When we got a cold or a sore throat Mum would give us Heenzo. It was some concoction made from a concentrate purchased at the Chemist. Mum would mix it with vinegar, sugar and water and it would sit on the shelf in a great big bottle waiting patiently for us to sniffle or sneeze. (See poem at end of story) Oh yes, hands up those who had a camphor bag around their neck? Mum made little tiny bags that were pinned to our singlets and inside was a camphor block. We wore them all winter long, sitting in the classroom smelling of camphor.
In school we wrote with a scratchy pen, nib and ink. If you were well behaved you got to mix up the ink for the week and pour it into inkwells in each desk, its was a watery wash out blue. Later, when I was about 10 I was given a fountain pen by Mum and Dad, whoa, was that a technical marvel! When I went to High School, I had a fountain pen with a drop-in cartridge so you didn’t need to fill them from a bottle anymore.
There were no supermarkets. We had corner stores, which were not necessarily on a corner. Our sugar and flour was carefully weighed up, while we waited, in brown paper bags. Biscuits were bought from a big tin by the pound or half pound. We selected the sort we wanted or we could buy broken biscuits – those left over at the bottom of the big tin. Bread was bought fresh by the loaf or the half loaf, wrapped in tissue paper, but beware …... if you were sent to the shop to buy half a loaf of bread there was no guarantee that it would have a centre by the time you got home. The taste of fresh warm bread torn from the centre of the loaf is still one of my fondest memories. Mum would make our food from scratch. If she wanted a pie, she would make the pastry, cook the filling and add it all together. Remember the smell of the kitchen when you got home from school, the roast in the oven, freshly baked biscuits and cake.
There was no such thing as Fast Food - I guess the only thing that would come close was the local Fish and Chips shop but even these were not around when I was young; think I was in my teens when they started to become available. You could buy a penny worth of chips (about 1 cent), but it was a special treat and not something that was a regular occurance.
Our mothers' cooked all our food, there was always biscuits in the tin and cake and every night we all sat around the table and talked to eat other. We ate what was put before us, we didn't leave the table until we had finished and we never got up from the table without asking.
When you bought a pound of tea, it came in a cardboard box and you had to keep the label. Once a year, Mum would take us into the city and we would get our new shoes for the next years schooling, look at the Christmas windows in DJs (David Jones) and trade in the Lan Choo tea labels.
A large room would have on display all sorts of wonders – teapots to tea towels, sheets to trays, dishes to cutlery, cooking pans and pots to scales and rolling pins. And beside every item was a little card telling you how many labels you needed for that item. Things like 50 labels for a tea towel, the more expensive the item the more labels were needed. It was fun to look through all those “free” gifts and make suggestions for what Mum should choose.
After shopping we would have lunch in the City. What a treat! Sometimes we would go to the Woolworth’s cafeteria where you sat on stools and watched the food go along a little conveyor belt waiting for the waitress to collect it and bring it to the counter for you. It was fun to say “look there’s my milkshake” and watch hoping the waitress would miss seeing it and it would ride the conveyor belt back out to the kitchen then back around again for another loop.
If Mum was feeling rich we would have lunch at Cahills. I can never remember the meals there but I can always remember the dessert – ice cream cake with caramel sauce. A scoop of ice cream wedged between two pieces of fresh sponge cake topped with cream, then a generous helping of their famous caramel sauce poured over the top. Mmmmmmm. If we were extra lucky Mum would buy a cardboard tub of caramel sauce to take home, what a joy!
My eldest sister worked for the MLC, she would check the new policies. At the MLC they had punch card operators who would punch out information to work out the bonuses on policies. It was very modern and very technical. Sometimes she would bring the punch cards home for us to see. Great big rectangles made of cardboard with tiny rectangular holes punched into them to represent the information. The computer took up the whole floor of the building; nowadays she could have bought the whole computer home as a laptop!
And then there were members of the opposite sex. By the time I was 13 or so, I was pretty interested in boys. I had a few boyfriends and we would walk to the pool or meet there and hold hands. If he was very forward or if we had been going together for a long time, he might even kiss me on the lips. Shock horror! Sleeping together was something our parents did or if we had relations to visit you might have to sleep with your sister. We couldn’t imagine the steamy sex side of relationships; they just didn’t exist at that age.
Girls who were considered “fast” generally kissed on the first date. The rest of us would whisper about them behind their backs. As we grew older, around 15, sex began to be more detailed and most of the girls my age knew someone who had “gone all the way”. Sadly those girls generally ended up pregnant with their babies adopted out and their school life and dreams shattered. One of my friends became pregnant, I remember she was studying ballet and hope to become a dancer with a ballet company. She was around 15, her parents locked her away, and I never knew what became of her or her child.
