It’s 4AM at the Gamble household. Mrs Gamble is getting ready to start her tasks for the day. She wakes up long before the rest of the family.

Get started!

“Thank goodness you’ve arrived!
I need a helping hand with the housework today. I am very behind on my tasks, and they all need to be done before sundown!”

O.K!

Click your shoes to take them off before you come inside.

Click the milk bottles on the doorstep to bring them in with you.

I’m coming Mrs. Gamble!


Before the kids wake up, Mrs Gamble cleans the bathroom.

Click the bathroom and outhouse to make sure they’re all sparkling clean.
‍

Next

Nice work – and great timing.

The Gamble kids are up, dressed and ready for breakfast.

Let’s meet them

This is Barbara Gamble, the oldest sibling.

She’s off to secretary school today.

At home, Barbara helps Mrs Gamble with the laundry. She also cooks and cleans up with her mum in the evenings.

These chores are to prepare her to become a housewife when she’s older.

Hi, Barbara!

This is Theodore Gamble.

His favourite lolly is a satellite wafer!

Theodore’s main chores are mowing the lawn and helping his father, Mr Gamble, wash the car.

He also has a job delivering the town newspaper on his bicycle every weekend.

Hi, Theo!

This is Marty Gamble,the youngest of the family.

His favourite game is hoppy.

Marty plays hoppy with Theodore and other kids on their street until dusk. Sometimes, it makes them late coming home for dinner.

It’s Marty’s job to feed the chickens, but he always forgets.

Hi, Marty!

Once breakfast is over, we’ll wave Barbara, Theodore and Marty off to school.

The Gamble kids walk four kilometres to school together because there’s no school bus.

How do you get to school?

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Next

Now there’s even more housework to do!

Click on each task to help Mrs Gamble.

Wash the dishes...

Sweep the whole house, using the carpet sweeper    ...

Next

Make the beds...

Pack tomorrow’s lunch boxes    for Mr Gamble and the kids...

Next

Sweep the porch and clean the cobwebs...
look out for spiders!

Are we done yet, Mrs. Gamble? I’m tired!

Phew! It’s time for a break.

Mrs Gamble’s favourite thing to do on her break is to have a cup of tea and a sandwich, and look through her Woman’s Weekly magazine.

Source: The Australian Women’s Weekly — November 12, 1958. Courtesy of Moreton Bay Regional Council Heritage Collection.
Next
Next

“I can’t wait until we can afford some of these luxury appliances.
‍
Oh, well. Back to work.”

More work? Oh, no!

Do you think that doing housework in the ‘50s was easier, or harder than than it is now?

Much Easier
The Same
Much Harder

In the 1950s, a lot of families used big washing pots in the backyard (called coppers) to wash clothes.

But the Gamble family is lucky – they have a brand new “automatic washer”!

Do you remember this appliance from the magazine?

Yes!
No…

Barbara is home from secretary school! Remember, it’s her job to do the laundry.

Click the clothes to help Barbara put them in the automatic washer.

Next

Click the clothes line to help Barbara hang the family’s clothes out to dry in the sun.

“Mum’s going to be so happy when these clothes are folded and put away!”, says Barbara.

Looks like you’ve made a new friend!

Next

It’s almost time to go. Let’s have a look at all of the things Mrs Gamble still has left to do...

Prepare dinner with Barbara

Clean up after, and store the leftovers in the icebox

Get the kids in the shower and put them to bed

Serve Mr Gamble tea and biscuits while he watches the evening TV broadcast

Press and lay out the whole family’s clothes for tomorrow

Plan the weekly groceries, and tomorrow’s meals

Get up at 4AM tomorrow and do the chores all over again!

Next

What do you think would be the most fair?

Tap your favourite answer!

or

“Thank you for helping me with the house work today.
It was nice to have some extra help around the house for a change.”

Next

“Could you do me one more favour? Take these empty milk bottles and leave them at the door  on your way out.
Here’s a penny to leave for the milkman.”

Next Next

Where did Mrs Gamble ask you to put the empty milk bottles?

Try Again

In the fridge

Try Again

In the bin

Correct!

At the door

Next

The time machine has arrived to pick you up and take you back home.

Click on the time machine to get in!

In the fifties, milk bottles were delivered to homes by “milkmen”.

All you had to do was leave a crate on your doorstep (with a penny sitting on it) at night.

In the morning, all of the bottles would be filled with fresh milk! It was almost like magic.

Why do you think people liked having their milk delivered?

Close

In the fifties, a lot of girls finished school early to learn office work skills.

Once they were married, they were expected to quit their jobs and become housewives like Mrs Gamble.

What kind of things do you think a housewife did?

Close

What’s a carpet sweeper?

They were like brooms, but with rollers to collect dust from the carpet. Carpet sweepers didn’t use electricity. Housewives would use them before vacuum cleaners were invented.

What do you think would do a better job at cleaning?

Vacuum
Carpet sweeper

In the fifties, packed lunch boxes were nice and simple.

