A Trip Down Memory Lane

[Richie]

Members relive your years growing up.

 

[Richie]

While almost all of you were having a normal childhood of playing with mates after school or on the weekend then going home to the family, I was stuck in a strict boarding school from age 7 to 16. It was only when school holidays came and I finally went home that I was given the opportunity of catching up on the childhood I was being deprived of.

 

[LFC]

lets go for the young un's never got to experience this incl my kids.

Home delivered Milk and Bread !
The breadrun was a massive fab, nice lush fresh sliced bread delivered in the arvos.
My Mum would get after me for I used to get 4/6slices a time and scoff them down.
Mentioning milk, those small bottles delivered in crates for our consumption at school.
Can't recall if this was compulsury to have.
Those pesky magpies used to dive bomb pop many lids if let ungaurded.
Polio shots at school !

 

[LFC]

Richie country/regional background ?
Those days many boarders came from there from memory.

 

[Richie]

Home delivered Milk and Bread

Before I was sent to the school my big brother was one hellova rabble rouser and always in trouble. One such stunt was he'd wait for the bread and milk to be delivered to his neibor then eat the innards of the bread and return it upside down to its paper wrapping and then take a few mouthfuls of milk , replace it with tap water then reapply the cap. All this was happening while his slave, me, was keeping watch. Amazingly he got away with this caper for a week before an enraged man bashed on our front door and demanded he speak to my father.

 

[Richie]

Richie country/regional background ?

Semi regional, Engadine in Sydney's south. I and my brother were sent north to this school in Parramatta because my deceased father had been a Mason and my mother was offered generous fees.

 

[Richie]

Home on hols I went nutso, feeding my face with lollies, riding my tricycle everywhere, sliding down nearby dirt hill on corrugated iron sheeting or wooden crate sides, exploring old abandoned houses, playing games in bush and tree house behind my home, catching yabbies under the railway bridge, swimming in local weir. Anything to remove the horrible school from my mind.

 

[RIMB]

Walking or riding a bike everywhere.
Going anywhere in the surrounding suburbs without worrying about being taken.
2 for a cent lollies and 10c lolly bags - Mates, Teeth, Caramel Buttons, Wizzfizz, Sherbert with Licorice straw, Choo Choo bars and Redskins.
Being chased by a bee with my melting Lemonade Icypole running over my hands.
Pie and Chips with the family from the local takeaway eaten hot out of paper wrapping.
Mum and Dad bundling us all in the car to drive down to the phone box to ring grandma when the phone was playing up and only charged local calls.
4 kids across the back seat and one over the back if we had guests.
Sleeping over the back in the Kingswood stationwagon on trips from Victoria to Queensland.
Catching neon tetras in streams and seeing the fog from the mozzie sprayers outside classroom windows in Singapore.
Looking at the many depictions of hell in the dioramas at the Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore.
Clambouring over old fortifications with my siblings at Portsea.
Beachcombing for treasures.
Hoping for a treasure found at the tip.
Camping and fishing with my family - anywhere bush or coastal.
Catching cicadas at Nambucca Heads with random kids while camping.
Playing tag and hide and seek on and around the Stone Henge stones.
TV screen rolling when the vertical hold went.
Clambering on rocks and seeing all the colours of the rainbow in coral in Malaysia.
Losing skin from skateboards or bikes on bitumen.
Tadpoles and clay balls from creeks at the bottom of the street.
Waiting for the tape to load a game on the Vic20.
The terror and mystery of the deep, dark hole created by a dredge at Rye when they added to the beach.
Playing anything with any kids you came across on holidays.
Hour after hour spent playing in the overgrown vacant block across the road.
Sunburn and peeling skin even with shirts, hats, sunblock and pink zinc.
Sunblock that did not have an SPF rating on it that I was aware of.
Cop a flogging if you misbehaved.
British Bulldog and chasey played on school grounds.
Small leather buttons for studs on my first soccer boots.

 

[Richie]

2 for a cent lollies and 10c lolly bags - Mates, Teeth, Caramel Buttons, Wizzfizz, Sherbert with Licorice straw, Choo Choo bars and Redskins.

Yep eat your fill at the local picture theatre, blackened tongue from the choo choo bar, suck the musk sticks to a point and poke a girl with it and wait for the little scream coming from the dark. Teeth, redskins, sherbet I remember those. Also milk bottles, fantales and jaffas and small tubs of ice cream and a drink all on sale from girls carrying around a tray at interval.

 

[LFC]

ah those lollies at bargain prices ! I'm paying for it to this day, countless fillings, root canal, teeth pulled out, paid for 3 porcelan ones recently ffs.
Now you remind of the days going to dentists in the 60/70's I call them horse doctors.
OMG those needles back then, the drills - and Mum holding my hand whilst I was being butchered and then get here's your little plastic toy for being a good patient man that was hell compared to todays dental visits.