Every Sunday, after lunch, my parents would take the family for a drive. Everyone would pile into the car and we would set off for some place around Sydney - Kurnell, Blue Mountains, Sans Souci or just driving around. There would be a thermos of tea for mum and dad and one for us kids filled with cocoa. My mother always called my dad the “Human Compass” and no matter where we went he could always find his way back home. I can remember when I was 15 we moved to Guildford in Sydney’s West. Off we would go for our Sunday drives and Dad would say “lets go down this street or up that one” and before we knew it we were lost, but somehow he used to always find Cowpasture Road, a long meandering road, once we landed on that he knew exactly where he was. Once we ended up in a place called Blacktown. A place way out in the bush, that only had a few houses and a shop or two. I remember my parents commenting on how far away it was. Guess where I now live and have lived for nearly 30 years – Blacktown!
When my sisters were older they were allowed to stay home or go out with their friends, I, on the other hand, always had to go on the drives.
This photo was taken C 1955 at Narooma - we went to the snowy mountains in Winter in the canvas tent. The other photo shows some of our wonderful winter clothing..... lol
Whenever my sisters went we would entertain ourselves by singing all the latest songs. My sisters used to buy the “Boomerang Songbooks”. These were little paperback booklets with the words of the latest top 40 songs in them. So there we would be driving around Sydney, singing at the top of our voices, with no musical accompaniment, no car radios in those days. I wonder now how my parents managed to put up with it. I know I have no singing voice and I don’t recall my sisters having much better.
Well, those good old days have long gone but I can recall them all with love and laughter.
Would I like to go back there again? Okay some things were better. I regret not being able to walk in safety in daylight and night but there is always a price to pay for progress. And I regret the loss of innocence for our children and grandchildren, they are forced to grow up long before they should. Childhood should last until their mid teens or longer but sadly often today its gone at 10. Drugs, peer pressure, sex and alcohol are introduced to our children long before they have the maturity to say No.
But still there are many advances that have improved our life – advances in medicine; technology has brought the world closer together; more opportunities for women;
For me personally – my husband and our wonderful sons, their beautiful partners, all whom I love dearly. The opportunities I’ve had to travel and be educated.
Not to mention owning my home and how could I give up my computer, the internet, mobile phones and DVD’s, my own car and the freedom to drive wherever and whenever I want. I can go to the supermarket and buy anything from anywhere. I can watch countless television programs from every corner of the world; watch movies with dinosaurs or aliens, ride on trains or spaceships. With the internet I have friends all over the world and I can “talk” to them daily with my keyboard and share my life. I can walk into a shop and buy Chinese vegetables, grown by Australians who were born in Europe. No longer is it meat and two veg for tea. Now I can have Thai stir fries; Italian pastas; Russian Chicken; with French pastries or British puddings. I can drink wine from anywhere in the world or bottle water from the world’s purest springs.
Because of the wonders of modern medicine, I can still be with my husband who was diagnosed with a brain tumour over thirteen years ago. He had experimental radiotherapy and a year ago, chemotherapy. Thanks to medical technology I can cuddle my beautiful grandson. He was born with a congenital heart defect – tetralogy of fallot – that would have meant a very short life span if he had been born in the 30’s or 40’s, instead we can look forward to a full and rewarding life for him.
I wouldn’t swap any of it for the world but I wouldn’t say no to another 100 or so years to hear my grandson say – I grew up in the 10’s and the 20’s – ah, those were the days!
When you bought a pound of tea, it came in a cardboard box and you had to keep the label. Once a year, Mum would take us into the city and we would get our new shoes for the next years schooling, look at the Christmas windows in DJs (David Jones) and trade in the Lan Choo tea labels.
A large room would have on display all sorts of wonders – teapots to tea towels, sheets to trays, dishes to cutlery, cooking pans and pots to scales and rolling pins. And beside every item was a little card telling you how many labels you needed for that item. Things like 50 labels for a tea towel, the more expensive the item the more labels were needed. It was fun to look through all those “free” gifts and make suggestions for what Mum should choose.
After shopping we would have lunch in the City. What a treat! Sometimes we would go to the Woolworth’s cafeteria where you sat on stools and watched the food go along a little conveyor belt waiting for the waitress to collect it and bring it to the counter for you. It was fun to say “look there’s my milkshake” and watch hoping the waitress would miss seeing it and it would ride the conveyor belt back out to the kitchen then back around again for another loop.
If Mum was feeling rich we would have lunch at Cahills. I can never remember the meals there but I can always remember the dessert – ice cream cake with caramel sauce. A scoop of ice cream wedged between two pieces of fresh sponge cake topped with cream, then a generous helping of their famous caramel sauce poured over the top. Mmmmmmm. If we were extra lucky Mum would buy a cardboard tub of caramel sauce to take home, what a joy!