In the Gamble family, you’d get:
• A jam or vegemite sandwich wrapped in wax paper
• A piece of fruit (apple or orange)
• A sweet treat, like a homemade lamington or an ANZAC biscuit... but only if you were lucky!

Mr Gamble would get the leftovers from dinner in his lunch box, and schools would provide milk for kids to drink.

What other foods do you think children would take to school?

Close

Here’s what satellite wafers looked like...

What do you think they tasted like?

Close

Hoppy

• Find a friend to play with you.

• Draw this picture on the ground with chalk.

• Find a stone, and toss it into one of the squares. Any square!

• Starting at 1, hop on all the numbers. When there’s only one number use one foot to hop. Jump with two feet when there’s two numbers to land on. Also, don’t hop on the square that the stone is in.

• Once you get to the end (9), turn around and hop back to the start. When you get to the square with the stone, pick it up without putting your foot in that square, and keep hopping back to the beginning.

• If you fall over when picking up the stone, or throw it outside of the squares, it’s the other player’s turn.

What are some games you play outside?

Close

Making your own clothes…

Are the clothes you’re wearing bought from a store? Back in the 50s, clothes were only bought by wealthy families on very special occasions.

A lot of women knew how to sew. Instead of buying their family’s clothes for every occasion, they’d buy fabric and sew it all themselves. They also handed clothing down from sibling to sibling. Hand-me-downs were a great way to re-use clothing when you grew out of it.

Have you ever worn hand-me-downs?

Yes
No

Why isn’t the toilet in the bathroom?

In the fifties, a lot of places in Australia didn’t have plumbing pipes all over the house. Many families had “outhouses” – small buildings outdoors for the toilet.

How do you think people cleaned an outhouse?

Close

Being thrifty...

Recovering from war with no money was tough. Groceries were very expensive.

To save money, people would do things like using teabags more than once before throwing them away. When families couldn’t afford butter, they’d use “dripping” to butter their sandwiches.

What do you do to be thrifty at home?

Close

Why is Mrs Gamble all dressed up just to do housework?

1950s house dresses were the uniform for housewives like Mrs Gamble. Complete with an apron, home dresses were almost the same as “going out” dresses.

Women were told by their husbands (and over the radio and TV) that they had to look elegant, beautiful and clean all of the time... even when they were scrubbing the floors!

Do you have to dress up when you do your chores?

Yes
No

Remember the milk bottles, delivered to homes daily by milkmen?

This penny you’re leaving is payment for him to replace the empty milk bottles with full ones, while everybody is sleeping.

Close

After the war…

Groceries were very hard to find during World War Two. When the war ended in 1945, everything was still very expensive. This led to people making their own groceries!

Having chickens instead of buying eggs, getting a cow instead of buying milk and meat, baking their own bread and churning their own butter... It was hard work!

Let’s test your memory. When did WWII end?

1956
1945

What’s a shilling?

Before dollars, cents and credit cards, Australia used pounds, shillings and pence.

There are 12 pence in a shilling. There are 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound.

Can you remember: How many cents are there in a dollar?

240
100

What’s a yard?

1 yard works out to about 91cm – just under a metre.

A yard is what we call an “imperial” unit of length. “Yards”, “inches” and “feet” were measurements we used in the 1950s. In 1966, we switched to the “metric” system: centimetres and metres.

Fabric often still gets sold in yards, and imperial units are still used by a lot of people, especially if they’re older or from the USA.

Can you remember: What kind of unit is a yard?

Metric
Imperial

Refrigerator

For most of the 1950s, only wealthy families could afford electric refrigerators. Most households used ice boxes (like eskies) instead!

Dishwashers

Dishwashers were a luxury in the fifties – most people did their dishes by hand.

How does your family do the dishes?

TV

TV might not have been in Australia by the end of the fifties, if it wasn’t for the Melbourne Olympic Games. In 1956 there was an “opening night” celebration to announce the arrival of TV in Australia.

Have you watched the Olympics on TV before?

Washing machines

In the fifties, these were called “automatic washers”. They were still very expensive, and many families didn’t have one.

Cocktail fridge cabinet

Entertaining was important in the fifties, but cabinets like this were very showy, and didn’t appear in many Australian households!

Everyone loved to look at magazines and dream of expensive luxuries like this for their home – especially Mrs Gamble!

A piece of luxury

Magazine spreads like this made upgrades feel less expensive, by breaking them down step by step. The first purchase would often be a stainless steel sink. And then, a fridge!

Livestock Feed

Rather than buying milk, eggs and meat all of the time, lots of people in the 50s used to have chickens and cows at home.

General stores would often have big sheds out the back, where they kept big sacks of livestock feed for everyone’s animals.

Freezer

See how this freezer opens at the top like a chest? It wasn’t until later in the fifties that fridges and freezers started to look the same, or join together.

You’ve reached the end of your 1950s journey!

Play Again?