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!
No one ever suggested that I was born to write. One needs a photographic memory, something I sadly lack. There's one advantage though in forgetting things quickly. You can read a book today, note within that the story was a good read, then pick it up same time next year and enjoy it once again!
The basic facts of my family though come easily to mind. My Dad was born in Sutton Coldfield outside of Birmingham, England in 1916, and came to Australia in the late 1920s by himself, at the age of 12 or so. My grandad had come out earlier, his wife having disappeared off the scene sometime during or after WW1 while he was serving in the British Navy. I was an only child and I assumed Dad was the same. However, in the 1990s a birth certificate came from a PI friend in London, which revealed that my Dad's mother had given birth to a daughter some years later. That remains a mystery. Mum's ancestry is better known as I quickly discovered online. She was born in the middle of seven siblings and spent her early life in Narrabri before returning to the Bankstown area.
At the time of their marriage in 1944, my Dad was serving in the CMF, an earlier knee injury preventing his employment in the army proper. Mum was serving behind the counter in a Bankstown milkbar on South Terrace, alternating that day job with war work at Chullora. This possibly related to aircraft construction. I came along in 1948.
Born in Bankstown in the late 1940s, it never occurred to this kid that there was anywhere else outside of "Banky". In the days before television, the only invasion by foreign forces, as we kids regarded it at the time, was the Queen on her tour of NSW. Bankstown North, the public school which put up with me for seven years, hasn't changed much in the intervening 50-plus years. Liverpool Road (Hume Highway on most maps) still runs past the old 2-story brick school plus assorted outbuildings. We students if I remember rightly were assembled on the central median strip. Assorted adults, teachers, parents and local shopkeepers took up the prime position almost on the city-bound lanes as the motorcade paraded by. There was no worry in those days about barriers, tapes or any form of Health and Safety regulations! In reality Her Majesty raced by due most likely to being held up by people more important to Those Running Things than us Westies. For years later, hundreds of locals told how beautiful the Queen looked, how she waved specially at them; all I remembered at the time was the beautiful black limo. Someone must have spent hours with sweat, cloth and polish, ensuring it would look the part.
The shopkeepers, by the way, made a killing that day, feeding the audience who were all feeling cheerful after seeing our reigning monarch. The jars of lollies in Frank Smythe's corner store were soon emptying into paper bags, or directly down eager throats.
