Many of Mr Mitchell's childhood escapades seemed familiar to his audience members, including his mum starching his underwear in an attempt to curb his naughty behaviour.

He shared that he once asked primary school students where their grandparents and great-grandparents got their hamburgers from, and of course received 'McDonalds and Hungry Jacks' as the response. 

When he explained that back in their day the process involved grinding the meat through a mincer and then adding flavourings and binders and shaping it into patties, they thought it was all much too like hard work.

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He brought several items out of his memory box which brought sighs of recognition from the elderly audience, although a couple of the items stumped them ( visitor Rosemary Boyle was right on the money, though). They included a darning mushroom (from back when people darned their socks), a razor strop (bringing back painful memories for some), and a Mrs Potts iron wooden handle which allowed housewives of the day to swap between irons heating on the cooker to get through the washing.

He relayed to story of a 94-year-old lady he interviewed, asking her the name of her first boyfriend. She said that was 80 years ago, but the name 'Fred' eventually came back to her.

"I thought I'd forgotten," she'd said.

She explained that he wasn't much of a boyfriend, but they went together for more than a year. Why?

"Because he brought along a box of Nestles WInning Post chocolates every Saturday night when he came to collect her," and Mr Mitchell had one of the original chocolate boxes which everyone recognised.

He brought out an original Commonwealth Bank money tin that young customers received on opening an account, encouraging them to save, and there were lots of heads nodding in recognition when he shared the regular experience of getting a penny's worth of broken biscuits from the local shopkeeper.

He even recalled a day when there were no broken biscuits to be had, but the shopkeeper went out the back and broke some up for him.

"You wouldn't see Woolworths or Coles doing that," Mr Mitchell said

He was talking their language when he spoke of the 'old money', and how at Christmas in his family every child's slice of pudding miraculously included a threepence.

"That was a lot of money for me back then and sometimes I swallowed one, but I got it back later," Mr Mitchell said.

A shilling was a 'bob', a sixpence was a 'zac' and a £10 note was a 'brick', but Mr Mitchell said he never had one of them in his youth.

He did have with him an original pre-WWII cardboard Johnson's Baby Powder container (with powder!), along with the later tin and then plastic renditions.

His sand soap brought back memories for one of the residents who used to scrub the floors of a Grafton hotel with it as a 17-year-old. Mr Mitchell said his father's urging for him to use some 'elbow grease' to scrub a tabletop with the sand soap sent him to the corner shop for a packet of the stuff, but that didn't end well.

Of course the pink Vincent's powders you could buy for a tuppence were familiar, as were the more popular white Bex powders as they were only a penny each. Mr Mitchell said many factory workers grabbed a powder at the train station on their way to work every morning and liked the taste only to become addicted, going on to suffer kidney problems as a result.

"Got a headache? Have a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down", as the motto goes.

Some recognised Mr Mitchell's little container of waxed matches from the WWII era. The matches were half the length of today's matches to save on wood, and the wax made them burn more slowly.

Each container had a strike plate on the base to light the match, but Mrs Boyle shared how Chinese miners in the 1800's filled empty containers with their gold dust, to use when gambling.

Mr Mitchell certainly engaged his audience, and no doubt triggered some lively conversations thereafter as residents recalled episodes from their past long forgotten. He has even published a small book 1001 Questions for Life Stories to trigger these memories when stories are being recorded.

Mr Mitchell put on a similar performance for Millrace residents the following day, and hopes to return to Tenterfield again.