[Maddison Dwyer]

Sent in by the lovely member Dennis R.:

A New Life.

50 yrs. Ago from the City of Nottingham

For our family a new life began

Down to London to board our ship

This was the start of a magnificent trip

Foghorns blowing, fare well crowds cheering

Down the Thames our ship was veering

Early evening we passed the white cliffs of Dover

Our first tiring day was nearly over

In a few days we passed Gibraltar

Our ship ploughed along without a falter

With flying fish and Dolphins too

Each day gave us a different view

Our first stop was to be Port Said

Native boats selling goods were a noisy crowd

Not allowed off the boat to show our new tan

We were entertained by the gully gully man ( an Egyptian magician )

Down the Suez canal in bright moonlight

Brought back memories of one of my old army camp sites

After the canal came the Red sea

Our stop at Aden showed lots of poverty

Then to Colombo through the India ocean

This was the start of a sickening motion

At this time we celebrate Doreen’s birthday

Next stop Freemantle, again we are on our way

After docking there a trip to Perth

There we find out what an English pound is worth

On the stretch to Adelaide we do it tough

For the sea has turned might rough

The crew rigged ropes so we can move around

Plates and dishes bounce to the ground

We spend the day in the city

Surrounded by parks it is so pretty

Then on to Melbourne our final destination

Arriving there to join our new nation

Greeted at dockside by family and friend

Our 10 pound trip is at an end

God bless Australia, we left the UK in 1958

 

[Tervueren]

I can remember going to stay with my Grandparents for the weekend. It was a totally different experience than living at home because Grandma had an outside "dunny" and you had to use cut-up squares of newspaper instead of the lovely soft paper we have today! There was a lane at the back of the house and the Dunnyman would come and empty the Cans for all of the houses that did not have a toilet. If I told a youngster to use cut-up Newspaper to wipe their bottom today, I can imagine the comments!!!

 

[Just Jill]

Growing up in the 1950’s with no TV or electronic devices. You always made your own fun. Lived in Glenholm St. Mitchelton, a Brisbane suburb. While it was suburbia, we only had to walk 1km or so, cross Kedron Brook (we called a Mitchy Creek), and we were in the bush. We had the best of all worlds. No sewerage, bitumen roads, curbing or channeling. The “Dunny” man came every week, and I would follow him up the street, carrying a can on my shoulder, just as he did. I always wanted to be a Dunny Man. Cracker (Guy Faulkes) night blowing up letter boxes of people you disliked, unknown to mum, or so we thought.
Rode you push bike into Brisbane City on Saturday afternoons, unknown to mum, again, so we thought.
What a childhood.
You would dare not let your kids do that today. All like it was in another life.

Kev

I

Growing up in the 1950’s with no TV or electronic devices. You always made your own fun. Lived in Glenholm St. Mitchelton, a Brisbane suburb. While it was suburbia, we only had to walk 1km or so, cross Kedron Brook (we called a Mitchy Creek), and we were in the bush. We had the best of all worlds. No sewerage, bitumen roads, curbing or channeling. The “Dunny” man came every week, and I would follow him up the street, carrying a can on my shoulder, just as he did. I always wanted to be a Dunny Man. Cracker (Guy Faulkes) night blowing up letter boxes of people you disliked, unknown to mum, or so we thought.
Rode you push bike into Brisbane City on Saturday afternoons, unknown to mum, again, so we thought.
What a childhood.
You would dare not let your kids do that today. All like it was in another life.

Kev

I feel really sorry for kids now. All the fresh air, tree huts, dad's fantastically dangerous go carts, ahhh well we could just go on and on. Boy they are missing SO much. Just Jill

 

[wazzalox]

I rember the ice man coming around in a horse drawn cart & the iceman would carry the blocks of ice in & put the ice in to the ice chest . The ice was carried in by 2 hooks . This happened once a week & the horse knew which house to stop at.

I was in ice boy around 1953 at Lakemba (when it was part of Australia) in my early teens while at High School. It was in the days of cars so the iceman had a van. The hook was actually one piece and hinged. When you pulled on it the jaws closed up and grabbed the block. A lot of homes left their back doors open and we'd use our ice picks to split the block and put it in their ice chests. Then back home for breakfast and off to school.

 

[Macarj]

I started work in 1971 at BHP Port Kembla steelworks known as Australian Iron & Steel and we didn't have fridges we had big metal boxes and the ice man came twice a week to put new ice in they kept everything very cold and never broke down

 

[ChrissyFaz]

That is exactly my childhood in Preston, Melbourne circa 1950’s
As we grew up we were in each other’s weddings. Such lovely memories. Always felt safe.
Not all, but a lot of us are still friends today.

 

[featherfour]

My mum loved to decorate and there was nothing she loved more than a big vase with gum tips in it. We'd be on a Sunday drive and Mum would yell "Stop the car! I see some good ones!" Dad would pull over and Mum would be picking the branches with the prettiest new pink gumleaves.

