Most small towns pre 1960 had a bakery.

Yenda had three, Hanwood and Bilbul also had one.

The Bilbul Bakery, when I began baked about 3000 loaves a week over a six-day week.

Delivered to all the surrounding farms at Bilbul, Yoogali, Hanwood and Lake Wyangan. Ninety per cent of the production was delivered on a rotation one lot on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, the other Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

No sliced bread then. The farmers had boxes or tins on their farm gate to place the unwrapped bread. We had about 250 customers.

Bread went through rain, hail or shine. Some of our vehicles were dodgy to say the least, we would often say maybe a horse and cart would be better, at least all you had to say was giddup and whoa.

I began my apprenticeship in 1953. After four years, you were issued a baker's licence that had to be renewed every year.

The bakery was a room 14 feet by 20 feet, with a brick wood-fired oven. The only equipment was a two-arm mixer capable of mixing 450 lbs of flour plus a small preliminary moulder.

It was all hands on, doughs took 25 to 30 minutes to mix, fermentation was from three to five hours, depending on the amount of yeast used. Ingredients were basic, flour, salt, yeast and non-mineral yeast food and water.

You had to learn hand skills quickly and be quick once the dough was ready, having to pull it out of the bowl and onto the table manually, hand weighed using a balance scale.

It was then moulded into shapes and put into bread tins, strapped in threes. I could weigh three hundred loaves in 10 minutes, put them through the little divider moulder and Lance would give them a hand turn and put them into the tins for proving.

For the Italian bread, it was the same process except we moulded them round, resting them for 10 minutes after which they were pressed down in the middle with the forearm and placed on canvas to prove.

The oven would have been heated to 900 F, using about 3 wheelbarrows of wood, one metre long, the logs had to be split as well.

The fire was then drawn out and oven closed down for one hour to even up the heat. It would be scuffled, an art in itself, to clean the cinders off the floor.

Tin loaves cooked first, 300 loaves loaded using a peel, taking 35 minutes to cook.

After the oven had cooled to 450 F it was loaded with the Italian bread, about 175 loaves which were loaded one at a time, taking about to 1 1/4 to 1 hours to cook.

Our reputation was built on this bread.

These were the only two varieties we made. Except at Easter buns were made, using a hand cutter, and moulded by hand.

Deliveries could be very difficult during the winter months, sometimes having to walk a kilometre because of the state of the roads.