This provides a visual map of the exhibition, ‘What’s in store? Shopping in Australia 1880-1930’. It helps teachers highlight major themes, AV, interactives and key objects to students before the visit. Most of the key objects are hyperlinked either to the Museum Online Collection Database or relevant online resources for easy reference. It also features relevant online resources and education programs that are available.

1. What’s in store? Shopping in Australia
1880 - 1930
Pre-visit exhibition
slideshow
Cash
register

2. What’s in store
exhibition entrance
from the King
Cinema side
What’s in store
exhibition
entrance from
the Steam
revolution side
-: Powerhouse Museum Learning :-

3. The steam revolution
1. The city store: selling in a modern world
2. The general store: a universal provider
3. The Wong family: a story of migration and heritage
Exhibition entrance next to Steam revolution
Kings
cinema
Entry
Exhibition floor plan Exhibition entrance next to Kings Cinema

4. 1. The City Store focuses on the rise of the modern city department store and the
dominance of brand names and advertising at the end of the 1800s. It also highlights
technological advances in handling money, from the cash register to the centralised cash
exchange system.
‘… in Pitt Street and George Street you will find “commercial palaces” equal to those in
London itself.’

5. Many Australians enjoyed a high standard of living in the late 1800s. Wealth generated
by gold and wool exports, together with the expansion of cities and general prosperity,
created a revolution in shops and shopping.

6. Sydney’s Anthony Hordern’s lavish displays
Centralised cash exchange system designed to tempt customers.

7. AV: A retail story
(19 minutes)
Bushells
tea window display
The Bushells tea window display: It was produced by the Sydney firm O’Brien’s
Publicity Services. It cleverly combined Bushell’s established use of exotic imagery with a
familiar scene of middle-class domesticity.

8. Providing for
a community
A world of
goods
Shopping
by post
Sound body
and mind
‘I will pay you
after …’
2. The General Store: a universal provider
It explores the intimate relationship between local communities and their stores by telling
the story of a pioneering Chinese–Australian family, the Wongs, and the small shop they
ran on their grazing property near Crookwell, New South Wales.

9. Shopping by post:
connecting city and A world of goods:
country Bolong and international trade
Interactive: Mail-order shopping, 1911
Try dressing a country teacher’s family and
find out the cost of your selection.
‘I will pay you after …’:
credit at the Wongs’ store
On display are objects from the Wong family’s store which operated between 1880 and
1916 on a sheep farm at Bolong, north of Crookwell in New South Wales.

10. Making do:
A world of goods: drapery at the store
Bolong and international trade
Sound body and m
health and education

11. Objects from the
Wong Sat collection
Providing for a community: from the cradle to the grave
Like other small general storekeepers, the Wongs provided more than just merchandise.
Their store was an important economic and cultural resource for the community.

12. Wong Sat and Amelia
AV: The Wong family store
Running time: 15 minutes
A cultured household:
books, figurines, magazine and riding crop
3. The Wong family: a story of migration and heritage
Chinese-born Wong Sat and his English-born wife Amelia Hackney
ran a general store on the NSW goldfields, and then further south at
Bolong, near Crookwell, from the 1880s to 1916. This section explores
the story of the Wong family and the community in which they lived.

13. Amateur photography:
Henry Wong’s camera equipment
Chinese shop objects

14. Abacus
Guang Yu Long Trading House

15. Home delivery: shop wagon
This wagon belonged to Sat and Amelia Wong who ran a general store at Bolong, near
Crookwell, NSW, from the 1880s to 1916. They used it to pick up goods from as far away
as Goulburn (nearly 50 km, at least two days travel, away) and to make deliveries to
nearby properties. The wagon was made by the Sydney Carriage Company around 1870.

16. Online resources
1. What’s in store? exhibition and exhibition teachers notes,
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/exhibitions/whats_in_store.php
2. Transport exhibition teachers notes and pre-visit slideshow, http://
www.powerhousemuseum.com/exhibitions/transport.asp
3. Locomotive No. 1 exhibition teachers notes and pre-visit
slideshow,
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/exhibitions/locomotive1.asp
4. History of Rail in Australia, http://
www.infrastructure.gov.au/rail/trains/history.aspx
Relevant education program
1. Life in the Gold Rush workshop for yrs 5-6
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/pdf/education/Education_brochure
_July2012.pdf
Image credit: All images used are from the Powerhouse Museum collection
-: Powerhouse Museum Learning :-