When Evatt died in 2018 aged 87 more responsibilities fell on Elizabeth who concedes that there is no alternative but to put everything under the gavel.
She says: “I have battled as a single person to keep this place going. In 2019 we had bush fires, people were told not to come to the Mountains and our numbers just sank. Then we had floods, more floods, COVID, more floods, bush fires again then a compulsory lockdown for six months. So many businesses in the Blue Mountains just bled out because it was too hard. It was a labour of love, but my love has just fallen through the cracks.”
Noddy original illustration by Beek.Credit:Rhett Wyman
Continuing our private tour from what was once the grand billiard room we take in toys of Ginger Meggs, Popeye, Biggles book first editions. Upstairs Barbie is here in all her many guises. She started out as a college girl in sensible clothes before becoming a hippie and Barbie as Twiggy and Marilyn Monroe and Barbie as a person of colour.
There are wartime propaganda dolls – the Mussolini “black shirt” doll and the Nazi ‘Hitler youth’ dolls. A cautionary sign on the glass cabinet states: “These historical toys are examples of pernicious Nazi propaganda aimed at indoctrinating German children. Ultimately, they contributed to war crimes and atrocities.”