Ian Granland 

A STORY OF LIFE'S ADVENTURES

 THE EARLY YEARS

I agonised over whether to put pen to paper about my lifetime, and as I write this prologue, it is taking me all my will power to proceed.

I must say, that even at this very earliest part of my writings,  There are two Ian Granlands - or maybe more!!  I get on with them all pretty well, so no need to worry about any potential conflict.

Like most of us, I always have wanted to strive for something better.  I love change and new things, ideas and gadgets.  I would work hard for what I believed in.  I wasn’t naturally mechanically minded but would have a go at most things.  Given time I would work out a puzzle and could become quite proficient at things, although very quickly bored.

I suppose I do have some good traits but I often wonder how I managed to get so far in life (aged 48 now) with such little effort.

Another thing is Australian Football.  I worked hard at it and at one stage for a number of years, if you asked me what was my highest priority was in life, I would have no hesitation in saying Australian Football.  It became an obsession.  More about that later.

Nevertheless, I intend to document, without the benefit of any type of diary or notes, my life in the different parts stages that are in some way set out below:

                   1.       Childhood/family

                   2.       School

                   3.       Football

                   4.       Army

                   5.       Police

                   6.       Marriage, children and so on.

Childhood/Family

I was born at the now demolished Crown Street Womens’ Hospital in Surry Hills on 1 August 1948, a Sunday.

Many of my generation were brought into the world in this auspicious yellow brick building but obviously, I don’t remember any of it.

My earliest memories are in a cot besides my mother and father’s bed on the latter’s side at 40 Caley Street Matraville (now Chifley).  I can remember standing in the cot and reaching out and shaking it.  Not much else.

I was later fostered out into a bedroom with my  brother, Bob who was seven years older than me and particularly as a child, a person I always found hard to relate to and interact with. In fact it would be correct to say, I hardly knew him in those days.

To Bob I was just a little kid.  As a child he always had different interests to me.

I was the youngest son in a family of two girls and two boys.  My mother was 37 when she had me and it was no secret that I was a mistake.  Regardless of my distorted mind, that suggestion never really had any detrimental effect on me.

After moving from the high chair between my Mum & Dad I was placed on my Dad’s right hand side, he being at the head of what was quite a large table in the kitchen.  We had no dining room.

I was (forever) a cheeky kid and was always the subject of a “lift under the bloody ear” sitting where I was.

Everyone in the family were taught manners.  “Can you pass this please”.  “May I leave the table please?” etc.  That word was ALWAYS asked before any of us could leave the table after a meal.

We were also taught to eat what was placed in front of you.  Don’t leave any!  Even today, I feel guilty if I leave anything on my plate.

We’d all sit round the table with a loaf of bread and a bread knife on the bread board in centre and the normal condiments of the day.  Kids (I was the only one there) didn’t normally drink tea.  I’d have a glass of milk.

The coffee we had then was coffee essence.  A dark liquid in a bottle with a picture of an indian looking fellow wearing a turbin type on the cap on the label.  I didn’t know there was any other type of coffee until I was in my teens.

My family was not rich.  My father worked for ICI at the chlorine plant at Botany.  He and three other families had relocated from Yarrawonga, Victoria during the early stages of WW II.

He was a foreman and always came home smelling of chlorine (like swimming pools) and I accepted that as part of life.

She echoed that accent of people from the Western Districts of Victoria, like the elder marathon runner Cliffy Young and former AFL Coach John Northey.  I could tell the dialect maybe others couldn’t.

Although I didn’t appreciate it when I was young, I would say that my mother was the closest person to me in the world, ever.  But I never put my arms around her and said “I love you Mum”, I did though (love her)!  We were as a society then never encouraged to show emotion.  I missed her terribly when she died.  Isn’t it funny how you take your folks for granted?

She opened the door (without knocking - well, I was only a youngster), looked at me and said something like “You dirty thing”, turned and walked out of the room.  How embarrassing!  It was about then that the mother-child relationship was severed.  I wish it never was.

She should have said, “Oh you’ve got a hard-on [could have used a different expression here] Ian, I’ll come in again later when you’re finished”.  (But I wasn’t doing anything Mum).

I’m a terrible one for telling a story and getting off the track.  You’ll find that if you read all these tales.

Mum was one of 15 kids, two dying in infancy.  Her father was a shearer, whos name was Roland Fry.  He travelled in his job and rarely came home but when he did he made sure that he left grandma in the family way - to coin a phrase.  He was dead long before I came on the scene.

