Thursday 20 October 2011

The Dunny!


Wonder how many people can remember 'The Dunny', 'Out house' or what ever you like to call it these days.  Few people have them now thank goodness but I have come to realize through my father 'the smell and acceptance of the inside toilet/lavertory'.

For those who are old enough and perhaps those that are not might recall if they visited their grandparents in the country more so on an isolated farm, there wasn't an inside toilet/lavertory, you had to go outside often a long way from the house to the toilet....

I myself can remember this :) oh, yes my age but my grandparents were old and lived till very old age and wouldn't have a toilet/lavertory inside, so as an early adult I remember the smell of the 'Dunny'. Dreadful! 

Now my grandmother would have white tissue papers on Sunday's off the bed in the Dunny, all other days was newspaper cut up into the right sized squares, a hole placed towards the top corner with a piece of string through it then hung on a nail, and it was these pieces of paper that we used to wipe our 'bum' :)
Well I mean you just have to laugh!

Now the newspaper was ok, for one would start to read what was written, tore off the next bit and hope it fitted like a jigsaw so one could read on, good it worked.  Sometimes reading a good story the jigsaw was not there and one was always left wondering.

I can only imagine what it must have been like, the fights, quarrels of having the dunny inside and the unkown of having a nice smelling dunny inside - today the toilet/lavetory.

7 comments:

  1. Well I am only 48 and I can remember visiting my great grandmother in Kurri Kurri and she had a dunny out the back and yes it was a long walk and I can still remember the smell.....lol My great aunt had an outside toilet but it was not a dunny aka can it was a flushing toilet but was just outside the back door.

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  2. Jo-Anne,
    Oh I remember the flush toilet outside the back door...one of my Aunties had one of those.
    Aye!! Things we remember :)

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  3. i can remember my first husband's parents had one. they lived in the country. i can also remember going crabbing and my ex husband throwing crabs over the door at me. no wonder we didn't stay married. lol

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  4. I'm an oldie. I can remember coming from England and inside flush toilets to Sydney and having a dunny outside. The smell was sickening and the maggots swimming around in it. Hoping not to be sitting on it when the dunnyman came. We always had proper toilet paper but my friend had the telephone book pages. They were supposed to be more soft but not as interesting to read. Not forgetting the spiders and snakes that might be lurking in the dunny. Do you remember we hated being caught driving behind a dunny cart... the smell and the flies???
    What has 24 doors and flies??? A dunny cart. Oh the memories!!!

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  5. Oh M I love this story it reminds me of Our Journey I was not ambitious enough with the scissors and the newspaper though. Thank goodness for toilet paper but as a child I remember sitting in the outhouse reading the Eaton's Christmas wish book. I miss that book. I DO NOT miss the out side toilet.
    When we first got a toilet here at the farm I just kept flushing it in amazement. :). B

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  6. Diane,
    What a wonderful description you have given :)

    I only remember the dunny at my grandparents in the country.


    Buttons,
    G - Well I bet you did do a lot of flushing, I know I would have too :)

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