The Hill's Hoist is a unique Australian icon, and stands alongside vegemite, utes, and drop-bears as yet another thing about Australia that we quite possibly invented to surprise foreigners.

A Hill's Hoist is a type of clothes line with a single central post coming out of the ground (usually mounted in some badly mixed, badly poured concrete, with the family kid's name written in it) and four arms sticking out perpendicular to it at the top. Between each arm and its brethren are several lines of rust proof (only not really) wire. These arms can be dropped down so they lie parallel to the main post, so as to make the hoist less of an eyesore in an Aussie back yard. This makes all the wire lose tension, which allows it to tangle itself around the other arms, the family dog, or whichever poor sucker decides to fold the damn things up or down. The mechanism for this function is usually rusted shut, as any good Aussie is PROUD of their Hill's Hoist.

Here's where the mighty Hill's is different from any other boring old rotary clothes line. At about waist height on the central post is a large crank handle which can be used to 'Hoist' the clothes up into the line of the wind, all the better to facilitate your dry underwear being flung into your neighbour's swimming pool. For those who still can't imagine what it looks like, imagine an umbrella with no fabric and only four arms, and you're starting to get there.

Most Australians have a story or two to tell involving a Hills Hoist, from the time you and your brother swung around on opposite arms of the rotor until they bent, or the time you convinced your little sister to stand in the middle of the hoist while you prodded the arm-locking mechanism with a broomstick, to the time as teenagers that you spun a shiny metallic bag of cheap wine around on the end of an arm, in some kind of demented suicide-pact version of spin the bottle. This is the stuff legends are made of.

This grand Aussie icon was invented by motor mechanic Lance Hill in 1945, in Adelaide, for his wife, who was having problems with washing falling off their regular line. Soon all their neighbours were asking Lance to make hoists for them, and the new clothes lines caught on in spectacular style. In '46, Lance and his brother in law started a business, opened a factory, and the rest (as they say in the classics) was history. Hill's Rotary Clothes Hoists (as they are known in full) are still made and used, and are now well and truly confirmed as one of the great Aussie icons of the 20th century.

Zerotime has very kindly taken a photo of his pride and joy, and posted it for us all at: http://monkeysoypants.org/img/111-1135_IMG.jpg