In book 1 Mike O'Connor writes about his grandmother doing the washing and boiling "the copper".

He also writes that the wire clothes line was supported by clothes hoists, long, roughly trimmed poles of scrub timber sold by a weatherworn old man who clip-clopped by on a horse and cart chanting this dirge "Cloooooooothes hooooiiiisssts".

I remember men with horse and carts doing that, but the long, roughly trimmed poles of scrub timber were not called "hoists, they were called "props" and the man in the cart used to call out "Proop, proops".

I am sure that the word "hoist" was not used for anything to do with a clothes line until Hills invented the Hills Hoist. Lance Hill actually invented it when he came back from the war in 1945, but the patent wasn't lodged until 1956.

Shirley Cronau