Now I know what you guys are thinking – here is a story about a policeman with a bell. Wrong! This is in fact a story about a pair of appliances brought together in perfect symmetry, much like their movie star cousins R2D2 and C3PO. The copper and the wringer kept house on the wind-swept concrete floor under our high set timber home in Wooloowin Brisbane. They both were part of the evolutionary development of the modern day electric clothes washer and dryer combo, being placed in a comparative timeline somewhere around Neanderthal man’s era. So now, imagine a heavy black metal witches cauldron with a belly of fire complete with a copper-tone half-spherical inner tub that was our Copper. Obviously taking its name from the content of the fabricated metal rather that its general cauldron appearance. The driving force behind this appliance was the fire burning under the tub, which boiled the water that stewed our dirty clothes. The necessary agitating action was provided by way of a washer-person with strong arms and a sturdy back who would prod the submerged bundle with a long water-weathered wooden pole. I remember my Anty Phillis being just such a person with her tiny frame lifting in reverse proportion to her downward stroke of the pole. Well, standing right next to the copper and always ready for duty, was the wringer with its raised rotating head and sporting a robotic ear to ear grin. Those twin creamy gummy rollers were so tight shut that they squeezed the hot water from those boiling clothes that came fresh out of the copper. Feed one small end of the washed item into the waiting jaws and then wind hard on the protruding lever and watch the water flow from one side as the steam-rolled ‘cartoon type’ clothes emerge from the other. David of course found no use for the copper, most notably because he could not get any of us to sit in it long enough for the water to boil. But oh the fun he had in feeding our Sunday best ties into the ringer’s mouth and winding on the handle until our noses were hard against those spongy ringer rollers. “UUUUnnnnkle” I think was the muffled call required by the extortionist to guarantee quick release. The final appliance in the wash/dry workflow was our stately Hills Hoist. Every Queensland home had one in their back yard but none holding quite the same stature as ours. See us kids eventually discovered that you could lower the hoist sufficiently to ensure that each kid was able to hang on each one of the protruding arms. The biggens, David and Margaret, whose legs could still reach the ground, would then run the required circles whilst holding their allotted Hills arm. This ensured an aerial ride for us littlens of high adrenaline excitement. Of course the Hills Hoist was designed for holding clothes but it was certainly not intended that the children would still be inside them. Finally our poor hoist with its bent droopy arms began to look more like our Weeping Willow trees than a patented modern day cloths dryer. Still, I reckon that I would gladly take a few more thong hits on the bum from mum just to experience that feeling all over again.
