well before 1950! Photo RA Spiller |
THANKS
The young people from Gunning Public School impressed the guides from the Gunning & District Historical Society. They were enthusiastic and very well-mannered. We thank their teacher, Gabrielle Dickson, for the opportunity to show off the Cottage.
The Veolia Mulwaree Trust Donation has vastly improved our ability to store fragile textile items and the toys and games of yesteryear in the Foord donation.
We are grateful to the Upper Lachlan Shire Council for providing the Research Centre building, where the objects will be stored until they are next on display.
SOURCES
1. www.cyningstan.com/game/70/halma gives an introduction to the game, the board layout in a “modern Spears edition” and easy to read Rules. It cites “A Book of Historic Board Games” by Damian Gareth Walker.
2. www.racingnelliebly.com/strange_times/Victorian-era-games-peter-coddles-trip-to-new-york/
3. The City of Sydney holds the record of a DA (development application) to reinstate the Winna building after fire: https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/777287
4. Trove, nla, NSW government gazette, 23 Nov, 1973, issue 145, p 5078.
5. Start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kau_chim for a review of the practice and history of "poetry lottery."
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