240627 Mary / Childhood and Youth

 Audio file 240627 Mary.m4a

Childhood and Youth

I was born in 1941, which was war years. I was actually born in the Payneham Hospital, which is on Payneham Road, more or less opposite the top of Bathams Rd. I'm mentioning that because I've lived most of my life in the Payneham area or near to it in Paradise. Because it was war years, some of my early recollections include blackouts, where cars and had to be driven with hooded headlights at night and all blinds and curtains had to be drawn, and there was a searchlight that rotated around through the sky that we could see at the top of Mount Lofty from the house where I lived in Payneham. And also in connection with the war years, I remember that even for a few years after the war ended, certain commodities were rationed. So we had ration tickets. And as a child of about seven or eight, I can remember sometimes going from one shop to another to collect particularly things like sugar, which my mother used to make lots of jam when there was ripe fruit in summer time. 

Other things about my early life. I have two brothers. One was older and one younger. Fortunately for me, we have been friends all our lives and I was very sad when my older brother died last year. I miss still miss him. We we lived in Payneham. But the three of us went to what was then called Wellington Rd. Primary school. We went along the the road, which is now called Portrush Rd. Because originally only the Southern part of that road was called Portrush Road And the section between Payneham Rd. and McGill Rd. was called Wellington Rd. hence the name of that primary school. I think it's now known as Trinity Gardens Primary School. Our father, incidentally, had also attended that same primary school because he lived with his parents in Amherst Ave. which is at the back of that school. We used to walk to school or ride our bikes to school, or if the weather was wet, there was a bus that used to be crowded with lots and lots of schoolchildren on wet days, and I think it cost us something like tuppence or trepans to catch that bus. And then we would walk home after school. 

Our parents grew lots of fruit trees and vegetables in our garden. And we also kept chickens. So I think despite the fact that my dad was a mechanic and we weren't, certainly not wealthy, we were certainly always well fed and well looked after and when. My brothers and I looked back over our lifetime. We think that we were very lucky to have been born at the time when we were because we had all that we needed in life. Not as many luxuries as we have these days, but we had everything we needed, and we knew that we were part of a family that loved us very much. We had lots of interaction with our grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, and as well as friends and and looking back, we think we had a pretty happy childhood.   

While I was very young, about a year old so in 1942, there were soldiers billeted at every house in the district because the Australian Defence Forces were called back from wherever they could be called back from because it was to try to fend off attacks from coming from the north, from Japan. Two soldiers were billeted at night place. And one of them. Ended up being becoming my uncle because he married my mother's youngest sister. Hmm. She used to come, I think, apparently to look after her beautiful baby niece that is me. But I think she was actually coming to talk to the soldier, one soldier in particular. 

So my husband Bruce lived not far away. His parents lived down Bathams Rd. which I've mentioned before. That suburb was called Royston Park. But I think too there were soldiers billeted throughout the district where he lived as well. In those days, there were a lot of empty blocks. Around there was plenty of housing, but there was also some empty lands, so there was plenty of room for children to play with their friends. And because there were not so many cars, it was quite safe to go out into the street and to kick a football up and down the street. Or to draw, took lines on one of the Telegraph poles across the road for the wicket and play cricket across the road. So that meant that children from neighbouring houses would come out and join us. 

Another thing I remember from those early years of my life is because the houses didn't have air conditioning of the summer evening. Many of the people in our street would be out outside trying to get a breath of cool air. And after they've eaten their evening meal. Often the dads would be watering the gardens and we children might run under the hose to try to get cool. But because everybody was out there, there was lots of talking between neighbours, and I remember that the dads used to be very good at telling quite good yarns, which we children were interested in, but weren't always allowed to stay up to. Here. We were usually sent to bed. Yes. 

Also the House that we lived in had an iron roof. Now the House that I live in now has an iron roof, but during the 1950s, sixties and 70s, eighties I think most of the houses in Adelaide had tile roofs and so one of my childhood memories is of hearing rain, heavy rain on the roof at night in winter time. And I'm now enjoying those memories as I listen to the rain on my current iron roof.  But a tile roof didn't give you that. That you didn't hear the rain on the tile roof. Yeah. 

