verandah

Slab House This is a low-set, single-storeyed, timber-framed structure with hardwood slab walls and floors and a hipped roof of unlined corrugated iron. Adzed timber rafters and tie beams with few battens support this roof, and the galvanised iron guttering is of early half-round profile. The principal uprights are morticed and tenoned to a bottom plate and carry a top plate, and the whole rests on timber stumps. Split hardwood slabs, both vertical and horizontal, provide the infill between the frames. There are no internal doorways. Slab partitions to ceiling height divide the structure into three rooms, each of which opens onto a verandah which runs the length of the building on the southwest side. The outer edge of the verandah floor is carried by a ground log. The former kitchen features a cooking alcove and chimney of corrugated iron attached to the end wall. This alcove is clad externally with vertical slabs and has a stone floor. Beyond the kitchen a small iron-roofed lean-to supported by timber posts is attached to the rear of the fireplace. The building remains substantially intact and has been furnished as a private museum, illustrating a typical bedroom and kitchen of the pioneer era. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_Hut_Farm

In the past Girls spent a lot of time at home learning to do domestic tasks, like sewing, cooking, washing, and cleaning. Their education was geared towards training them for womanhood and how to be good wives and mothers. Needlework was a key part of this education, from the working class to the wealthy. It was seen as an essential feminine skill—plain sewing to make and mend clothing and household items, and embroidery to decorate them. Needlework samplers have been around since the 15th century and had become a standard feature of girls’ education by the 1700s. Settler girls in Australia made cross-stitching samplers at school. But samplers and other domestic items don’t tell us much about the lives these girls led outside the home. Girls often worked out of the home as domestic servants or in factories, went to school, and played in the urban neighborhood. Some evidence of this can be found in the shape of homemade wooden dolls from archaeological digs around Little Lon—a working-class area on Little Lonsdale Street. We have written correspondence, photos, and paintings of prominent men and women from the era, but these rarely include much detail about children. Of the hundreds of thousands of girls born in 19th-century Australia, very little of what they made have survived. Source: museumsvictoria.com.au/article/a-discovery-of-stitches-ne...

What a wonderful house!