A couple of weekend ago while on a bushwalk/fishing trip my mate Dave and I where camped near an old cattleman’s hut somewhere in KNP, it was raining, we had just eaten dinner and where enjoying a drop of Port around the fire place when Dave noticed a mouse running across the floor, the mouse ran down a gap in the floor boards. Out of interest I grabbed my torch and had a look down the hole, the mouse was gone but I saw a dusty, rusty old tin, I grabbed a stick and lifted the tin so I could grab it with my hand. When I got the tin out, I could see that it was an old tobacco tin.
- Old Tobacco Tin
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On opening the old tobacco tin I found an old news paper cutting and an opened packet of cigarette papers. The cigarette papers where an Australian brand but made in France but the news paper cutting got my interest, the cutting had been torn out of a news paper, on one side there was an advertisement for baldness and dandruff cure, the other side had some general information about a toy fund, an announcement about a new restaurant that had just opened, and an announcement about up coming Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force Association Smoke concert.
- The contents
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- Cigarette papers
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I took photos of the tin and contents and placed the tin back where I got it from, hoping that it is another very long time before it is found again and that the next finder puts it back for the then next person to find.
- baldness ad
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- Articles
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When I arrived home I wanted to see if I could find when the tin found its way in the hole, the news paper cutting was a clue, there is mention of the “Sun toy fund”, I tried to do some research on the net. The National Library of Australia has a large collection old news papers some have been scanned and are available on the web. My search for the Sun News paper came up with many choices, but only a very few had old papers on line, I did find a paper called the Sun that was published from 1910 to 1988. Another clue was in the Toy fund article, the name of Rev. Jas. McLeod was on the list of donors, I did a search and there was a Reverend James McLeod that was working in Sydney in the early thirties, another clue could be the article on the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force Association Smoke concert. The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF) was a small volunteer force of approximately 2,000 men, raised in Australia shortly after the outbreak of the First World War to seize and destroy German wireless stations in German New Guinea in the south-west Pacific. The final clue and a good one is the tobacco tin, a search came up with this site, 1930 Tobacco tins, note the middle tin at the top.
My current thinking is that this tobacco tin may have been under the hut floor undiscoverd since the early to mid 1930’s 80 years or so. How the tin made it under the floor is a mystery that has me guessing was it placed there or did it fall off a table etc. I do not have much experience in history, if any Bushwalk.com members can help with any advice it would be appreciated.
Tony