So my two brothers went to a secondary school called Adelaide Technical High School where my father and several other members of his, I think a sister and brother of his, and I think a couple of my mother's sisters had attended also. But in those days where the boys were allowed to do an academic course which included a language, French and mathematics and science subjects like physics and chemistry, the girls were limited to business courses which were taught very well. At that school, however, I decided that if it was good enough for my brothers to study maths and science, it was good enough for me to study that too. So, instead of going to the Adelaide Technical High School, which was on the corner of North Terrace and Frome Rd., I used to ride my bike across through the back streets to McGill Road and then go up lossy St. Kensington Gardens to Norwood High School where I was able to do the course of my choice. 

I have mostly very good memories of high school. I loved the study. About the sport, I love meeting new people from other primary schools who came there as well as the ones I've known all my life at Wellington Rd. Primary School. And I particularly liked the fact that the school had a choir and I sang in that choir. And I until Christmas time, 2023, I was still singing in choirs. And I'm very grateful for the experience I had in the school choir that got me started. To be able to read and sing music. Of many types and many languages, it's been a very enjoyable experience. At home I still have a particular friend that I met at high school, which means that she and I have been friends since 1954. And we're still friends today. In fact, I was her bridesmaid when she got married, and but I still keep in touch with quite a few people or these days. As we're getting older, that's not so easy. But if I happen to bump into people I knew at high school, we find that it's very easy to forget about all the years in between and to still have friendly discussions.

I mentioned sport as being one of my interests at high school. So I learned to play tennis and I played tennis for many, many years. After I left school and so that too was a way in which I got a lot of exercise and met a lot of different people. Over those years and that's been very enjoyable. I tried my hand at playing some hockey at high school. I liked that, but I had some leg injuries from being banged by the hockey stick, so my mother thought that wasn't a good sport. I also played a little bit of softball. Uh, but mostly it was tennis and netball, which in those days we called basketball. It was 7 a side later, after I left high school and went to university. At that stage, I swapped over from playing netball to actually playing 5 a side basketball, and I played that for well over 30 years. I loved it because it was a team sport. Give me a ball to chase around the court, and I was happy to run. So whether it was a tennis ball and I had a racket in hand, or whether it was a the the basketball for me to dribble it down the court, I was happy to chase the ball. 

So at this stage, I'm just trying to think of memories from my earlier life. I can remember some of the presents that little girls used to get when I was young compared with the presents that little girls are given now for birthdays and Christmas. I can remember one Christmas getting a complete set of a miniature ironing board, iron soap, to do washing with pegs to hang clothes on the line. So I think we were trained up very much to be housewives of the future. And of course, we all had several dolls to play with. Because I was born in the war years the shortages, far more serious things than toys were being manufactured in those days. And so, I had hand me down dolls from older girl cousins, which my mother would make new clothes for, so that when I got the doll, it looked different from when I had seen it with my cousins. And when my mother could, after the war, when she was able to buy me a really nice new doll for myself, she did. 

And I remember that, by then I was six or seven, an elderly lady had taught me to knit, and I was quite a good knitter. I remember I knitted a whole outfit for my baby doll, just like the real babies were wearing. That was an old lady called Mrs. Smith, which was a very, very common name in those days. But what was unusual was the fact that she took time to teach her five year old little girl who was a friend of family. We were not related, but we're definitely good friends and she took time to teach me knit and crochet, and they are activities that I kept up for many, many years.  Right up until, I would say, 20 years ago. I was still knitting and crocheting. Then I don't know, I think I've got busy with other. And I haven't done it recently, but I'm thinking if I'm going to be sitting around a bit, I may well get back to that. Hold on for time. 

 And of course, when we went to school, whereas the boys went off to do woodwork lessons, the girls went to do home science, domestic arts or whatever it was called, where one week we would learn to cook something. We usually took the ingredients with us, how the eggs survived the ride, the bumpy ride that they got when I rode my bike to school, I'm not sure, but they did. And the other week we would do some laundry or be taught how to clean the house. My mother used to be highly amused because by the time I was doing those lessons. I was 11 and 12 years of age at the end of primary school, and by then every Saturday morning I used to help my mother do a big baking session where we would make all sorts of things. Particularly some cakes, some biscuits desserts, like tarts, we would put the fruit in that that my mother had preserved during the summer time. 