From what I can gather Mum was reasonably intelligent.  She often told me that she would have loved to “go on at school” but circumstances forced her into the work force at fourteen after completing elementary schooling at the Garibaldi State School which is near Bunningyong in Victoria.

Mum, or Win (short for Winifred) as I used to call her, got a job in Ballarat as a house maid working for a solicitor name of Nevitt.  Once the kids in her family left school, there was no room in the house for them.  It was out and get a job and if that job took you away from home, then go.  In those days, uneducated country girls had little options for work. She lived on the premises at Nevitts, a large and noble house, often pointed out to me in Ballarat when we visited and there in later years.  It was there she met up with a (female) crony who was the cook, not much older than her.

Her name was Essie and in 1959 Mum, Dad and I travelled by car together with Uncle Harry and Aunty Eva (one of Mum’s sisters whom we picked up at their country mud brick home at Corowra, west of Albury literally right across the road from the Murray River) to Adelaide to visit Essie and her husband for a holiday.  Essie had no children.

The three of us regularly use to go to Corowra for holidays. You know, that was the first place I heard magpies warble.  They used to wake me of a morning there and I remember asking my mother what that sound was. 

Aunty Eva used to go down the back to milk their cow and put some wood on the stove (obviously a fuel stove) ready for breakfast.  As I got older (13 and onwards), Aunty Eva and I used to talk footy.  They used to follow the Corowra Redbacks at the time in the O & M leauge, but that club has changed now.  I took my family to Corowra in 1993 and the whole of their land had been sub-divided with homes built on the blocks. As I write Aunty Eva is aged 101 and in a nursing home in Ballarat whilst Uncle Harry died around 1973 or so from Cancer.

Anyhow, back to the Adelaide trip.

As you can imagine, I was bored shitless; Me at eleven with a bunch of fifty year olds!  One thing I can remember was that (Aunty) Essie lived near a football ground in Adelaide and although I hadn’t then been bitten by the footy bug then, she took us along to a SANFL footy match to break the boredom.

Now back to Win.  She often told the story that the old solicitor who owned the house, Nevitt, used to chase Essie and her (he probably being half pissed) at times wearing only a night gown with the intention of sex.  She never got caught (I hope).

My father (I later called him by his gven name: Charlie) was what you would call “a bit of a lair” I feel.  Practical, but I wouldn’t say overly intelligent.  He was a footballer.  A big strong six footer, but footy didn’t seem to play a very big part in his life like it did in mine.  Although I did hear he wasn’t a bad captaining the Redan Under 18 and later playing with Ballarat.

He lived in Redan and was the youngest in a family of nine.  Eight boys and a girl.  His father was a miner and died in 1923 of consumption.  Most miners died of that then.  It is a disease of the lungs attributed to the dust inhaled whilst working in the gold mines of Ballarat.

He did a bit of boxing, trained by one of his brothers, Arthur (Sparrow) and at one stage became the heavy weight champion of the western districts of Victoria.  He often told me that.

Turns out that he won that title more by default than by talent and really through sheer aggression.

According to Uncle Tom, another of Dad’s brothers - a character if there ever was one, Charlie was boxing for the title and was suppose to take a fall, however the pea belted Dad a bit too hard which ignited the aggression gene in him and he knocked his opponent out.  I don’t think it was a popular win with the bookies.  Most of his brothers were pseudo shifties but basically nice people.

Well in about 1930, Mum & Dad met at a dance.  Charlie apparently took Mum out for a while and with work being scarce went to Newlands, a small country town north of Ballarat “digging spuds”.  (They worked hard for a quid in those days).

I think it was Aunty Eva who chased up Charlie to tell him that Win was in the family way and he’d better do something about.

They were subsequently married (on a date never disclosed to any of us) and next thing Patricia Catherine was added to the family.

When I was young my mother nearly always had some of her family coming to visit.  Mostly her sisters.  She was the hub of the family.  Always writing letters and encouraging her relatives to come and stay.

I can remember her mother, Jessie living with us for a while.  Unfortunately I used to stir that poor old bugger a bit.  Well it was a case of an 8 year old versus a 75 year old and those ages dont mix with some.

I can remember running over her toes on my tricycle with a blue/grey budgie on the handlebars and not thinking anything of it.  I would zoom up and down the drive getting closer and closer as I did.  The budgie eventually fell under the wheel and I ran over and killed it.

At other times I would knock on her bedroom door then run away when she answered.

