The Tivoli TheatreTheatre was on the east side of Glenferrie Road opposite Llaneast Street. Silent black and white moving pictures were shown there.
A pianist played music, changing the tune and tempo in keeping with the action being shown on the screen. Sometimes a film would break in the projection machine thus causing a temporary stoppage. If it happened during Saturday Matinee, impatient children stamped their feet on the floor. Until the show resumed.
The Tivoli Picture Theatre was superseded by the Victory Theatre and New Malvern Theatre. The Victory Theatre was in Wattletree Road on the east side of Glenferrie Road intersection, the New Malvern Theatre was at the corner of Glenferrie Road and Dandenong Road.
Both theatres had an orchestra. Occasionally the showing of a special feature film would exceed the orchestra's usual time of finishing duty, when this happened members of the orchestra, except the pianist, retired at their regular time leaving the pianist to provide music until the end of the show.
The Victory and New Malvern have long ceased to operate, The Victory is now a store, the New Malvern was demolished in 1988. The coming of Television in 1956 was the beginning of the end for many picture theatres.
In 1912 when our family moved to 48 Hunter Street Malvern, gas was used for lighting throughout the house.
In 1922 with the assistance of Fred Dunstan ( who became my bother-in-law) I installed the wiring and had supply of electricity connected.
There was no hot water service. Water for the bath was heated in a four-gallon kerosene tin on the stove in the kitchen.
The bathroom had a galvanized iron bath with a cold water showerhead over it, there was no wash basin. In those days a washstand and toilet set including wash basin and water jug formed part of the bedroom furniture.
In the laundry there was a wood-fuelled copper in which clothes were boiled. A wooden "copper stick" was used to lift the clothes into the wooden trough alongside for bluing and rinsing. Wringing was done by hand.
Ironing of clothes was done on the kitchen table, using Flat Irons heated on the stove, in later years a Gas Iron was used and when electricity was connected to the house an Electric Iron was used.
Bar soap was purchased for household use. In the laundy it was sliced into the copper to boil with the washing.
Blue was put in the water for the final rinse. An advertisement for Reckitt's Blue depicted a blue ocean with white crested waves and the message, "Out of the blue comes the whitest wash".
Bar soap was used in the kitchen for washing the dishes, a soap-saver could be used to make suds in the water but a cake of soap on the prongs of a fork was often used for that purpose. A soap-saver is a small mesh wire container in which small pieces of soap can be used. Sand soap was used for cleaning cooking pots and pans.
We had a Coolgardie Safe to keep perishable food cool and a meat safe made of perforated zinc. The Coolgardie Safe had a wooden framework covered with hessian, it stood in a shallow metal trough and had a similar trough containing water on the top. Wicks fed the water to the hessian sides, evaporation of the water cooled the space within the safe.
In later years,when electric powered washing machines were introduced many brands of washing powders, liquid detergents for dish washing etc. were on sale.
Black-lead was used to polish the kitchen stove and fire-grates in other rooms.
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