As well as cooking main meals, I actually could cook a whole lot more things than I was ever taught at school. And my mother used to laugh to think that they were taking a whole morning to teach me how to cook one thing when she knew that at home I could cook lots of things in that time. And with those cooking lessons. The girls used to ride up to Norwood High School from Wellington Rd. Primary School to do them, and I think the boys rode across toward work centre, which was somewhere near the corner of Beulah Road and Portrush Rd. which was the extension of Wellington Rd. I don't think that work centre is there anymore. 

One of the things that used to amuse me at at the cooking lessons was that in the big kitchen that we had, there were both electric stoves and gas stoves and a lot of the girls in my class lived in houses where there were electric stove whereas I grew up in a house where there was a gas stove. So I was quite used to lighting matches without burning my fingers and also the the stove in our house, the one with the OR label on it was called modern. It was actually not modern even when I was 12 years of age, but it was much more modern than the gas stoves that were in the cooking centre at the high school. And a lot of the girls in the class were scared of using it. So we were supposed to cook with gas one time and electricity the next time. But when the girls realised that I was very happy to light matches and light the oven, they used to do a swap with me. And I think I probably cooked in the gas oven every week and a lot of my friends cooked in the electric oven every week. And the teacher didn't ever seem to realise what was going on. I would have said we weren't naughty at school, but we did do a few things that were questionable. 

Uhm, what else do I remember about high school? Much to my surprise, when I got to my 4th year of high school, which was called leaving, and 5th year, was leaving honors. We used to have prefects and the senior students in the school, and I'm sure the staff used to vote for 12 girl prefects and 12 boy prefects. And. As junior students in the school, we looked up to these prefects and they were senior students who were on gate duty in the morning, and if we arrived late we lost a house point. So they noted that down so they they were on to us if we weren't wearing correct uniform. We also got, I think, lost a House point, but they were the people who for House Sports Day ran team practices and helped us younger ones to do the best we could, to see which House would win the shield that particular year. Well, much to my surprise, I was voted as one of the 12 prefects when I was in leaving because I didn't see myself as a hugely popular or  notably sporty person. I certainly enjoyed sport, but I wasn't the best tennis player, or best at athletics. One of my friends was. So I was surprised and very honoured. And that carried through to my fifth year at high school, leaving on as when I was a prefect for a second year so. I appreciated the the faith that my fellow students had in me, and I hope I did a good job with the duties that I had to do as a prefect. 

At that stage, there weren't any parents driving children to school unless it was a terribly, terribly wet day. We all arrived on bikes and so there were a lot of bike racks. Or people came walking from nearby or walking up the street from the from the tram line on McGill Road, or from the tram line that came up the Norwood parade. And those tram lines, they were a nuisance if you rode a bike because when we were crossing McGill Road to get to the high school. You had to be very careful for the bike tyres not to slide on the rails. Or you could easily come off and there you were right in the middle of the road with cars and trams. It wasn't good. So we had to be very careful. So a lot of bike riding. 

Oh, one of the things I remember from early at high school our first year there was 1954. That was the year that the Queen visited.  She was supposed to have come before while I was still at primary school, and so we had actually practiced up. In the primary school choir to sing some things, and, I think, to do a dance, but that was cancelled, I think, because King George the sixth was very ill and so the trip didn't happen then until after he had died. The queen was crowned in 1952, and then came here in 1954. On the day that the school students saw the queen, officially, the school day, for that, we all went to the the Oval at the Waverly Showgrounds.  And we were packed in behind the white wooden picket fence. It's going back rows and rows deep, and the children, who by then were the right age to be singing and dancing. They actually came onto the Oval and performed there. I think at that stage the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were up in one of the stands where they could see all that on the Oval. But at one stage during the day. They, the queen and the Duke came and drove around the Oval very slowly, just in front of the picket fence. Thanks, and when that happened, everybody in all the the rows deep that went back, all pressed forward now because I was very short, I was in that front row and I think I remember feeling very keenly the top of that picket fence pressing into my tummy as I got pushed forward over the points on that picket fence. 