My eldest sister worked for the MLC, she would check the new policies. At the MLC they had punch card operators who would punch out information to work out the bonuses on policies. It was very modern and very technical. Sometimes she would bring the punch cards home for us to see. Great big rectangles made of cardboard with tiny rectangular holes punched into them to represent the information. The computer took up the whole floor of the building; nowadays she could have bought the whole computer home as a laptop!
And then there were members of the opposite sex. By the time I was 13 or so, I was pretty interested in boys. I had a few boyfriends and we would walk to the pool or meet there and hold hands. If he was very forward or if we had been going together for a long time, he might even kiss me on the lips. Shock horror! Sleeping together was something our parents did or if we had relations to visit you might have to sleep with your sister. We couldn’t imagine the steamy sex side of relationships; they just didn’t exist at that age.
Girls who were considered “fast” generally kissed on the first date. The rest of us would whisper about them behind their backs. As we grew older, around 15, sex began to be more detailed and most of the girls my age knew someone who had “gone all the way”. Sadly those girls generally ended up pregnant with their babies adopted out and their school life and dreams shattered. One of my friends became pregnant, I remember she was studying ballet and hope to become a dancer with a ballet company. She was around 15, her parents locked her away, and I never knew what became of her or her child.
Every Sunday, after lunch, my parents would take the family for a drive. Everyone would pile into the car and we would set off for some place around Sydney - Kurnell, Blue Mountains, Sans Souci or just driving around. There would be a thermos of tea for mum and dad and one for us kids filled with cocoa. My mother always called my dad the “Human Compass” and no matter where we went he could always find his way back home. I can remember when I was 15 we moved to Guildford in Sydney’s West. Off we would go for our Sunday drives and Dad would say “lets go down this street or up that one” and before we knew it we were lost, but somehow he used to always find Cowpasture Road, a long meandering road, once we landed on that he knew exactly where he was. Once we ended up in a place called Blacktown. A place way out in the bush, that only had a few houses and a shop or two. I remember my parents commenting on how far away it was. Guess where I now live and have lived for nearly 30 years – Blacktown!
When my sisters were older they were allowed to stay home or go out with their friends, I, on the other hand, always had to go on the drives.
This photo was taken C 1955 at Narooma - we went to the snowy mountains in Winter in the canvas tent. The other photo shows some of our wonderful winter clothing..... lol
Whenever my sisters went we would entertain ourselves by singing all the latest songs. My sisters used to buy the “Boomerang Songbooks”. These were little paperback booklets with the words of the latest top 40 songs in them. So there we would be driving around Sydney, singing at the top of our voices, with no musical accompaniment, no car radios in those days. I wonder now how my parents managed to put up with it. I know I have no singing voice and I don’t recall my sisters having much better.
Well, those good old days have long gone but I can recall them all with love and laughter.
Would I like to go back there again? Okay some things were better. I regret not being able to walk in safety in daylight and night but there is always a price to pay for progress. And I regret the loss of innocence for our children and grandchildren, they are forced to grow up long before they should. Childhood should last until their mid teens or longer but sadly often today its gone at 10. Drugs, peer pressure, sex and alcohol are introduced to our children long before they have the maturity to say No.
But still there are many advances that have improved our life – advances in medicine; technology has brought the world closer together; more opportunities for women;
For me personally – my husband and our wonderful sons, their beautiful partners, all whom I love dearly. The opportunities I’ve had to travel and be educated.
Not to mention owning my home and how could I give up my computer, the internet, mobile phones and DVD’s, my own car and the freedom to drive wherever and whenever I want. I can go to the supermarket and buy anything from anywhere. I can watch countless television programs from every corner of the world; watch movies with dinosaurs or aliens, ride on trains or spaceships. With the internet I have friends all over the world and I can “talk” to them daily with my keyboard and share my life. I can walk into a shop and buy Chinese vegetables, grown by Australians who were born in Europe. No longer is it meat and two veg for tea. Now I can have Thai stir fries; Italian pastas; Russian Chicken; with French pastries or British puddings. I can drink wine from anywhere in the world or bottle water from the world’s purest springs.
Because of the wonders of modern medicine, I can still be with my husband who was diagnosed with a brain tumour over thirteen years ago. He had experimental radiotherapy and a year ago, chemotherapy. Thanks to medical technology I can cuddle my beautiful grandson. He was born with a congenital heart defect – tetralogy of fallot – that would have meant a very short life span if he had been born in the 30’s or 40’s, instead we can look forward to a full and rewarding life for him.
I wouldn’t swap any of it for the world but I wouldn’t say no to another 100 or so years to hear my grandson say – I grew up in the 10’s and the 20’s – ah, those were the days!
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