Following closure of Little Darwin's cluttered den and the subsequent heroic attempt to knock the greatly reduced contents into some kind of order, the above worn Justus van Maurik cigar box , caterers to the House of Lords, filled with an array of nearly forgotten items collected over the years, some posted in this blog, has surfaced.
The above photograph shows the box being aired with some of the interesting ephemera on display. There is a postcard of an early New Zealand football team which beat England ; a souvenir bookmark sent out by the Over Seas League Tobacco Fund of London to provide wounded WWll soldiers with cigarettes and cheer ; a whimsical postcard dealing with the problem of long Welsh names; color slides of Portuguese Timor when oil was discovered there by an American drilling company supplied from Darwin ; a slight glimpse of an Aboriginal family posing with an impressive looking pedal car .
Buried deep inside was a menu for a March 22, 1876 private dinner at the Adelaide Club which included oysters, mutton , fillets of beef, roast turkey and ham, braised ducks and devilled pigeons.
