25 Ward Street Lamington
In today’s world of super markets and city living, on line shopping the corner grocery store has almost gone. It’s now called a ‘deli and in most cases not a delicatessen as that is a sub section in Woollies or Coles.
It means that we have lost contact with how our groceries and foods are prepared, packed and delivered to us. Mr Plastic and Mr Cardboard hide the story.
Herb Blacker, my dad was a grocer. That, in the early 1900’s meant he had been trained properly. He was an apprentice grocer at about 14years of age at Jackson’s Store in Boulder and learnt the proper way to present and package groceries.
Jacksons Building was on the south side at about 33Burt St Boulder. The old façade hides an amazing history. It has changed use many times but if the stories of the old days could be told what tales?
Herb later started his own business in a tiny shop in Hannan St on the east side of the Mechanics Institute entry. Only just enough room for a centre counter from the front to the back with the wider space for customers. Goods were packed high on shelves and it was the catalyst for a bigger shop.
At the end of the 1930’s 25 Ward St is where he built a larger two room shop with a house adjacent and began life as a married man.
This grocery shop in the 1940’s – 50’s still operated on the early days service model. Packaged goods were mostly tinned, bottled or boxed and only a minimal choice of brands. A large amount of food items were supplied in bulk and the shop keeper had to make goods up in smaller units for customers.
The back room at the Ward St shop was the place where this was done. It had a large preparation bench down one side, about 24feet long with store shelves above on the wall.
At one end was a wonderful old set of modern balance scales. The pivot arms were enclosed in a glass casing and either side chromed weighing platforms each about 1-foot square. The dial arm behind the glass with a variety of measures marked in baked enamel. Either side could be switched on for use with small or heavier items.
Underneath was stored the traditional old cast iron balance scales ready to be lifted to the bench for busy work making up packages. One tray was for the cast iron weights, the other for the goods to be weighed. A set of cast weights, iron and bronze weights also on hand for fixed weighing – ¼, ½ Lb and 1lbs, 2lbs, 4s and so on.
In the front room of the shop was also another set of even more modern baked white enamel scales for weighing up to 5lbs. Plenty of glass, a visible arm and scale with a chrome weighing platform that gave a very hygienic and clean appearance.
Outside was the heavier weighting platform scales for bags and boxes and adjustable to weights in Lbs to Cwts.
All equipment was regularly checked by the Government Weights & Measures inspectors. Sealed, stamped plates on each machine were updated and correct weights certified down to the fractions of an ounce. Out of order or wrong machines were closed immediately and replaced if not repairable.
Now to how and why they were used.
Brown paper bags in a variety of sizes as well as smaller lighter white paper bags were used to package goods.
Sugar came in hessian 32lb bags direct from the refinery and labelled accordingly. This was opened and poured into a metal tub, oval about 2-3feet in size. A scoop was then used to pour sugar or whatever into opened brown paper bags. When about fifteen bags were ready, one at a time they were weighed on the cast iron balance scales, adjustments made to correct weight per bag. There should be no surplus or shortage.
The bag was then hand folded in a neat machine-like manner and the last flap folded over and sealed with brown paper sticky tape. This was dispensed from a heavy holder, moistened over a water wheel and snapped off at a fixed length, just enough to seal the bag. The sealed bags were then turned upside down on the bench to dry off under their own weight.
This required a systematic set up and preparation and often was a two-person job. The work bench top being covered with filled brown paper bags. As the tape dried each package was turned over and a label added, not pre-printed or bar coded. Hand written pencil on brown paper sticky and through the same water trough dispenser – or pencilled on the bag – “2 Sgr”, but one could puncture the bag with too sharp a pencil or later a biro.
White sugar always spilt and became sticky on muggy hot days, so care needed not to spill. Brown sugar, not so spillable but still sticky! Icing sugar another sticky challenge so sugars had a day of their own.
The next day the flours – plain and self-raising. Flour dust a real problem and keeping the bags clean and presentable a real skill. Filling with the Scoop into the paper bag had to be done cautiously or one’s hair aged in a puff of dust.
Other bulk goods packaged in this way were rice, peas, soup mix beans and tapioca to mention a few.
Dates from the middle east came in a wooden box in a solid block stuck together. Breaking these up was messy and rubber or plastic gloves only available in later years. In the same way sultanas, raisins, currants were sourced but usually in large reinforced bulk paper bags. And then afterwards the tub had to cleaned, washed and dried before going back to start the next week – sugar, flour etc.
In earlier years butter and lard also had to be prepared. Butter was sourced in 56lb blocks, wrapped in grease proof paper in a cardboard box.
A Butter Cutter Machine was ingenious and made light work of the initial cut up. The opened box was turned upside down onto a square wooden platform on a wind-up stand.
After the box was removed a crank handle was turned that forced a frame with criss-crossed wires up through the block. A similar side cutter sliced the other way to make pats of butter. Each one was then removed with wooden bat paddles, placed on grease proof wrapping paper and check weighed. Adjustments were made with a knife to add or remove to ‘make the weight’ before wrapping. No brown paper sticky tape here, just a fancy fold to lock the pack and then off to the fridge.
Mills & Wares biscuits came in tin boxes about 18inches square with a hinged lid. Pre-packing into bags not so common a job but sold by weight in paper bags.
Cold cooked prepared meats were sliced on site with a meat cutter. A handle drive, later electric motor driven, slicing wheel with a slide feed bench. Care needed and sold by weight and sliced finger not on the menu. Polony, ham, brawn, cooked silver side and beef supplied from butchers or small goods companies in large pieces were kept in the display fridge.
Cooked legs of ham for Easter and Xmas another special. On order, the legs were placed in a boiler and cooked on site. Cheese also came in full wheels that were cut into wedges as required.
In earlier times sides of bacon were also sliced with a massive hand cranked slicing machine. This machine was pride of place in the Hannans St shop.
The drive wheel was about 2ft in diameter and the cast iron finished in maroon coloured enamel. The feed bed was able to hold a full side of bacon but when Ward St opened there was no place for it, so it was out into the storeroom. Pre-packed / cut bacon was stocked from elswhere, probably the beginning of today’s packaging.
Of course, wrapping paper was always on the counter for whatever was being sold. Newspaper was often used as a protective outside wrap. White butcher’s paper and grease proof paper was used immediately close to fresh or cooked foods, whilst the brown paper bag was strongest. Cardboard boxes also were commonly used for deliveries when customers did not bring their own bags.
Every day of the week a ‘round of customers’ had their grocery order collected in the morning and delivered back to their home in the afternoon. Customers from all over Kalgoorlie and Boulder were served in this way. The little ‘ute pictured was later traded in for bigger vehicles
Keeping foods fresh and hygienic was critically important not only for the customer but also for business return. Spoilt, damaged or lost goods were a cost against the business but also reflected poorly on the reputation of the grocer.
It is obvious that An Apprenticeship in Grocery had benefits and turned shop assistants into skilled, organised business people.
Oh, don’t forget – ‘The White Apron’ – had to be clean, spic and span behind the counter – that was the Grocer of years gone by.
Moya Sharp
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Loved the article on Blacker’s shop in Ward Street. The Duggan family lived in the shop/house next door but one to the Blacker’s shop – right on the corner of Ward and McKenzie Streets – probably between the dates of August 1958 to Jan 1959 and then we moved to Killarney Street. As a 10-year old boy I remember going to Blacker’s shop to buy lollies.
Mike Duggan