[Vella Gonzaga]

Gings/Slingshot​

Who here played with gings/slingshots back in the day? I can’t believe the wild adventures kids used to have with these things! Slingshots or gings, along with potato guns and bows and arrows, completed the ultimate arsenal for childhood mischief. Do you have fond memories of playing with slingshots/gings?

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Credits: The Times Of Our Lives -Australia In The 60’s - 90’s

 

[Wandiwa]

We called them gings, the old large lacky bands off the egg cartons worked ok.
When I saw the title shanghai I thought it was going to be an article on China.

 

[Maddison Dwyer]

@Wandiwa it's funny, we just had a chat because I called them slingshots, you called them gings, and a few team members called them Shanghai's so I think different states / territories had different names for them

 

[Wandiwa]

Google: Other names include catapult (United Kingdom), peashooter (United States), gulel (India), getis / guleli (Nepal), kettie (South Africa), or ging, shanghai, pachoonga (Australia and New Zealand), Tirador (Philippines).

 

[Maddison Dwyer]

Oh thank you for this @Wandiwa I have never heard of it being called a 'pachoonga' before! I am excited to see what other members called it!

 

[Chappy]

We used to call them 'Dingers' . We'd cut up old bicycle inner tube to form rubber bands and link then together for extra power. Great fun. We made lots of our own toys. Kites, gliders and boats just to name a few.

 

[Suzanne rose]

We called them straight out Sling Shots.
I never used them but we were always tortured by my 2 cousins until my grandmother grabbed them by the ear and gave them a talking too. But then it happened all over again

 

[ruffy]

Back in the sixties my friends and my brother had them.
We called them slingshots and when fireworks were available we would light one and aim at each other.
They were fun times

 

[Karen s]

I remember dad wasn't too happy when we cut up a now tyre tube to make our sling shots as kids on the farm.

 

[SGH]

I remember we made our own from tree branches, we have ghost gums growing around the paddock, we also made cricket bats from bits of pine we'd score from Flanagan's Garages at Yennora and played French cricket, although I would call it brandings most of the time. As we got older there was cracker night and we'd put 6 bungers together and throw them in the creek, timed perfectly of course, and stretch does anybody remember playing stretch, we played it with darts. The idea of the game was someone threw the dart and you had to stretch to pick it up, there were a couple of times I discovered in a leg, by accident.

 

[Sockjoan]

I grew up in South Africa, where we called them catapults. My father made very good ones, and taught me how to make them. I still have his childhood catapult (though it needs repairs), with notches cut into it for the birds he killed with it; he was ashamed of this after he grew up.

 

[Gsr]

We always called them shangeyes, had great fun making and playing with them. We used to use small pebbles to fire at each other, they hurt a bit when we got hit, but didn’t cause any injuries. We used these, cap guns, toy rifles, homemade bows and arrows to play cowboys and Indians. We used to use larger rocks in competitions to see who could shangeye the longest distance. The boys used to shangeye birds, lizards, snakes, goannas, fish, anything that moved. Luckily they missed most of the time. Sometimes we accidentally put a rock through a window, oops, or hit a cow or horse. When this happened we were banned from using them and they were confiscated, but it wasn’t long before we made more. We just played with them away from the adults. We lived out in the sticks so had to make our own fun.