It was a long day because we had to get down there early and all the children be lined up. Well before the the Queen and the Duke were due there, but it was lovely to see them and and of course we all had to take a packed lunch that day. And then, when we got back to the school, we found that the caretakers had actually locked the gates and our bikes were inside. I'm not sure now, but I think some of the senior boys who were young men actually helped by lifting. I think they jumped over the fence and then went and lifted bikes back over the fence so that the younger ones could get home to our parents. 

And that brings another memory back to me. Of going home late in the afternoon during my school days. As you walk down the street. About 5:00 or 5:30, which it could be if you'd been playing sport after school, you would smell all the the tea, cooking in all the houses along the street. To hungry children, that was a wonderful smell. Yeah, it's different now because. I think. People eat out a lot more. They buy a lot more convenient food, and I don't think house windows are open as much because everybody's got air conditioning and so on. But yes, that was a very welcome smell to hungry children and 

Because I played a lot of tennis in the afternoon after school either with my friends from school, or I also played for a local church team at Payneham, we had practice a couple of nights or a couple of afternoons a week, and we would go there and practice before going home for the evening meal. Later on, after I left school and I went to university, I've got those same good memories of smelling the evening meals, cooking as I walked home from the tram on Payneham Road. No, it wasn't the tram by then, it was the buses that came out on Payneham Road, I think in 1958. So that was at the time I finished school, I think. 

There were quite a few children about my age growing up in Payneham, so there was always plenty of friends around to play in sports teams together and and eventually at the church at it was called Payneham Methodist Church and those. With the group of young people that that we played sport with tennis, and first well netball and then basketball, we formed a youth club and we used to organize dances about once a month. Tools of the fathers. One player of cornet. And another one played the piano beautifully. And they used to donate their time and come along and play for us to dance. Another young man used to come and play his drums. We did pay him. I don't think he charged us full rates, but as he was engaged and was trying to save up to get married and have a house. We thought it fair to pay him, so that meant that we took it in turns to have a little group responsible for decorating the hall on the Saturday morning with streamers and balloons and putting what was called Floor Speed on the floor, which was a fairly rough wooden floor, but that was so we could dance gracefully without our shoes sticking. And the same group would have had to clean up before we went home, to take down the streamers and balloons so the hall was returned to good condition. But we had a good time and had lots of fun. And I don't think the young people now would know the dances that we used to do. They were old fashioned, a lot of them were just the a partner. Got you up and you danced the whole dance with them. But there were a couple of what we call progressive dances where we would dance in a big circle. And one partner would ask the girls to get up and dance, and then during the dance you change partners. So you progressed around the circle. I had a very cheeky friend. One of the boys who always came and asked me for a progressive dance because he said he could get rid of me quickly. I have to admit, we are still friends to this day. I have known him all my life, and despite the fact he was very cheeky, we've laughed about it and are still friends. I've mentioned my husband Bruce, and he was a a very important person because he used to play tennis in the tennis team. That same tennis team that I did and go to the dances and I liked having the dances that lasted all through the whole dance with him because he was my special, very special boyfriend.

Bruce did not go to the same high school as I did. He went to Adelaide Technical High School where my brothers did so. So Bruce and particularly my older brother whose name is Edwin, they were very good friends because they were the two top students in their class and they were always seeing who could do the maths and science. Particularly the physics best, but it was very good competition between them.

And as I said, we've been friends all our lives, so. That that's been a really good part of our lives. And I've mentioned my younger brother. His name's John because John was five years younger than me. I had already left primary school before he moved from what we used to call Infant School in those days. I think it's called junior primary now. And that was in a usually in a separate part of the schoolyard. So I'd moved off to high school before he got into the primary school where he would have played in the same yard as I did then. He didn't start high school until I left, but he went to a different high school anyway. So, John was kind of in a younger age group, and he was friends with a younger group in Payneham then my brother Ed and and I were. However, having said that, as we got older, we find that we found that we were quite friendly across the age groups, that that age difference didn't matter anymore. So. We've all been good friends for many, many years. 

