It is hard to pick just one thing that as the biggest change in my lifetime. About the only thing that hasn’t changed is that we still have the same Queen.
One very big change that has occurred in my lifetime is that here in Australia we no longer manufacture goods the way we did when I was a child.
When I was growing up there were numerous factories. In Elizabeth where I lived for several years there were factories making jeans, sewing machines, white goods and of course cars at the Holden plant. I can remember when I was a child that at around four o’clock our normally quiet suburban street would suddenly be full of cars as workers returned home after their shifts at the factory.
An ad from an old Woman’s Day from 1976.
In other suburbs around Adelaide there were more factories, Chrysler, later Mitsubishi with two plants and other factories who supplied them with parts, Actil made towels and bed linen, Golden Breed made T-shirts and sweatshirts, Perry Engineering, Castalloy, Hills Industries, Simpson, Pope, Kelvinator, Sabco and Clipsal were all names that South Australians knew.
Ford had their factory in Geelong, Victoria and there was another Holden plant at Fisherman’s Bend. We even had our own toy manufacturers, Cyclops, Metti, Verna to mention a few.
Frigidaire advertisement from an old magazine 1948 so a bit before my day.
Today many of those companies are gone. Cars are no longer manufactured or even assembled in Australia. You can’t buy an Australian made fridge and many other products formerly made here are now made in other countries where labour is cheaper. Even here in Tassie our Blundstone boots are now made overseas.
I think it is very sad. We were proud of our Australian brands and those factories provided employment and a decent wage for many.
Below you can read an article on the closing of the last Holden factory, the one in Elizabeth not far from where I used to live.
Today is the 5th anniversary of my first post on “Our Other Blog”. Of course it was “My Other Blog” then. I had only been writing the doll blog for about a month and I was itching to write about other things and post photos of non-doll subjects. However, I wanted to keep the blog on topic so the logical thing to do seemed to be to start another one.
I wasn’t sure how I’d get on as a newbie blogger trying to write and photograph enough material for two blogs or how long I’d keep it up for before losing interest. It wasn’t exactly an auspicious start; looking back at the stats I had 9 views of the blog in June 2013, the next two months were no better. My first very modest goal was to be read every day. I hated seeing those blank spaces in the stats graph like gaps in your teeth.
Stats for Our Other Blog
Things picked up though. Six months later I was posting regularly two or three times a week. I’d started joining in the Daily Prompt, thanks Daily Prompt you helped; and I’d hit on the idea of posting a photo every Thursday as a blogging goal.
Messerschmitt car at the National Automobile Museum at Launceston.
Since that time there has been steady though unspectacular growth in the number of people reading the blog and the names of many regular readers feel like old friends now.
I have learned a bit I think. I take photographs now consciously looking for subjects that will be interesting to use in a photo challenge. Cee’s Photo Challenges in particular have been a big help to me as I now look beyond the obvious for a picture and I have a new enjoyment of black and white photography.
Australian Comedian Roy Rene (Mo), Hindley St, AdelaideHairy Maclairy sculpture in Tauranga, New Zealand
Reading the work of fellow bloggers has helped me a lot too. Sometimes their thoughts trigger an idea of my own to write about; sometimes just an interesting thread of conversation in the comment section.
I know that some people who read my posts are not native English speakers so I proofread for spelling and grammar errors and try to write in language that won’t be too hard to follow. I want us to write the way we speak but to keep it simple. I know that sometimes I write a bit too much so I try to check that too. “Is there an easier way of saying that?” I ask myself.
I’ve probably learned as much from reading the work of others as from reading WordPress articles about blogging. I want to particularly mention Marilyn Armstrong and her team of writers at Serendipity-Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth because I enjoy the variety of subjects they write about and Marilyn has a lot of good advice for new bloggers as well. Pat, who writes Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss, has shown me that even if you rarely travel far from home you can still write entertainingly about your daily life and the antics of your cat.
Over the past year I’ve learned how to work as a team with Naomi after she joined me in blogging here. In fact Naomi’s first post was on the 31st of May last year so it’s her anniversary too. It’s been a lot of fun to have someone to exchange ideas with.
