(In case some of you are wondering "Who or what is a "Berry"?", it's a town in the Shoalhaven region of the NSW South Coast, about 140 km south of Sydney. It has a population of 2,467 (per the 2021 census). It's a nice place to have a day trip to with some nice eateries, but it can get amazingly crowded on weekends because about half of the rest of NSW also realises that it's a pretty little town.)

Crowded House is an Australian / New Zealand pop / rock band which was founded in 1985. Sooo... 40 years ago next year, sigh. Every place and time has its soundtrack. Crowded House was part of that soundtrack in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1986 they released their biggest hit, Don't Dream It's Over. In the video clip lead singer Neil Finn walks through a series of rooms which change over time, from 1958 up to the (then) modern time of the mid-80s.

One of the rooms was The Dream Kitchen, 1966. This wasn't it... and yet it was. And certainly when I first saw this room, I thought of the video clip. It has all the component parts that someone from that era will remember from a time after Australia had emerged from the constraints of wartime rationing (tea and butter were the last things still to be rationed, ending in mid-1950), and was able to return to buying itself nice things.

The linoleum (lino) floors in the traditional black and white squares. The red accented Laminex table top with a modern, aluminium-like base and legs. (Red was a bright and cheery colour to suit the optimism of the period, and the metal was reflective of the jet age.) The red and white vinyl chairs atop tubular metal. The stainless steel sink with {gasp!} draining boards! So modern! The subtly pastel tones of the kitchen cupboards set against the white framed woodwork; oh, and bench space! Believe it or not, there wasn't always a lot of it in the 40's and earlier.

All of this would be familiar to the rapidly expanding middle class of Australia of the 1950's and 1960's.

I have to say that the museum staff have done an outstanding job in reproducing this; it all looks only a few years old, not more than half a century old.

The kettle may be a touch too modern, but the labour saving Sunbeam Mixmaster certainly isn't. The bread bin to the right of the mixer would be rather older, I think, but rarely do people buy everything for their kitchen at the one time.

Similarly the storage tins to the right of that – a feature of all modern post-war kitchens – are probably more 50s than 60s; more jet age rather than space age. Had they been bought new in the 60s they would have almost certainly been made of plastic.

I swear, you can almost hear the strains of the theme song as new episodes of Skippy The Bush Kangaroo are playing on the 1960s TV in the living room, while Vegemite sandwiches are laid out for an after-school treat.

Of course, this is a representation of a time and place, not a reproduction. I have no personal experience of living in such a place, for example, but I've seen others do so. Not exactly like this, but pretty damned similar. The echoes and the resonances from it are real.

On which point, the museum building was once a bank. Specifically, it was a branch of the English, Scottish and Australian Bank (known as ES&A) which was founded in 1852 in London and existed until 1970 when it was bought by the ANZ Bank.

In 1884 the bank purchased land for its new branch, which was here. The bank branch did close in 1942, and the building was used by the then-local council which had bought it. However the bank re-leased the building and reopened its branch in 1951. It continued until 1972 when it closed again. Back then one of the perks of being a bank manager was getting a home to live in at his (it was always "his" back then) branch, or certainly in rural banks since it was an incentive for staff to move out to the sticks.

And that, dear friends, is why we have a kitchen in a museum building that was once a bank.