Connection through family

Afternoon tea time 

Donated by Valerie May 

A delightful memory from my childhood was my mother taking my sister and I to visit her Aunt for afternoon tea. It was in the 1930s and was served on a lovely tea set on a linen tablecloth with serviettes. Many years later, I visited her cousin in a retirement village and he served me afternoon tea on this same tea set. When he died, I inherited what was left of this tea set and I still love having and serving afternoon tea.

Grandmother's tea parties 

Donated by Joan Dowling 

This pink teacup and saucer belonged to my grandmother and would, I think, be 100 years old. 

My mother and father and I lived with my grandparents until I was five years old. 

My grandmother had a lot of lady friends and she often hosted morning tea parties for them. 

If my mother was out on the morning of one of my grandmother's tea parties and she had left me in grandmother's care, I would be allowed to join the ladies provided I was ‘seen and not heard’. 

I enjoyed these gatherings because although the conversation was far beyond me, I enjoyed the laughter and always scored some delicacies from the table. 

The ladies were quite kind and I usually scored a cake or two. I wasn't too keen on the cucumber sandwiches,  but the cakes were good. 

I am 90 years old now and still remember grandmother's tea parties. 

The verandah 

Donated by Marlene Little 

For me having a cuppa is sharing and listening with family and friends, sometimes when people are hurting and sometimes just to spend time with one another. 

Our home is at the end of a poinciana- and jacaranda-lined street and the view from our front verandah is very special. We have lived here for 34 years.  

The first time I shared a cup of tea with my little 3 year-old granddaughter (and first grandchild, as she always reminds me!), she chose a little coffee cup just the right size for her and we took our tea to the front verandah. 

I was putting our cups and biscuits on the table when she said, ‘Granny, I want to sit on the top step. Mummy says that when she was a little girl, that was her favourite spot in the whole wide world, because it looks down on the street with trees.’ 

It was then that I realised that I had done this same thing with my daughters when they were little girls. I have photographs of them having their own tea parties with their dolls. 

This cup, saucer and plate belong to a tea set which my mother received from her sister for a wedding present in the 1930s. 

The great tapestry of my life 

Donated by Val Wheatley 

This cup and saucer is chipped and cracked, the gold trim worn away. The cup is stained. It's inexpensive, bought from Coles in the early 1960s and made in Australia by Johnson Sovereign Pottery. 

However, for me, its value is incalculable. When I look at this cup, tears spring to my eyes.  

I am instantly sitting at the laminex servery on the farm where I grew up. Lan-choo Tea, heavenly ginger fluff sponges, soda biscuits, fried scones on cold, wet days late home on the school bus. Fighting with my brother over the washing up, my father stomping mud off his work boots, neighbours, aunts, gossip. My mother: indomitable, high energy, a force to be reckoned with. Lingering over the last mouthfuls of tea and cake before reluctantly doing homework. 

Tea is an integral part of the ‘great tapestry’ of my life. A continuing thread through all the ups and downs of marriage, work, children, friendship, establishing a home and a sense of self. 

I treasure the delicate teacups that my husband, Corni, lovingly brought back on the plane from Germany, without breaking, just four weeks before dying of leukaemia in 2007. 

Always there when needed, flavoursome, aromatic – the familiar ritual of cups, kettles, tea pots, brewing – ‘milk and sugar?’ We take time to have a cuppa – to talk, connect, to share and care for one another.