MOTORISED RIDES

The photo is a movie clip from 1967 looking south down Sir Joseph Banks Street with Milton Street on the right. Original, single-story homes with a Waltons van parked on the right.

We never owned a car when I was a kid. It was beyond Dad's reach as he was still paying off the house after the war and throughout the 1950s. He worked for Dalgety and Co which in the 1960s was located on Gardener's Road, Mascot. This would have involved at least one change of transport after the war, most likely train and bus. Mum's mum, Gran, lived in a brick house on Hillcrest Avenue, Greenacre, with her second youngest son, Uncle Bill. Bill owned a motorbike with sidecar in the 1950s and I loved riding in the sidecar with Mum, listening to the chug-chug of the old bike as we rattled along Liverpool Road, bump-bumping over the pesky tar strips between concrete blocks. Mum's youngest brother, Jack, married to the lovely Von, lived on Fenwick Street, Condell Park and drove a sporty Singer rag top car. In later years this car was retired to Gran's shed with a promise that it would be restored one day. So far as I know, that day never arrived!

Mum's oldest Sister, Aunty Jane, lived a couple of streets away in Conway Road, Bankstown during the 1950s. The house was located on the north-eastern corner of the northern end of Conway and may still be there. I believe Jane was Bankstown's first female taxi driver while her husband, Uncle Reg, drove a magnificent black Dodge which, legend had it, never left the garage on rainy days. I can't recall actually riding in the Dodge but do remember looking at my young reflection in the shiny Duco. The few family photos I have from the early 1950s probably came from Reg's camera. Taxis were a lucrative business at the time. Reg and Jane retired in the late 1950s to High Street, Harrington, on the North Coast of NSW. Mum and I took the train to Taree in 1958 while Dad remained at home while the sewer was connected. Unfortunately, I can't remember if we caught the bus across to Harrington, or were collected in the Dodge. Most likely it was a bus trip!