Yep how was the bang for buck buying anything those days.
$5 went so far

 

[Richie]

Walking or riding a bike everywhere.
Going anywhere in the surrounding suburbs without worrying about being taken.
2 for a cent lollies and 10c lolly bags - Mates, Teeth, Caramel Buttons, Wizzfizz, Sherbert with Licorice straw, Choo Choo bars and Redskins.
Being chased by a bee with my melting Lemonade Icypole running over my hands.
Pie and Chips with the family from the local takeaway eaten hot out of paper wrapping.
Mum and Dad bundling us all in the car to drive down to the phone box to ring grandma when the phone was playing up and only charged local calls.
4 kids across the back seat and one over the back if we had guests.
Sleeping over the back in the Kingswood stationwagon on trips from Victoria to Queensland.
Catching neon tetras in streams and seeing the fog from the mozzie sprayers outside classroom windows in Singapore.
Looking at the many depictions of hell in the dioramas at the Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore.
Clambouring over old fortifications with my siblings at Portsea.
Beachcombing for treasures.
Hoping for a treasure found at the tip.
Camping and fishing with my family - anywhere bush or coastal.
Catching cicadas at Nambucca Heads with random kids while camping.
Playing tag and hide and seek on and around the Stone Henge stones.
TV screen rolling when the vertical hold went.
Clambering on rocks and seeing all the colours of the rainbow in coral in Malaysia.

and billy carts.

Tadpoles and clay balls from creeks at the bottom of the street.
Waiting for the tape to load a game on the Vic20.
The terror and mystery of the deep, dark hole created by a dredge at Rye when they added to the beach.
Playing anything with any kids you came across on holidays.

Going anywhere in the surrounding suburbs without worrying about being taken.

You lived in Victoria? There was a terrible kidnapping for ransom in Sydney of an 8 yr old schoolboy Graham Thorne. His body was found several weeks later. Was in the mid 60s I think.

sunburn and peeling skin even with shirts, hats, sunblock and pink zinc.

Sunblock that did not have an SPF rating on it that I was aware of.

Cop a flogging if you misbehaved.

My brother was always being flogged by my fathers belt. In my fathers eyes I was a little goodie two shoes and could do no wrong.

British Bulldog and chasey played on school grounds.

Small leather buttons for studs on my first soccer boots.

That covers just about everything RIMB. End of thread.

 

[Richie]

OMG those needles back then, the drills

Even more archaic at the school.

 

[LFC]

RIMB skateboards we're big in the day, Surfa Sam were Australian made.
My fam were big beach goers hence got into surfing heaps, crashs on those skateboards were epic long before crash helmuts and kneepads haha
BILLYCARTS - make them with lawn mower front wheels and ball bearing rears leaving your track lines down new tarred roads.
The power sliding from side to side.
Great cheap no cost fun.

 

[Richie]

Brother and I used to catch cicadas and Christmas beetles. Kept the cicadas in a shoe box with holes in lid.

 

[LFC]

mentioning british bulldog, playing forcings back - only time I learnt using to kick a eggball.
Used luv getting that spiralling ball fly making up lots of ground.

Good ol pushy's, too right rode everywhere miles away without a worry.
Imagine Mums today how they react where's Johnny gone for like 4/5/6hrs.
Dragsters when they first came out.

 

[LFC]

I used to catch cicadas and Christmas beetles. Kept the cicadas in a shoe box with holes in lid.

yep blue tongue lizards used to catch as well.

 

[Richie]

BILLYCARTS - make them with lawn mower front wheels and ball bearing rears leaving your track lines down new tarred roads.

We were not as hi tech as you, old pram wheels, wooden fruit crate, piece of rope to steer. Had races down the local streets. I recall I won quite a few. Perhaps a future career in Formula One went begging when I trashed my billy cart.

 

[LFC]

high tech like that.
Not sure how we progressed to that for obviosuly the blueprint was as you had, fine tuning I guess.
I luved anything with wheels, bush track push bike racing was popular our parts, we'd have 20 odd riders in races and some crash's were huge.
Gratifying to win enjoyed it heaps.

RIMB mentioned first football boots, heck they used to be high ankle leather boots, long before the low cut was developed to And those soccer balls were full on heavy leather when wet weighed like bricks, gawd we never heard of concussions back then.

 

[Richie]

My fam were big beach goers

Which beach LFC. Ours was the iconic Cronulla and later Coogee where I had a race with death in my first car.

 

[Richie]

RIMB mentioned first football boots, heck they used to be high ankle leather boots,

They sure were and bloody uncomfortable on the upper ankle when fully knotted. I played league, cricket and yawnion at the school. Without a word of lie, if we wanted to play a game of any sport, say cricket, first we had to remove the fresh cow crap from the field as that is where they grazed. We also had to battle maggies on the lower footy field as they nested in two nearby pine tree forests. No organized sport there, except an annual Sports Day.