Our house has some nice features, one of them is an old Hills Hoist, probably from the forties. A Hills Hoist is a steel rotary clothes line invented in Adelaide by Lance Hill, during the post war baby boom. Before disoposable nappies. When most families lived in suburbs with big back yards & no clothes dryers.
What I love about my Hills Hoist is; you can fit two or three full wash loads on the line, it all gets hung from a central point, they are compact and they have (to my mind anyway) a charming old fashioned homey aesthetic. G says that a piece of rope from one point to another would do exactly the same thing. I think that's fine when you're camping, but if we ever get our own place I'm going to buy one of these...
from here ,unless of course, there is already an old one installed. Our backyard has more of a ramshackle permaculture/hippy aesthetic but the way it all works is remarkably similar.
The wonky table for putting the washing basket on was salvaged from a cafe my family used to have. G put the wheels on it, but was unable to fix what was very dodgy carpentry to start with. I am very attached to the table, so it stays, even though it is not up to Gs standard in such things. You can see his outside workbench in the distance, complete with shade cloth to stop plums dropping on his head in summer. Also hanging from the line is the very unglamourous peg bucket, an old fetta cheese catering bucket with a hole in it. As you can see, I tend to leave the pegs on the line, but G likes the bucket system. The piece of rope hanging is from when Grace used to lie on a blanket under clothes line fascinated by the flapping washing & a piece of rope. How quickly she's moved on! Here's the Hills from another angel, with the tumbly down shed in the background & the lemon tree in the foreground.
It's rare at the moment to see it empty during daylight. You can read more about the history of the Hills Hoist here .
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