While thank you’s are being said I also want to mention my friends Ally and Matt Clark and Bruce Laughton who have all generously allowed me to use their photographs when I didn’t have any suitable ones of my own.
Matt -Hobart snow day 2015-Photo Ally Clark
Ally enjoying the snow – Photo by Matt Clark
Bruce- Sunbury 2017
I think that photography will be the main theme of this blog for the next twelve months. I want to keep on sharing photos of the places we know in Tasmania. Naomi is particularly interested in vintage vehicles and we both love to photograph old and interesting buildings and other structures.
MV Cartela-Port Huon Wharf- July 2014 by VandaRowing boat, Franklin, Tasmania by VandaAutumn in Franklin by VandaModel Steam engine at Evandale. This engine is called The General. There would be all sorts of bits and pieces inside to move the driving wheels and work the pistons. photo by NaomiPhoto by NaomiOoh Ahhh Fireworks! This is a great old sign.Photo by NaomiMore of the cast in their terrific costumes. Photo by NaomiCallington Mill sign. Photo by NaomiThe Richmond Bridge photo by Naomi
Although we probably won’t include them in our Cruise Holiday posts we do hope to share a bit of the footage Naomi has been taking with her movie camera in the future. She wants to concentrate on editing pictures and sound before we do that.
So finally I’d like to say thanks to our readers old and new for sticking with us and we hope you’ll continue to enjoy the journey.
I spent a good part of the evening looking through old photos in the hope of finding something in particular. That did not happen but I did find some very old pictures of Vanda and me on one of our first trips to Sydney together. One time we went over on a coach and stayed in a cheap hotel in The Cross. Vanda took this snap of me at a local café. I’m not sure if it is Jeffries or not but I remember they had the best Black Forest cake ever. The photo of Vanda was taken on the ferry going to Birkenhead Point. At one time they had a great little shopping centre where I bought quite a few clothes and stuff. On the way over it was very windy and when I gave my fare money to the young guy it blew out of his hands and into the drink. I still got my change as he said it was his fault which was very kind of him. It was still paper money in those days. Anyway here are some happy holiday snaps.
In my family we seem to be kitchen conversationalists. We lived a couple of different places growing up but long conversations generally seemed to happen around the kitchen table.
From the mid sixties to early seventies mum, my sister Naomi and I lived in a Housing Trust rental home in Elizabeth north of Adelaide. It was a semi-detached house and had three bedrooms, living room, kitchen, laundry and bathroom. The kitchen was a large room which incorporated the dining area. It was where we ate all our meals. On schooldays we didn’t linger over breakfast but I do remember mum making toast under the oven grill and that on cold days our dog, Felix, would try to take advantage of the open oven door by jumping up and sitting on it to keep warm until he was shooed off.
We had a table with a laminated top and metal legs which had four matching red vinyl covered chairs. Actually Naomi still has this table at her house. On weekends when there was no rush mum would cook eggs and bacon in her favourite stainless steel frying pan which Naomi also still has.
Some of Mum’s old pots and pan plus my whistling kettle on the stove. Photo by Naomi
Sometimes we might have boiled eggs with bread “soldiers”,scrambled eggs and toast or maybe porridge. There was always tea, made in a pot and drunk out of mum’s “Weeping Willow” china. Mum liked the Willow pattern china so over the years we had many different variations of it as cups and saucers were broken and needed to be replaced. It ended up that each of us had our own special favourite cup and saucer. As you can see Naomi still has some of this china too.
Weeping Willow dinner set. Photo by Naomi
On those morning we had time to talk. Mum would tell stories about her childhood or about living in England during World War Two. We talked about ghosts and favourite pets and what we would do when we won the lottery. We’d make a second pot of tea and even a third until mum realised that it was eleven o’clock and she had to “get on”.
Sunday lunch was a special meal for us too as we’d always have roast lamb, baked potatoes and veg and Yorkshire pudding. As we played in the kitchen sometimes we were often around when mum was cooking but she didn’t insist that we help with the preparations. We rarely had guests, maybe a little friend of Naomi’s or one of our cousins who lived down the road. That was another meal when we talked a lot.