 

[featherfour]

Our back yard had lots of fruit trees in it, and Mum was a jam-maker. Apricot, from our tree, and quince jelly. But autumn we had to go blackberrying. The scratched arms and stained t-shirts were worth it. The floral scent of blackberry jam would fill the house, and if there weren't quite enough jars, that meant we got blackberry tart for dessert.

 

[Sapper JAX]

When my dearest Mum said ‘Go outside and play and don’t come back for ages’, she’d pack us a bottle of cordial, some biscuits and fruit and tell us to go ‘up the bush’ - woohoo! We (seven of us) always thought we had the absolute BEST EVER BACKYARD IN ALL THE WORLD, being a mountainside all to ourselves. Never bored, too much to do and never wanted to come inside for a bath and bed.

We made a cubby house in the gnarled apple tree that was a ship, a tardis a house, a plane, the moon…We clawed our way to the Monster rock, climbed up waterfalls, caught frogs and crawchies, climbed up the middle of the Hollow Tree, and stood under the waterfall getting soaked to cool down on hot summer days. When older we went on mountaineering expeditions up to Initial Rock to carve our names next to our father’s name, walked along the mountain and took the Sublime Point track to climb back down again always with wobbly legs.
We picked buckets of blackberries in February so than Grandma and mum could make blackberry jelly, pies and biscuits, and nabbed fruit from the abandoned orchards half way up the mountain. We made tracks through dreaded lantana - bashing it down and tramping on it. We swung on vines and made foxhole cubbies. We got ticks and leeches galore! We got stung with stinging nettles countless times. We picked Stinking Rogers and made them into bows and arrows, spears and horses. We got paspalum sores and scraped up knees and arms. We knew how to deal with such things. It was all normality for us.

How things have changed.

Being a Nanna to two little girls aged two and four is a lovely blessing. Miss four started to use the ‘B’ word one day when I was babysitting.

BORING!? WHAT?! They have so many toys to play with, lovely rooms, a great big garden set out like a Childrens play/activity park, but it was all just ‘boring?’ They have an amazing dollhouse… the kind I dreamed of having as a child…they have a fabulous cubby house in the garden. It even has its own verandah!

I told th little misses that I had an amazing doll house when I was little. I made it with a wooden crate and scrap wood from my Dad’s workshop, wood glue and hammer and nails. I loved my dollhouse. I played so many wonderful hours of pretend with my Dollies made of pegs and material scraps.

Miss Four thought that was very funny but it got her imagination working and ever since we have played long and often complicated games, using anything we can find around the house, yard and in their stuffed toy boxes, to add to the fun.

When they jump on the trampoline it’s not so boring if you play counting and singing games to make it interesting, We play schools with the Dollies and camping or ‘going to the farm’. We made a zoo for all the little animals using lots of different building toys and bits of cardboard and sticky-tape to make a house for the dinosaurs. The swings outside become trains and buses to catch and go on an adventure. There is a teepee in their room but we made a cubby house with blankets and sheets over the climbing frame. We have dolly birthday parties with all the bells and whistles.
So many games to play when I turn the televisions off, hide their tablets and devices…and it’s not even boring. When I hear that ‘B’ word I shake my head and tap my noggin to remind the little sweeties that ‘boring’ is their problem to fix.

They still love their Disney channel and YouTube and ABC kids shows and having a rest after lunch glued to their tablets. It’s all good.

So what if their Nanna Lisie is slightly weird, goofy, crazy, silly, just a big kid at heart! At least it’s not boring when Nanna comes to play lol

That takes me back to world war 2,I was still at primary school in a little town out west,New South Wales.I was about 10yrs old.We had to dig slit trenches & air raid shelters.The ground was as hard as hobs of hell,we did this each morning for about 3hours.We kids prayed for rain to soften the ground ,alas it never came that winter,but the next ,it rained cats & dogs for weeks.So we had to off with the shoes(thats if you had a pair to wear).No enemy would have ever found this place,besides there was not much to destroy.That was my early contribution to the war effort.If not enough when I turned 15yr ,I joined the army.

 

[Macarj]

My memory is a bit of a mystery and goes back to 1961, when I started at primary school (we were called "bubs") at Hughesdale State School. I was not taught the alphabet, or even that the vowels were "a, e, i, o, and u;" instead, our walls were covered in charts where all of the sounds were represented by a different colour. We were taught to recite "White a" (as in cat), "Yellow u" (as in up), pink i (as in bit), "blue e" (as in get), "gold o" (as in got). The "a" in "gave" would have a different colour because it was a different sound. The "th" in "the" would both be the same colour, because they represented a single sound.

What was this all about? I have no idea! Certainly we were part of an experimental cohort, maybe there was some theory about learning and synesthesia? I went to a different school when I was in grade 4 and honestly didn't know what a vowel was! I had a bit of catching up to do. I've tried to find out what was going on, but never been able to track it down. I think it might have been called "colourwords" but try Googling that! Anyway, I thought I'd share it here, maybe someone else will remember or know what was going on.