Am still trying to think back to to the early days. Uh. Yeah. I've mentioned some of the toys we played with. Oh, my goodness, a hobby horse. A long stick with a horse's head on it, and we all at on the bottom end. We used to get on there and sort of gallop around the backyard. Tricycles, little tricycles that we got on on. Pedaled furiously. One stage, we had a little car, a metal car. Again it was a pedal car and we used to get in and pedal that. As was the the way in in the 1940s and 50s, a lot of the houses had gravel driveways. Now peddling the little pedal car on the driveway wasn't so easy, but we did have a a square of cement in front of the shed, so we could go around in quite decent circles on that. Or if we were allowed to try it out in the street, if our somebody was there to watch us and make sure that, if a car turned the corner, we weren't in the middle of the road where it would have been dangerous. Now the same square of cement in front of the shed became very important later on when we were at primary school and we learned how to play well. 

We learned the rules of tennis because we used to listen to the broadcast of Davis Cup, things like that on the radio, no TV to watch it. We like tennis. And so the strip of cement we used to take the prop from my mother's washing line. Not when there was washing hanging on it, which was a good long metal rod and we would put it on halfway across the cement. And then we had some wooden beach bats and old tennis balls, and we would draw the court lines on that cement and go out and play tennis over the mum's watching prop, which was OK unless Mum wanted to wash and needed the prop for the lawn. So the three of us loved playing tennis in the backyard. And of course, one of our jobs as we got older was raking the gravel in the driveway because gravel gets scuffed and out of place, so raking raking the gravel. I think a lot of children used to do that. And then when I think what was in in our garden originally when my mother and father bought the house in Payneham. There were a lot of prickly cactus bushes in the garden, but my older brother Ed had a habit of somehow or other getting cactus prickles stuck into him, and I think Mum got sick and tired of pulling cactus prickles out of him and patching up the the wounds. So dad removed all the cactus bushes eventually and so it was much safer backyard for John and me to play. And they had been for Eddie. 

We had some favorite places in the garden, the Peach tree that we had was a very sturdy tree, quite thick limbs. And it had obviously been pruned to open up more or less like a bowl, so it was very easy to step into the lower part of the tree and climb up a limb there and sit up there, where you could kind of see through the leaves what was going on in the backyard. But you weren't terribly obvious to everybody else, so that was the Peach tree. 

 Also a our house had hedges along two sides, the two sides and the front. Later on, when we one of our jobs was to actually click the hedges with the hedge shears, we weren't so fond of the hedges because we had to clip them and then rake up the. The clippings but. The edges along the sides. Had gaps where we could get through and we had kind of cubbyholes in behind. On both sides of the house. But there was a particularly big gap in behind the the hedge that went down near the shed. So that was a favorite playing spot. And I also think down the back of our garden, there was a small shed and in there were was the Mallee roots that dad used to buy and then chop a bit smaller to go. Were on the fireplaces mostly. 

We burnt a fire in what we called the kitchen, but it was actually more of a breakfast room because my mother had a kitchenette, which today would be called a Butler's pantry. And so that had stove and sink. Cupboards in it and and you could put the fridge in there, whereas the other room had. A dresser with with a plates and so on were. The table where we ate and this fireplace. So at night on a cold night, we would sit around in front of the fire. Memories of early childhood include my mum's bringing out the baby bath. Quite a large baby bath and being allowed to have a bath in front of the fire where it was warm when when we were still small, like young children, and then cuddling up in our pajamas and dressing gown and slippers while mum put a hot water bag in our bed to warm the bed up, And sitting on Dad's lap while he read a stories, or told us told us stories. And so we would then go to bed feeling happy and warm.

Am mentioning that fire in in the living room because my dad began work at 7:00 AM in the morning, he and mum used to get up at 6:00 AM. And the first thing they would do would be to rake over the coals in the great, and put a bit more wood on the fire. So by the time we came down to breakfast, which was after Dad had left for work at about 6:30, the room would be warm. We had a room where we had a a big dining table and a lounge, a more formal room. And when we had visitors or a lot of people around, that was where we went to, that big room. And we would have a fire there. But normally it was in the living room. 

There was another bedroom in the house that also had a a fireplace as a lot of the houses did in those days. But I don't ever remember a fire in that bedroom. 

