Carefree Shopping

Val has chronicled the woes of supermarket shopping in Australia in the mid 1970s. Her post made me think of shopping when I was a child in the 1940s and early '50s. I lived in the country, at a time when very few women drove cars. Indeed, there were several families on nearby farms who didn't even own a car, therefore most of the household shopping was home delivered.

Mum would ring up the grocer in the nearest town, which was 12 klm (8 miles) away, on Tuesday morning with her order for the week, and this would be delivered by the owner of the grocery store on Wednesday afternoon. Colin would bring in the groceries, all stacked in a wooden box, set it down on the kitchen table and unpack it. Then he would check through the order again to make sure it was all there. I remember that he always wore a white apron and had a pencil tucked above one ear.

On Monday mornings Mum would ring a butcher in another town about 22 klm away with her weekly order. The meat was delivered by the mailman on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and left in the mailbox together with the mail. Mum bought meat from that same butcher for more than 20 years and never once visited the shop or met the butcher.

Bread was delivered Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from the bakery in the local town. The bread was left in a large wooden box at the entrance to the farm. Our house was 400 metres from the road so one or other of the 7 children would need to walk down to the road to collect the bread or meat and the mail and carry it home in a hessian sugarbag on their back. We sometimes ate most of the inside out of a loaf of bread on the way home, leaving just a crust. You can imagine how happy that made Mum! She used to rouse at us, saying, "If I gave you bread to eat with nothing on it, you wouldn't eat it. Yet you'll eat it before it even gets to the house."

We collected milk from our own cows and butter was brought out once a week from the milk factory by the milk carrier. At one time we would go through 7lbs (3.5 kilos) of butter a week.

At various times a greengrocer would call with vegetables and fruit. We had many fruit trees of our own on the farm, although Dad would often buy whole cases of apples and oranges from orchardists in the Mildura area. These would be sent down by train. At other times, two of my brothers grew vegetables and sold them to Mum for half shop price. This meant that Mum had cheap vegetables and the boys earned some pocket money. What they couldn't grow, Dad would usually buy during a weekly trip into town.

None of this shopping was paid for at the time of purchase. At the end of the month each business would send a bill in the mail and Dad would write out a cheque for each one and post it off.

In the late 1950s supermarkets started to appear in Australia and we began making a fortnightly trip to a larger town for groceries and vegetables. However, meat and bread continued to be bought as before.

In the early 1970s, before moving to Canberra, Richard and I, and Michelle and Tanya lived in another small farming community which had a corner store (see photo), where most groceries could be purchased. Many of the goods still came to the store in bulk and had to be weighed out by the storekeeper. Sugar, salt, a range of dry goods, and biscuits are some of the things I remember being sold in this way. Michelle developed a liking for Monte Carlo biscuits so it didn't matter which sort of biscuit I asked for, Malcolm would always include 2 Monte Carlos for her. At the same shop you could buy hardware, gift items, and stock feed. A typical country store.