Oh, what memories.
Some differences for us - we didn't get fast food franchises in Australia until the early Seventies. Except for KFC - "Kentucky Fried Chicken" back then. I think that came out in about 1966. Otherwise for a treat we would get hot chips (fries, only bigger and fatter) wrapped in newspaper, from the local fish 'n chip shop. There were other delicacies such as meat pie (individual-sized) with "dead 'orse" (Aussie rhyming slang for tomato sauce). Ice cream sodas were a very special treat. A burger was a rare treat for us - I was in my teens before I had one, I think. And Aussie burgers are very different - they're huge and loaded with salad and other stuff like cheddar cheese, grilled bacon and fried egg. Sometimes slices of pineapple too, as well as salad and the beef pattie, usually moulded on the spot from a handful of beef mince. You'd watch them cook it. People could buy potato crisps but we never did.
We grew most of what we ate. We weren't strictly living on a farm, we lived in the outer suburbs but my parents managed the land very efficiently. When I was found as a baby to be allergic to cows milk, my parents bought and bred goats on our small quarter acre. We kept hens, sheep, a few pigs from time to time, the goats and towards the end, we raised some poddy calves. This was on top of the fruit orchard and the vegetable beds. The whole family would pitch in to help harvest or till the beds. The manure went onto the garden beds.
We had dogs, always. One dog was a genius - the older twins would come home from school for lunch and when they went back would take the dog with him. he had a shopping bag with money and a list. The grocer would fill the shopping bag with the goods on the list, put any change in the bag, give it to the dog and send him home. My older brother would also use the dog to fetch in wood from the woodheap in wet weather. My mother would leave me with the dog, knowing I would be safe and no stranger could enter the yard. He was a wonderful dog - died of tick bite when I was 4.
Food - home cooked from cheap or home-grown ingredients. My mother would buy stewing steak and grill it. I was a determined vegetarian. o junk food, sometimes home-made biscuits but they were counted out. We did get lemonade sometimes as a treat, but mostly I drank milk or sometimes home-made cordial. We preserved the orchard produce in an old Vacola on the stove. I used to come home from school and wash a bucket of potatoes, then peel them and put them on to cook. Then the carrots. Then peas.
We actually had a dishwasher - pitiful by modern standards. With 8 kids I think my mum convinced my father to get one. We still had to hand wash-up every night, but it cut the load in half. The milking things were the worst to hand-wash. One bathroom but separate toilet. The laundry - we graduated from an old copper with a hand-cranked wringer, to an automatic washing machine. We never had a drier though.
School shoes - bought as needed, repaired at home for as long as possible. I remember buying new shoes and generally having to go up three sizes or more, because my feet had grown that much. My parents would hand down everything else, but never shoes. I had one pair of 'good' shoes for parties and Sundays. One pair of shoes for school. The rest of the time - bare feet, even in winter. And always, a pair of gumboots (wellingtons). We had a rack for all the gumboots in the family, they were kept in the toilet. We always had to check them for spiders (funnelwebs and redbacks) before putting them on.
Clothes - either home-made or hand-me-downs. However, I had a wealthy aunt who once brought some designer clothes back from Paris - three white broderie anglaise dresses. With six girls there was always a white dress for someone to wear. I worked my way through all three dresses and still have one in my wardrobe. It fits easy child 2/difficult child 2 perfectly but she refuses to wear it because it looks too "little girl" in style, with a full skirt and peter pan collar. However, you can see the quality of the workmanship in the fabric and manufacture. From what I can see, the fabric has been hand-stitched. I wore one of these dresses to a sister's wedding; to my school formal (several years running); to a number of other formal occasions. It definitely was NOT in fashion when I wore it to the school speech day!
For primary school I didn't wear a school uniform. Instead, my mother & I hand-made some dresses which were for school. I was supposed to change into play clothes when I got home from school. In summer that was usually necessary anyway, because the Sydney southerly buster (a summer storm, blowing up from the south) would arrive like clockwork after every hot day, dumping torrential rain in a thunder & lightning display at precisely 3.20 every afternoon; I would arrive home soaked to the skin. One feature of this drought - the southerly busters are simply not arriving. They have been rare for the past few years.
We had a TV, there were three TV networks to begin with in about 1956. A fourth network began in early 60s. We now have a number of community channels and another national one (multicultural) which began in about 1978.
No air conditioning in our home. Heating in winter was a wood fire at first, then later a coal fire. We occasionally were permitted to use an electric heater. A special treat in winter was being permitted to get dressed in front of the fire.
I walked to school - quarter of a mile - then later I had a two mile walk each way. At times (when I was 4, and later when I was 11) I travelled by bus and then train to go to school, over an hour's travel each way. I was not permitted to ride a bicycle - too much danger on the roads.
A neighbour owned a horse and sulky, I used to have to run out with a rock from the garden to prop behind the wheels when he wanted to stop to chat to my mother. The milk (when we got cows milk delivered) arrived on a horse & cart - a big white cart with steel-shod wheels that were bigger than I was. he gave free drinks to my sisters but I was not allowed to have any.
My mother made ice cream from goats milk (not recommended) and later on, we made butter from the cows milk after I outgrew my allergy and we had a beautiful Jersey house cow.
I remember studying for my final high school exams (we had moved to a five acre farm at that point) by first going out into the garden, picking a colander full of tomatoes and sitting at my desk reading my tests and eating tomatoes. At the farm, we lived four miles from the school and it took forty minutes for the bus to make each trip. husband lived closer to the town and would sometimes ride his bike to visit. We met (briefly) in my final year of school, he took me out a year later (as friends) and we didn't become an item for another 18 months. Then my parents sold the farm and moved 300 miles away. By that stage I was adapting to living alone in the city - very different. But when I went home to my parents, at lunchtime we would have salad sandwiches. I would be sent out to the garden to pick some tomatoes, a lettuce and pull up an onion. We would slice up some cheddar and open a tin of beetroot. They lived by a wonderful beach and I would swim every day, year round.
Maybe because there were so many of us, we had a more frugal lifestyle than other kids my age, but when I look back it was fairly healthy, apart from the bread and dripping (it was a treat, can you believe!) I can feel my arteries harden, just thinking about it. Every kitchen had a dripping tin. You can't buy them these days.
Leaving home to live alone in the city was a huge shock. But if I hadn't I would never have grown up. husband & I used to travel the trains on the way to uni. I came home for weekends so we saw each other on Friday afternoons and Monday mornings. It was the last days of the old country steam train, so it means a lot to us.
Ands orange juice? We had to hand-squeeze it ourselves. It was easier to eat the oranges instead.
That's life!
Marg