Human nature being what it is has always striven for better things often losing some of the finer things. The hills in the distance always seem to be much greener. Over the next rise life will be brighter and better. Memories are much the same. We tend to glamorise the good things until the past looks much brighter than it really was, the bad years forgotten as the years roll by.
I was 55 years of age when my youngest son was born. He had a grown up brother and sisters to help spoil him and I am as much to blame as they are. I feel the depression years and shortage of money have left their mark at the back of my mind so I have spoilt him as much, if not more, than the rest so I am hoping that his common sense makes him a better man than his dad.
My son has so much more to amuse him than the children of my day. To get him to read is like pulling a tooth. All the great stories have been made into films and shown on TV - so much easier to sit and look at the idiot box where the good and the trash are shown for their entertainment. I am sure that something is missing in their lives.
We learnt to read first the comics then the Boy's Adventure Stories; Coral Island, Treasure Island, King Solomon's Mines etc. The girls read Seven Little Australians, Little Women, the Anne and Billabong series etc, so in my opinion two main things are missing from their lives. Companionship and good books. Yet at eleven years of age my son has a far greater knowledge of the world through the visual aid of the TV.
He hears about the current affairs of our daily news and shows he has a grasp of them by the penetrating questions he asks. Also he sees the wonders of our world while we had to use our imagination of what they were like.
Technology has advanced so much in the last half-century so he has so much more to learn than we had and I presume he is no different than the other children of his era. In our time we had no TV or radio, no cars for our parents to take us to the beaches and parklands for miles around. We had no swimming pools in our backyards. What we had was a greater dependence on each other so we had to make our own fun.
I was born in Paddington. Today it is the Bohemia of Sydney. The "in" suburb to live in with its old fashioned terrace houses with their beautiful wrought iron balconies and facades and, for the lucky ones, wondrous harbour views. When I was born it was a working class suburb noted for its low rents and its convenience to work and city.
One of my earliest memories is lying in bed at night and listening to the lions and tigers roaring at Moore Park Zoo. Taronga Zoo had only been recently built and the great cats had not yet been moved to their new home.
We used to watch the city lights come on one by one as we followed the old gentleman with his long pole going from gaslight to gaslight lighting them in term. A simple pleasure yet remembered after 60 years.
What cheeky little urchins we must have been. Where the White City tennis courts are today were the chinese market gardens. We used to think we were brave and smart hanging over the fence watching the hard working chinamen hoeing between their rows of beautiful vegetables and yelling "ching chong chinamen, velly velly fat" then racing madly away. Had our parents known we would have had our tails smacked good and hard.
I remember the first air race from England to Australia which Sir Ross Smith was knighted for. I recall running with the other boys as fast as we could to see Captain Pickles make a forced landing in Centennial Park. If there really was a competitor named Captain Pickles I don't know. Maybe the man who told us his name was pulling out legs. To this day I am not sure. All I know is that we were there to the plane land.
I recall our billycart races down Cascade Street. It was a very steep street and halfway down the Bellevue Hill Tram use to cross so all the carts lined up at the top of the hill with one boy watching to see if the way was clear of trams. On his signal the race would be on. The thrills and spills of those wild rides! It was a wonder none of us were killed. A special guardian angel must look after little boys and girls.
When the Easter Show came around those same billy carts came in very handy as the sample bags in those days were free. A mob of us kids with our carts in tow would go to the show sneaking over or through a prearranged hole in the fence. There was no fun going in the main gate. It was much more exciting to enter illegally then working as a team we would bring back sample bags to the one who waited outside then go back for more until the man working at the booths would query our many trips and refuse us. Then it was our turn to wait outside while the rest went in and did their share.
Then we'd go back home to the back lane. We would share our spoils. It was supposed to be one bag per family from each stall. Our method of getting many sample bags makes me wonder if we had anything to do with them lo longer being free. All I know is our parents had enough condiments to last from one show to the next.
Our favourite game was Hare and Hounds and was best played in the long twilight of a summer evening. We would give the Hare five minutes start then the hounds would be after them following the chalked arrows that showed the way they went. We would purr at courting couples sitting on the gas boxes as we trotted past them as the gas box was a favourite haunt for courting couples. To boys our age kissing girls was stupid. When the hares had gone far enough they would write Home on the pavement then it would be a mad scramble to get back home to base. The ones that knew the best short cuts usually arrived back first.
Our other pastime was to run down busy Oxford Street and jump onto the back of vans and lorries, not motor driven but pulled by one or two horses, then dropping off we would do the same coming back down the other side of the street. This game was called Whip Behind and many a behind had a whip laid across it which added spice to the game.
We also watched the fire brigade when they went on their training runs. The bell would ring, the horses would trot from their stalls and stand underneath their harnesses where they would drop onto their backs from above and in a manner of minutes they would be galloping down the street with us street arabs chasing after. I doubt if the modern firemen could get their fire engine moving as quickly.
We went swimming at Bondi and if we could not scale on trams we walked. Bondi had very few houses and from the top of the hills of Waverley to the sea was mainly sand dunes. Dover Heights had only one house on it, the home of "Nosey Bob" the Hangman. We would give a sigh of relief when his house was out of sight. Today you would not find a vacant block of land on either Dover Heights or the dunes of Bondi.
One last memory. As a special treat mother would sometimes let us buy our lunch from the shop outside the school. No school canteen in my day. She would give my brother Les and myself threepence to spend. We would buy a piece of fish, a bag of chips and have a penny left over which we would spend it on Bullseyes or Humbugs that I can still taste.
My father told me how wonderful his childhood was in comparison to
mine so I surmise that my son will tell his children the same.