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• Verdun Buns – a Red Cross cookbook

  Audio

  Ena Ryan was born in the prosperous Wellington suburb of Kelburn in 1908. In this 1985 interview she leafs through a cookbook produced during the war as a fundraiser for the Red Cross.  The recipes and advertisements reveal the social upheaval the war brought to communities back home, from florists advertising speedy service for last-minute weddings (before men departed overseas) to recipes for cooking for invalids. Some recipes were contributed by the public, and Ena is appalled that one woman named her recipe ‘Verdun buns’, after the horrifingly destructive 1916 Battle of Verdun.

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• Society Wedding, c.1914

  Video

  This rare example of amateur or home movie footage provides a glimpse of a society wedding about 1914, probably in an eastern suburb of Sydney. It shows guests arriving by car and horse-drawn vehicles at the church, followed by the wedding party. The bride and groom are seen leaving the church and being showered with rose petals before posing for photographs at the reception.

  No record survives of this film’s source, subjects or locale.

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