During the excavation of a long forgotten box in the Little Darwin jumbled collection , an early cookery booklet put out by the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society ,Melbourne, when many families were malnourished, was found which showed housewives how they could jazz up the table by turning a serviette into a pyramid in seven illustrated folds.
That exotic touch of the pharoahs could then perhaps be displayed with a braised rabbit dish or some French tripe . And an Aunt-Sally Pudding, made from suet, dried fruit, a cup of sugar, ginger and cinnamon, boiled for four hours,served with custard or jam sauce , would surely have wowed sweet -toothed Cleopatra .
It seems our Shipping Reporter is something of an Egyptologist and in an earlier life may have operated a leaky shaduf on the Nile in ancient Egypt as he recently made an interesting related discovery at a deceased estate in Townsville.
He claimed that a variety of attractive carpets, runners and mats, spread out in a house, in the backyard, spoke to him. Could they be magic floor coverings like the one that turned Aladdin into a frequent flyer?
Finally, he received a strong urge to lift up a carpet and revealed another exotic link with Australia in the shape of a trade label for an Egyptian made carpet, featuring a man flying on a Khalaf style carpet, for the Cyrus Persian Carpets Company , Gold Coast, Queensland.