There was the little shed down the back that started me off about fireplaces because not only was there the larger fire wood in there, which had to be chopped up and later on my brothers, that was one of their jobs to help chop the wood. But we had a a chip heater to heat the water for our showers and baths. When we'd grown out of having a bath in front of the fireplace. So there were stacks of small kindling wood which had to be split with the little Tomahawk because you couldn't put anything bigger than chips into the chip heater. And so, eventually that chip heater was replaced when it burnt out with a gas heater, and we thought that was wonderful. That was progress. Also in this little shed though, I was going to have it used to smell of Bran and Pollard because we bought that plus some shell grit and all of that was mixed into the flowers food, which was basically scraps from the kitchen, including any porridge that was left over in the morning and things like that. And was mixed up with hot water and some Bran and Pollard and shell grit were scattered in the chickens yard for them to to eat. So we always had a plentiful supply of good eggs and chicken to eat, particularly for birthdays and Christmas. 

Pretty much all of our extended family was in Adelaide. So we would visit them frequently or they would come to our house and we grew up knowing. Our grandparents, our uncles and aunts, our cousins very well. When we got to primary school age, we would actually ride our bikes to visit family members. 

Because quite a few of them lived within one to three or four miles, and it was safe in those days. I think safer than now. Once we've learned the road rules and obeyed them on our bike. Because there weren't as many cars on the road and they weren't going as fast. So in what was more or less the local district, I mean, my grandma, one other grandparents lived in Stepney Nelson St. So that wasn't far from Payneham. I had an aunt who lived in South Payneham, which was on the way to school anyway. And my other grandmother lived with an aunt in Marryatville  near somewhere near the Marryatville primary school. So again, we would ride our bikes that far because we used to ride to tennis matches and ride home the long way from school with our friends. I have even been known to ride home from North High School to Payneham via OG Rd., Klemzig, North East Rd. 

A lot of times, even came home via Gillis Plains. Sometimes when we rode our bikes with our friends, we just got talking and kept riding. And as long as we were home at a reasonable time, we didn't get into too much trouble.

All my grandparents were born in Australia. My mother's parents are descended from. Their families had come from England.  So I've learned some things from what I call an English grandma, although she wasn't born there, and a German grandma, and again that grandmother was born here in South Australia up at Springton.  But her family, they were actually Prussian. They came from Prussia when they came out here in the 1850s.  And they spoke German. The part that they came from is now part of modern day Poland. So they came from near the large town near them, when they lived there, was called Poes, and it's now called Poznan.

So we actually grew up with, sharing a meal table with people who had German accents or English accents from the South of England, the north of England.  I think we thought the English accents were funnier than the German accents, and to today I still can set a table in two different ways. Because of what I learned from the English side of the family, what I learned from the German side of the family, I have no problem with that.

I adapted to both very readily and I was lucky enough. What I call my dad's father died when I was only only one, so I don't remember him unfortunately, but Dad's mother was 86 when she died, so I was 14 and I did have an opportunity to know her better.  My one regret is that I didn't have an opportunity to know her for longer. Yes, she carried the German traditions very well because Dad's family, until his parents came to the city, a lot of them still lived at Birdwood or the Barossa Valley and had kept their traditions alive.

Unfortunately for my dad, when World War One started in 1914, his mother said,   No more German to be spoken in the home. You will speak English. You learn English at school. You all speak English and no more German. So we lost some of our heritage. Yeah, dad was born in 1907. So until he was 7 and bilingual. He did still remember quite a bit of German, and later on when I've been singing German songs, I've heard words that I remember my dad was saying. So and also after the war, he worked at the what was then called the Municipal Tramways Trust. And he was in charge of overhaul of the buses. And after the war, there were a lot of people came here from Europe. And whether they were German, had fought against the Germans, a lot of them spoke German, and Dad was actually able to talk to them, to help make their job easier. And I know he was glad that he could remember enough to help the newcomers.

My other grandparents, my mum's parents, they were alive. They were at my wedding. Grandfather was 86 when he died, about nine months after I was married. My grandmother lived to 93. So, I was 31 when she died. 30 or 31, and even my my son remembers his great grandmother, and we think we're very fortunate that we had them, that we had a lot to do with them and and we loved them a lot because they're a big part of our lives.

I think that's enough for today, isn't it? Goodness me.

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