Later, when mum remarried we moved to another house where the kitchen was much smaller. Although it was a squeeze we often did still sit there to drink tea and talk after a meal.
Even today if I’m visiting Naomi at her house we sometimes sit in the kitchen over a second cup of tea talking after a meal although nowadays we both prefer to move to the living room which is warmer and has more comfortable chairs but the talking continues.
SAR 520 class “Sir Malcolm Barclay Harvey” at Adelaide Railway Station circa 1977
I found this post that I wrote a couple of years ago so I decided to rewrite it a bit and run it again for those who came in late as they say in the Phantom comics. Feel free to skip it if you have read it before.
Naomi and I went to the Hobart Model Railway Show. It is usually held at the Tasmanian Transport Museum in Glenorchy. It is always a busy day for them and they fired up their M class steam locomotive on the Sunday.
Seeing a live steam engine made us nostalgic. We spent a lot of our teenage years traveling on steam excursions around South Australia. Naomi said that she thought that those were probably the best times we had in our lives. I tend to agree. We were so lucky that we were in the right place at the right time to do that.
It all started when I was about thirteen. We were in Adelaide with mum one day when I saw a big sign advertising a school holiday trip on a steam train. I asked mum if she would take us as my birthday treat. She agreed and we had such a good time we wanted to go again. The next year mum let us go by ourselves and soon we were regularly doing trips on Saturday or Sunday afternoons around the suburbs.
I remember how in 1972 we got a brochure in the mail with the latest trips being run and one of them was a weekend trip to Victor Harbour, a seaside town about 50 miles away from Adelaide. I was fifteen and we didn’t really expect that we would be allowed to go away overnight without an adult but we asked anyway. Much to our surprise mum said we could go if we could get someone older to go with us. We produced a seventeen year old cousin and that was acceptable. We took sleeping bags and slept in the carriages in the station yard. Can you imagine the horror of parents today if three teenage girls did that? Naomi was only thirteen. Rail fans, then and now, were predominantly men a lot older than we were. However, in all the time we went on trips together we never felt unsafe or had any trouble with men. Most were just surprised that two girls would be interested in trains.
After that trip we went as often as we could afford. Once I turned sixteen we were allowed to go without a chaperone although our cousin sometimes came along too. At that time there were still many country towns that could be reached by rail and as we were too young to drive it was an ideal way to see the countryside in safety. We went to country shows and festivals like the Cornish Festival in the “copper triangle” of Moonta, Wallaroo and Kadina and the Orange Festival in the Riverland district visiting towns like Loxton and Berri. We went on evening trips where there were “listening stops” where everyone could get out of the train usually somewhere in the countryside. You stumbled into a dark paddock and waited while the train reversed back down the track a mile or so and then came forward working hard and whistling. Most people said that for recording the conditions were better at night. We enjoyed standing in the night air listening although we never became avid steam sound recorders. Sometimes we’d stay on the train and watch the people instead especially if it was raining.
Sometimes we went on dinner trips where we’d be served a meal in a 1920s Pullman dining car and other times it would be a run round less used suburban lines to factories or to the docks. When we were a little older we visited wineries although we were always more interested in the trains than the wine. We went on other weekend trips too and even joined the Australian Railway Historical Society. Naomi reminded me how at the meeting where we were accepted as members we got a round of applause when our names were read out. We are not sure if that was because we were girls or because we actually turned up at the meeting as most new members never seemed to be there when their names were called.
We enjoyed the meetings which were held once a month on a week night We’d catch a bus, train or tram down to Goodwood where the meetings used to be held in a hall there. There were a lot of reports read out but the one we always looked forward to was the Tour Manager’s Report. This was the one where you would find out what trips were being planned for the future. We always wanted to go on all of them of course. After the business part of the evening there would be an interval when we’d buy a drink and browse in the book sales area. We could buy books and videos or souvenirs like postards, teaspoons, badges and T-shirts. The sales were one way that the society raised money for their restoration projects. After the break we’d have entertainment, usually a slide show or films, sometimes professionally made but more often than not made by members. Many were excellent, occasionally they were terrible but everyone was polite and always applauded anyway. We still laugh over the memory of the awful slides a member brought of his trip to England. There were numerous slides of clouds taken from the plane and a lot of his railway photos were out of focus. We had a really hard time not laughing.
