The Essence of Life

One of the things that I really enjoyed as a child was to lie in bed and listen to the rain on the tin roof. There were so many different sounds. There was the soft tinkle of the first tentative drops of a light shower, soon followed by a regular pitter patter as the rain intensified. What I loved best was, when everything else was quiet, I could hear a heavier shower progressing up the street. The steady drumming on the roofs intrigued me and on some nights I could even tell when the shower passed over the cross street because there was a slight pause in the advancing sound. Thunderstorms were a special treat! The lightning and the thunder never frightened me but the belting on the roof of the heavy drops was a sure way to soothe me off to sleep. Always the thunderstorms were accompanied by a gurgling as the water rushed down the downpipe outside my bedroom and I could imagine the same thing happening at the rear of the house where a short downpipe led into the top of the corrugated steel water tank.

Very occasionally, the tank would overflow and a torrent of water would spill out onto the driveway, much to Dad’s consternation as he had to repair the damage before he could drive the car out in the morning. Although there was a tap at the bottom of the tank, it was well out of my reach, and, in any case, we didn’t use the water for drinking – it was used for doing the washing. A pipe led from the tank to the concrete laundry tubs in the combined laundry/bathroom and then on to the wood-fired copper set in bricks in the corner of the room.

The copper served a couple of purposes. The first of course was to boil the water for doing the washing. As the water really began to heat, Mum would drop the clothes in and stir them around from time to time with a pot-stick. I remember that during summer washing days, the room would be full of steam and Mum would actually sweat, something she didn’t seem to do at any other time. That pot-stick had other uses. Mum used them for transferring the steaming clothes from the copper to the laundry tubs where she’d drop them into cold water and use the glass scrubbing board on any spots that hadn’t yielded to the boiling water and Lux flakes in the copper. Then it was through the hand-turned wringer before being hung out to dry on the long clothes line held skywards with a long wooden prop.

The other use for the copper was to heat the water for our baths as there was only a cold water tap at the end of the bath. Mum would use a dipper to fill a bucket with which she’d gingerly transfer the hot water across the room. I remember that for a long time the only shower we could have was a cold one, not something I tried more than once during the winter, although it was a delight during the summer.

When we finally had hot water flowing to the bath, it was through an electrical instant heater which made life easier for Mum. At the same time that the bath heater was installed, another one was connected in the kitchen. This saved carrying kettles of hot water from the coal-fired stove to the sink at the other end of the kitchen. These developments lasted for some years until the time of “The Renovations”.

“The Renovations” heralded major changes. First of these was the extensions at the back of the house, and these included a separate laundry. To do this, we had to sacrifice the water tank but this was similar to all the other houses nearby where the tanks gradually disappeared. In the bathroom/laundry out went the copper. Out went the concrete wash tubs. Out went the instant water heaters. In came a new bath - two taps but only one spout. In came a shower, operated by turning a small handle to divert the water from the bath to the shower. In came a new wash basin, similarly equipped with two taps but only one spout.

Then into the new laundry there came a new electric copper, a hand operated washing machine with a perforated cone which had to be raised and lowered by hand to stir the clothes and, of course, hot and cold taps over the new stainless steel tubs. Some years later, the copper was removed and an automatic front-loading washing machine was installed with its own dedicated hot and cold water supplies.

Time has passed, and along with it, departure from the family home to establish my own family home. Hot and cold running water is automatically assumed these days, but now the range of taps is amazing. Flick switches adjust the temperature to suit whatever one is doing, while automatic washing machines remove the hard work for the women and automatic dish washers make the task easier for their husbands.

Heat sensing switches now automatically turn on sprinklers in the case of interior fires, making fire control so much more effective.

In the yard it is no longer necessary to stand and water the garden with a hose, instead it is simply a case of turn on a tap, an adjustable timer and leave the job to the sprinkler system installed around the flowers. That is of course assuming you don’t have the latest in underground pop-up sprays, computer controlled for the different seasons.

Even washing our hands at the shopping centres now doesn’t even require turning a handle. Simply wave our hands beneath the taps and warm water sprays out while-ever the hands are moving.

Washing the car needn’t be the chore of old. Now, instead of the boy of the house earning a little pocket money, it’s simply a case of driving to the car-wash and inserting the former pocket-money to have a computer controlled program wash, suds, rinse with spot-free treatment and even add polish to the water.

Of course, the work-load for mothers has been reduced dramatically but at what price? Now to pay for the extra labour-saving conveniences, young mothers now go out to work at a wide range of employment, so are they any better off? You decide.

By the way – the other uses for the pot-stick including using it as a roller for the glazed baize table cloth from the kitchen and it was also very handy for retrieving tennis balls which rolled under the house, but this had to be done when Mum’s back was turned.

Now, everything old is becoming new again. Builders of new houses are being encouraged to install water tanks, in fact, if you happen to live in Sydney and wish to install a swimming pool, you are now required to have a water tank attached to the house.