Straight Hair and Rag Sausages

Dear Sepia Saturday.

You wanted photos of hair this week.  Just look at the beautiful photos members have been posting.  But let me remind you that not all of us have beautiful, lush, gleaming sensual rolls of thick, lustrous, magniificent hair..  Some of us for the whole of our lives have had thin, stringy, sparse, dull, straight, straight hair which at a time when straight  hair was unfashionable hair  needed to be tortured with strips of rag for hours to have any semblance of a Shirley Temple curl for a special occasion.

Respectfully,  boundforoz

The only evidence I have of rag “sausages” on the girl on the right. Newstead 1936.

And for more hair photos go to this week’s Sepia Saturday links.

And I said…. then She said…. – Wordless Wednesday

And I said … then She said …

Christmas 1968 at Stawell, Central Victoria

Sand, Sand and more Sand

Sand is formed by the weathering of rocks into smaller and smaller particles helped by water and wind, heat and cold. No two sand areas are the same as the particles come from so many different sources.  But we associate sand with the ocean,  rivers and deserts,  where it  will often be the backdrop for our recreational activities,

Here are some rocks as they were 112 years ago.  By now erosion will have changed their appearance,  These rocks are down on the beach somewhere on the Bellarine Peninsula near Geelong in Victoria.

Tom Tansey is holding his younger daughter with his wife beside him and his elder daughter at her knee. The year would be 1902 or 3  but I can’t identify the reason for the excursion.  It is possibe that it is something connected to the Geelong Town Band or a church outing. At the time the South Geelong to Queenscliff Railway was still operating so it may have been a day excursion by train, otherwise a slower trip by horse-drawn vehicle.

You could safely build a fire on the sand of a beach when you needed to boil a billy

A 1930 Walking Tour from Apollo Bay to Port Campbell

Here Vera boils the billy in 1930, looking smart in her jodphurs and Charles enjoys his cuppa. If you look closely at the rock in front of Vera you will see  the Kodak camera case which was featured in a previous post.

Charles enjoys his billy tea

By Christmas 1938/39  they were enjoying a family picnic on the beach  Lovely warm sand to squish with your toes and a sun that was hot enough to make you need an impromptu shelter made from the rug that had probably been brought along to sit on.  Even the pram comes down on the sand after having been brought to the beach strapped onto the luggage rack at the back of the car –  there was no boot in the car.

I think this beach picnic was at Skenes Creek, just to the east of Apollo Bay.The width of the sand  looks right t and there would have a bit of a river to the left of the picture.  If I’m wrong someone is sure to tell me.

And finally in 1940 the tide comes in and covers the sand at Queenscliff.  Time to take the plunge.

These photos were posted for this week’s  sand theme for Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday

A Cane Chair in Beechworth with a side serve of Brass Bands

Sepia Saturday has suggested cane chairs – or should I say wicker furniture – as a possible theme for this week.  Here is Amelia Tansey in 1931 nursing one of her four grandchildren while seated in a cane chair  at the side of her house in Camp St, Beechworth .

So while wifie was at home cooking, cleaning, washing, sewing etc, etc,  what was hubby Bandmaster Tom doing?   If not at work he might have been at the State School training their brass band.

He would have been using his favourite teaching methods.  My cousin Larraine gave me a copy of his hand-written notes in his lovely  cursive script  This is the first page of three.

Here is Tom at the centre of the State School Band playing in front of the school in 1931.

And then again after playing at the hospital for Christmas in 1931. Some of the boys look quite old but some schools went up to  the 8th grade and the boys would be 14 or 15.

At other times he might have been rehearsing  the Town Brass Band. or putting the band through their marching practice, this time in 1934

Other  interpretations of this week’s  theme can be found at Sepia Saturday

 

 

A 1950 Wedding Dress for the Bride – A Treasure from Trove

I recently wrote about a demure little  Ballerina length evening dress  which was  bought from Renee Rose in Swanston Street,  Melbourne in 1951.

While I had been browsing through the digitised newspapers using Trove I found that the previous year Renee Rose had also been mentioned in the daily Argus in connection with a wedding dress.

The Argus, 15th July, 1950

This dress from Renee rose was said to be the most daring bridal dress in Melbourne and was used to illustrate a comment from the Dean of Melbourne that brides were turning the marriage service into a mannequin parade.  The accompanying article had the clergy putting forward their response to the Dean.

One delightful clergyman was “so distracted by the low-cut frocks  of the bridesmaids that he almost lost the thread of the service”..  From this brief article it would seem that bridesmaid’s frocks were the ones most likely to come in for criticism.

Another even blames the male dress designers as their only interest is designing from the male point of view.

Folk Dancing at School in 1970

We sometimes called it Folk Dancing, at other times Country Dancing.  I don’t know how much resemblance there is between the dance that these children are doing and true folk dancing..  But this is what these school children were taught in 1970 for a display at their annual school fete.

So from home movie to tape  to DVD to computer and the gradual loss of quality this is what the St John’s Lutheran School fete looked like in Geelong in 1970, beginning with a display of folk dancing.

 

The music is Percy Grainger’s Country Gardens.

Other examples of dancing and folk traditions among many other things can be found on Sepia Saturday.