Traditionally the evening ended at the Pie Cart in front of the Adelaide Station where those of us catching public transport home usually ended up buying a hot drink or snack. Occasionally once we got to know people we’d be offered rides back to the city. I have one hazy memory of several of us squashed in to a Volkswagon Beetle with our bags, a picture someone had bought and Naomi somehow squashed onto someone’s knee in the back because she was the smallest.
SAR Pacific 621 at Adelaide station
I can still remember the sheer excitement I felt on the morning of a trip. We’d get to the city early and would run up to the end of the platform to watch the locomotive arriving. We were not the only ones, there was usually a crowd of other rail fans with cameras and families with children doing the same thing. “Look, there’s the smoke.” someone would say. “There’s the whistle, here she comes.” and soon we’d see the engine and tender reversing into the station and backing onto the train.
We’d stand on the end platforms of the old wooden carriages or stick our heads out of the windows risking getting soot in our eyes. Many rail fans wore goggles but we never did. Sometimes we took a packed lunch and a thermos of tea which we frequently seemed to break. Other times we bought box lunches usually consisting of a bit of chicken, a bit of ham, piece of cheese, bread roll and a pickle followed by a slab of fruit cake. We still call that particular light fruit cake “railway cake” when we see it. If we were still hungry we could buy sweets, potato chips and drinks from the baggage car later.
Those were such great days, we met lots of friendly people, saw places, laughed a lot and learned new things. You really could not ask for more than that.
M Class steam locomotive and train. Tasmanian Transport Museum.
David’s parents’ Kodak box camera and our mum’s Agfa.
I was stumped for a good picture today and decided to share this one of two of the cameras that David had in his collection. Both of these belonged to family members. The Kodak Brownie I believe belonged to David’s parents the battered Agfa on the right belonged to our mum. She used it to take photos of Naomi and I as small children. This was actually the first camera I ever used myself. Mum showed me how to hold it and take the pictures. She would change the film for me. I remember that it was 120 film and you would get about 8 photos to the roll. I was probably six or seven years old when I was first allowed to use this camera.
I could not possibly choose just one picture to represent 2017. I did take a lot that I liked even though I didn’t travel much this year. I’ve enjoyed taking pictures of flowers both in my garden and in parks. I have been trying to learn to take better pictures of birds and of course my pets are frequently photographed.
I’ve also documented the changes that have been happening in my house during the past year. I have had a lot of work done outside and a lot of painting and decorating inside.
I turned sixty this year and continued to enjoy my doll collecting hobby and my love of steam engines and railways. I was lucky enough to visit the Puffing Billy Railway near Melbourne in June. In the winter we had some snow in Geeveston and also a visit from the film crew of the ABC TV series “Rosehaven”.
Another thing I’ve greatly enjoyed is participating in Cee’s Photo Challenges, it has given me the chance to photograph things that I would not normally pay attention to and to have fun playing with editing software.
I think it is amazing the way these change colour as they bloom.
Yellow rose in bloom
Geraniums and Lobelia
Pigeon in Wellington Square Hobart
White-faced Heron
Waiting for me to throw it again.
Polly in one of her favourite spots .
A scaly visitor
2017
My “Mid-Century ” furniture. The buffet belonged to David’s parents. I bought the china cabinet to match it.
Glass given to me by my friends at the Op Shop for my birthday.
Two new celluloid dolls. John who is made in Japan and Princess Elizabeth by Palitoy UK. Both from the 1930s.
Climax Locomotive on Puffing Billy Railway
Tracks in the snow
Celia Pacquola between takes.
Imagine putting these on by hand!
Windmill
Art work at Drysdale Engineering, Geeveston
A pair of feet at the Salvation Army Op Shop.
Mona Roma ferry
House edited with Picasa’s focal B&W and HDR filters
