[maddiem]

Old ice chests​

We had an old ice chest in PNG that we used as a cot. It was fantastic, no mosquito's, the thrown toys bounced back, and it gave me somewhere to sit for night feeds.

 

[Gazzboy]

I remember the ice chest and the delivery truck in my early years

 

[EllieN]

We had an old ice chest for camping in the 50’s. We camped at Moffat Beach Caloundra from around mid 50’s until they closed the park in around 1969. It was a first in - best dressed for a site. No powered sites. Hence the ice man came every day.
My mate Laurie and I had fun running around at different times in the day shouting out “ICE” (like the Iceman), even when he wasn’t there. People would come out to get Ice, but the man was not there. We thought it was fun, but I guess the other campers were not.
After all these years Laurie is still my mate, even though he lives in central NSW.

Kev

 

[Millewah]

Your heading of an Old Ice Chest with a photo which I assume was supposed to be an old Ice Chest. The photo was an old kitchen pantry cupboard. I spent 17 years as a volunteer in my local historical society where we also had a local history museum & one of the displays was old kitchen pantry like in the photo. As a child, we had an ice chest & ice was delivered a couple of times a week. I still remember the iceman arriving & with a hessian bag over his shoulder n which was the new block of ice. He would rush into the house, to the kitchen, to put the new ice block in the ice chest. The Ice was placed in the top compartment & the lid securely closed. the bottom section was where our food was kept. It was all timber with I think some insulation on the inside. I was more interested in the photo you show as I believe it was the old kitchen pantry cupboards our family used before power & refrigeration. I am writing the story of my fathers family. His grandfather with wife & family lived at Old Inglewood in northern Victoria in the late 1800's/early 1900's. After death of my gr.grandparents, two of their children, who stayed on in the family home, then continued to live there. My father's mother died in 1909 in Kalgoorlie WA when her youngest child was only about 8yrs. Her father then took her back to his old family home where she was be cared for by her aunt who had not married. In writing the story I looked at what their kitchen might have been like. The kitchen pantry food cupboard was like the one in the photo. a cupboard on legs, wire mesh on sides & front for & the doors, for air flow, with a solid metal back, top & bottom. To keep ants out of the cupboard, containers filled with water were placed under the legs. I wanted a photo of something similar for my family book, then one day when in a local cafe I saw a food cupboard, mesh on the sides with two opening front doors. I asked about it but the new owners said it was there when they took over the Cafe. Then my granddaughter posted a photo of a cabinet she purchased which would have been about 100 yrs old, it was not unlike what I was looking for. With so many things in my life happening in threes, this photo here is exactly what I was looking for, had to be something people would have used in the kitchen before power & before even the iceman.