The Mobile Cook's Galley, part of the Museum of the Riverina, is a heritage-listed former mobile field kitchen and now museum collection and museum exhibit located in the Wagga Wagga Botanic Gardens, Baden Powell Drive, Wagga Wagga, in the City of Wagga Wagga local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed and built in 1934 by Jim McGilvray and Harold Fife. It is also known as the Chaff cutting train. The property is owned by City of Wagga Wagga. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 24 December 2004.
History
The Cook's Galley was a mobile kitchen used to prepare food to feed the chaff cutting team owned and run by the Fife family during the 1930s and 1940s. Jim McGilvray (carpenter) and Harold Fife made it from recycled materials in 1934.
It consists of a carriage of four steel wheels with a drawbar for towing. The drawbar was attached to the back of a Roden or McClaren traction engine. On top of the carriage a rectangular cabin was fitted with two single full-length doors and a small window at one end. The kitchen contains a coal stove for cooking, a wooden cupboard for storage (below) and food preparation (above). Elsewhere in the kitchen are a number of wooden packing cases, food bins, cooking and eating utensils, fire tools and pitching forks.
History of the Fife family business
The origins of this particular branch of the Fife family go back to William Fife (1802-1880) who lived on a moderate farm at Drumcullion, County Fermanagh, Ireland. All five surviving children of his first marriage to wife Bessie (née Nixon 1807-1850) immigrated to New South Wales, Australia between 1859 and 1865. The aftermath of the Great Famine, the death of their mother, their father remarrying and better prospects in an overseas colony were all contributing to factors to them leaving Ireland.
The Keenan family, their neighbours in Ireland, had a daughter in Goulburn, New South Wales, who agreed to sponsor the new migrants - Faithy (1836-1903), Nixon (1840-1916), John (1838-1874), George (1848-1916) and Eliza (1846-1939). Their ages on arrival were 23, 19, 24, 14 and 19 respectively. Harold's great grandfather, Nixon started work as a yardman in a hotel, then became a carrier driving a bullock team between Sydney and Cooma. Later he bought and worked land in the vicinity of Goulburn. He married Elizabeth Cole (1849-1879) in 1870 who bore him six children.
Harold's grandfather, William (1871-1956), the eldest son of Nixon, was the first of the family to operate a chaff cutting business. He also bred horses, worked as a railway line contractor during lean times, and a farmer in later life. He suffered the unfortunate accident of having his left foot crushed by the Buffalo Pitts Traction engine which drove his chaff cutting plant. He married Mary Jane Whittaker (1874-1904) in 1896 and they had two sons William Clyde (1897-1971) and James Nixon (1898-1972), Harold's father and uncle respectively who played a major role in the family's chaff cutting, produce store and bakery businesses in Wagga Wagga.
It was while working on his father's (William's Snr) chaff cutting plant at Sherwin's Flat, Tarago, that Harolds' father met his future wife, and Harold's mother, Myrtle Wyatt.
In about 1919 Harold's father, William Clyde, moved to Wagga Wagga to work for Les Howard who operated a chaff cutting plant. (Howard also originated from Goulburn). He was paid one shilling per ton and had an average weekly wage of 2 pounds 8 shillings. James Nixon (1898-1972), William's younger brother and Harold's uncle, joined him. Initially they camped in the Jockey's Room at the pony racecourse where Norton Street is now located and on the site which in years to come would house their Chaff Mill and Bulk Store.
Harold and his mother joined his father and uncle in Wagga and with good prospects in the chaff industry persuaded their Uncle Tom, who lived in Goulburn, to purchase Les Howard's chaff cutting plant. For a number of years they worked for Uncle Tom before buying the plant from him and establishing Fife Bros in 1925. Tom Fife still lived in Goulburn so the sale to his nephews suited him. For almost three decades the family business travelled rural New South Wales cutting hay under contract to James Dunn Ltd., Stockman and Kleinig & Co., Kerridge & McMahon Ltd., and E.D. McMahon & Co.