Things that were so common-place when we were kids.

You'd grab some pennies and head to the closest phone box, ring up your girl friend and talk for ages.

Your girl friend would usually park herself on the floor while she was talking to you.

The freezer section of the refrigerator would ice up

and need defrosting every couple of weeks or so.

Nearly every home had a Namco Laminex dining setting in the kitchen.

With the war only recently over, most things were in short supply.

Fresh milk was scarce and most families got by using this old favourite.

I can still remember the taste of it - yuk!

Back then plastic bags had yet to be invented, instead

mum went shopping with her string bag.

When we were real young (under 2) mum would bath us in one of these.

This was common place in a lot of homes before sewerage was connected.

There was a large metal bucket under the seat and the "night-man"

would come around once a week and remove it and replace it with a new one.

Long before toilet paper was the norm, you'd use the local newspaper or woman's weekly which would be cut into usable sizes, tied together and hung from a nail in the wall.

If you lived in a cold climate and didn't fancy a trip to the outside toilet in the middle of the night

you had one of these under your bed. It had to be emptied in the morning.

If there was a baby in the house, parents did not have the luxury of disposal nappies,

instead the baby would be wrapped in a re-usable cloth nappy which would

be soaked in a bucket after use then washed, dried and used again.

Before Mr Hills invented his rotary clothes line, mum would usually

hang all the clothes to dry on one or two long wire lines that

sometimes ran the length of the back yard.

After school your mates would come around and you'd all go out and play.

Your mum would usually serve up bread and vegemite for all.

If anyone hurt themselves while you were playing, mum would dab some mercurochrome on it.

As it contained mercury, it was later-on deemed harmful - but it fixed a lot of us.

We always played outside, usually until dark. If it was raining there were a number of games

we'd play, snakes and ladders was popular as was this one.

If your family was well off you probably had a pedal car though most of us just had a football

to kick with our mates or a cricket bat, two sets of stumps and a few tennis balls.

Every home had an incinerator.

If not brick it was usually an old 44 gal drum with holes punched into the sides down the bottom

to allow air in for the fire to breath. Everything went into it

and it was dad's job on the weekend to fire it up.

Radio's back then were valve driven, you'd turn it on and wait for several seconds

for the filaments to warm up before it would work.

You would tune it by turning a knob which would rotate a large ganged capacitor

and the stations would be shown on a screen on the front of the set.. 

Dip switches, which switched the car's head lights from low to high, were situated

on the floor of the car, near the pedals, and you operated it with your foot.

I didn't think it was such a bad idea!

Long before automatic gear boxes in cars were common place,

you changed gears manually. The common configuration was what

was called the "three on the tree."

We could go to the movies in our car, so that you could hear the dialogue in the movie

you would take one of these speakers and clip it onto your front window.

On weekends, if you were a boy, before you were allowed to go out and play,

it was usually your job to mow the lawns

and before Mr Victa invented the "rotor-mower" you did it with a "push-mower".

There were millions of these once, now they are just a museum piece.

When we were kids, chicken was a delicacy, we were fed on a diet of steak and/or lamb.

There were usually fights to see who got the "wish-bone" and you and your brother or sister

always used it to make a wish.

Television was in its infancy, in black and white with 4:3 resolution.

There were usually only 3 channels, 7, 9 and the ABC

and to change channels you had to go to the set and turn the tuning knob.

TV stations didn't broadcast 24 hours a day when we were kids,

they usually went off air about 11.00pm and came on again about midday.

When not broadcasting a program they would broadcast a test pattern

which we'd watch!

Photography was in it's infancy and there were photo booths in many shopping arcades.

You'd put in your coins, duck inside, pull the curtain, pull a silly face

and it would flash and take your pic. You'd usually get a string of 3 copies of the photo,

all about an inch by an inch and a half.

When we were 17 we had great hair, listened to cool music and drove the best cars.

Girls wore some cool duds - bell bottoms we called them.

Debutant Balls were a very important annual event on the social calendar in most suburbs and country towns throughout the 1950s, right up to the 1980s.

The girls would invite a young male to be their escort for the evening

and after dinner the debutantes were presented to a leading dignitary.

The evening usually wound up with some ballroom dancing,

including the Pride of Erin, fox trot and of course, the progressive barn dance,

followed by the compulsory waltz at the end of the night.

Girls either made their own gowns on the ever faithful Singer or saved up and bought them.

The boys would usually hire their suits.

When we wanted a band-aid there was a little piece of string to open the packet.

Spam and sardines were a popular meal,

and they came with a special key with which to open the can.

Every school room had one of these, ball-point pens hadn't yet been invented,

it was either nib-pen and ink or pencil. The sharpener was in constant use.

At school we had wooden desks with a lift-up hinged top under which we kept our books.

The holes were where we kept our ink wells.  Swan ink was the favourite brand.

What are just throw away items today, when we were kids pencils were valuable.

Before we went off to school, mum would shave off a bit of the pencil at the top end

and write our names there in ink so we always knew which were ours.

The fortune-teller. Everyone knew how to make one.

Video Cassettes. 

In the mid 70s these were the absolute latest in hi-tech, kids today wouldn't know what they were.

Once a very popular sweet - now long gone.

Another favourite was Mac Robertson's Snack chocolate block.

Not the bland old one you get today, ours was sculptured.

The Commonwealth Bank provided us with a metal money box in which

we'd keep our pennies and spare coins.

This was forced saving as there was no way to get the money out

without using a can-opener to remove the complete lid.

If/when we went travelling we'd always take our travel clock.

It didn't require batteries or power to operate,

you just wound up a small key at the back and it would tic tic for 24 hours.