Yes we had that in our school also it made it very easy to learn I remember every day just looking around the room and going through all the the letters and words over and over

 

[Heathert]

It doesn’t ring any bells with me ….school must’ve been different in Victoria than SA!

 

[featherfour]

We didn't have a laundry, but outside was the washouse. Inside was a copper heated by a gas ring. I remember Mum's arms, red with the heat of the water as she would wring out the sheets by hand. The copper was also our dog's bath, and I remember being a little bit worried by that gas flame…but the dog didn't get accidentally cooked.

 

[Retiree46]

I have similar memories of the Billy Cart. We usually made ours the first week of the summer holidays. The axles were wood that my dad had in his workshop, as was the centre piece to hold the axles in place. The rear axle was nailed permanently but the front axle was bolted allowing it to turn when going round corners or going up driveways. The wheels were ball bearings I got from a neighbour and the steering was a rope. There were no brakes only tennis shoes. When you wanted to stop at the bottom of the hill you either slid allowing the back of the cart to slide on the bitumen, or continued up the hill a bit before rolling back into the cutter. If you came back to quick, when the back hit the gutter you flipped up.

You must have been rich, we couldn't afford shoes let alone tennis shoes.

 

[Hieme]

My memory is a bit of a mystery and goes back to 1961, when I started at primary school (we were called "bubs") at Hughesdale State School. I was not taught the alphabet, or even that the vowels were "a, e, i, o, and u;" instead, our walls were covered in charts where all of the sounds were represented by a different colour. We were taught to recite "White a" (as in cat), "Yellow u" (as in up), pink i (as in bit), "blue e" (as in get), "gold o" (as in got). The "a" in "gave" would have a different colour because it was a different sound. The "th" in "the" would both be the same colour, because they represented a single sound.

What was this all about? I have no idea! Certainly we were part of an experimental cohort, maybe there was some theory about learning and synesthesia? I went to a different school when I was in grade 4 and honestly didn't know what a vowel was! I had a bit of catching up to do. I've tried to find out what was going on, but never been able to track it down. I think it might have been called "colourwords" but try Googling that! Anyway, I thought I'd share it here, maybe someone else will remember or know what was going on.

I started Bubs Grade in 1961at East Ivanhoe State School. The type of learning to read and write started with learning the phonetic alphabet. It was and still is the most effective way for children to learn reading and writing skills. Alas, the Government changed the system to a more streamlined approach to learning, which was not as effective. They have never gone back to the old effective ways because they would have to re-teach all the teachers. I also remember writing on a slate board with chalk and having to wipe it clean with a damp cloth. Later we were made to feel very special using paper and a 2B Pencil.

 

[featherfour]

In primary school, we marched around the quadrangle every Monday morning. We saluted the flag and sang God Save the Queen. This became very real for me when in 1953, because when I was 10, Queen Elizabeth visited Adelaide, and we all went to Wayville Showgrounds to see her! We each received a small New Testament bible as a memento.

I love this memory so much! It takes me back to my primary school in the early 60s when we did the same thing. Ha ha those Souza marches are still in my head, 60 years later. At the end of the marching, the "best" classes would get to have a banner and march around again (there were so many of us, so out of all of the grade 3s, one would have a banner etc). My ambition in life was to be the class captain and hold that banner. Eh, never happened, but I still have the Souza marches.

 

[WADuck]

That lovely old black and white picture looked so familiar I was even tempted to look and see if there was anyone I knew. Yes, the family picnic of days gone by bring back wonderful memories. Now only in old family albums.

 

[@valentid1960]

As kids we loved summer holidays. We’d go down to the swamp and collect tadpoles and bring them home and watch them grow into frogs. The billy carts would come out and make any repairs. Dad was a delivery driver for Cadbury so he was able to get wooden crates from milkbars.
Whenever someone moved into the street our parents would have a party for them. The ladies would be inside drinking Sherry or Shandy and the men were outside on the balcony drinking beer.

 

[Thecheesequeen]

I have lots of wacky things our family did and I cherish those wacky things, especially as I lost my mum quite young from Cancer! Growing up in a poor housing commission part of Sydney, my parents always found a way of rounding up some cash for Christmas. One year my 3 younger brothers were to receive a trampoline for Christmas.... a normal person would set this up in the backyard, but not my Dad! He was determined it be "under" the tree! He set the thing up over night in the middle of our loungeroom (moved all the furniture out) set the tree on top of it! And Tada!!! Your present under the tree!!!! So silly really, as then the boys had to help him dismantle the whole thing and reassemble outside!! Kept them busy on Christmas Day

I love it!

 

[Wandiwa]

Remember being able to safely jump off your house roof, with a tea towel pegged to your shirt collar because you were Superman and able to fly ......

 

[Wandiwa]

I remember the milkman leaving our milk bottles at our front gate with our money in the empty bottles, and no one would steal the money overnight.The good old days !!!

Magpies worked out how to pierce the foil lids on our milk bottles and used to steal the cream off the top LOL.