She was pretty old and they shipped her off to one of her other daughters after about six months with us.  I have no doubt that I was part of the cause of her movement. 

I have recognized late in life that I suffer from ADDS and really had no real control over some of the things I did as much as I regretted doing those things.

Like everyone else, we had a clothes prop line.  The “wash house”, as it was called then was at the back of the fibro shed which was to later become the garage at the house in Matraville.

We had a copper tub in which Mum boiled all the clothes, normally once a week.  It was fuelled by wood.

We only had a bath in those days and it too was wood fuelled, called a chip heater with the whole family bathing each Sunday Night.  Otherwise it was just a scrub with the communal washer (flannel).  Because I was the youngest, I would be first in the bath (and probably wee in the water) then the water would be saved for the next person, and so on.

Mum or Dad would carry me to the loungeroom where I would be dried. In winter the coking coal filled Cosi brand heater would be lit from which warmth was heating the room.  The folks would just leave me to my own devices standing naked in front of it, and sometimes I would wee on it's outside just to watch the steam dissipate.  Boy, it used to stink.

When I was young I can remember frequently having horrendous nightmares whilst in bed and alone in my room of a night.  I often wonder what the catalyst was which caused these so vivid and realistic dreams.

At times I would be so scared I would be mute and motionless.  It really, really was frightening and I cannot emphasise that enough.

I had two good mates.  One particularly close friend, Malcolm Nayda who lived next door and the other, Alan McGregor who lived across the road.

I can’t remember much of my pre-school time, however I do remember travelling to Melbourne with Mum by air to her mother’s funeral.  I used to always get motion sickness and true to my name it happened in the plane god, how on earth did we afford to fly?

I remember it quite clearly.  I spewed into my mother's lap.  Thats what type of a kid I was.

We returned by boat along with one of my father's sister-in-laws, Aunty Doris.

Dad had a mate, Dick Knape with whom he worked and they became close friends.  The Knapes lived opposite ICI in Dennison Street and sometimes Mum and I would walk to their place and meet up with Dad after work or after he may be played bowls on the company rink.

In the early fifties I remember one time playing with some of Dick’s new brass screws, still in the paper bag.  I was out at the sewer overflow vent and just dropped them into drain, one by one, then professed to know nothing about the incident.  Brass screws were very hard to come buy then and were expensive.

Another time, when I was a bit older I was playing by myself down the backyard.  We had a huge back yard, the block was 212 feet by 60.  Dad had chooks and of course from chooks came chickens.

I used to play by myself a lot down the back yard.  It became my kingdom.  We normally had a dog and he would become part of my games.

The greater back yard was divided into segments.

An area, 60 x 40 feet was the “chooks yard” with moulberry, apricot, peach and nectarine trees.

It also contained chooks sheds.  We always had black chooks which laid lovely brown eggs.  We were never short of eggs but there was a down side.  I later ended up getting the job of feeding them of an afternoon and collect the eggs.  It turned out to be one of my regular daily chores right up until I went to work.

Woe be … if a fiesty rooster felt a bit cocky (get it) with me.  I would kick it fair in the guts if it got too cheeky.  They didn’t worry me but could be quite aggressive.

Believe it or not we had over 100 chooks at one stage.  Charlie looked after them.

I like to think Charlie had the premonition that chickens would come into their own as a food for the Australian masses (which they have) but he didn’t have the resources to maintain them.

I think the Council was motivated by the Local Government Act around the mid fifties which placed a limit on the number of fowls which could be kept domestically and he had to kill most of his prized lot.

I remember that day vividly.  There were heaps of people helping kill, hot water dunk, pluck, degut or to use the more convential term, “dress” the chooks.

I think Charlie gave each of those who helped dressed chickens as reward for their services.

Although we had chooks, we never often had chicken as a food.  He used them more for eggs.  He used to sell them.  He also had a small green hatchery in which he hatched young chickens from eggs.

I can remember one time when I was very young running up the back yard with an arm full of eggs I had collected to give to my mother and I dropped one on the back step.

The neighbours on either side also had chooks but not on the scale we had.

Anyhow, with the reduction of chickens meant empty chook pens.  These were big rooms with wire netting at the front.  Easily big enough to walk around in.

My friends and I used to play in one particular vacant pen and to us it became a ship.  I was the captain (because it was my place) and they were the crew.  If we played in their place, they would be the captain.  I even obtained some type of a wheel I would use as a ships steering wheel.

Sometimes one of Allen McGregor’s sisters used to come and play with us.  She was about 3 years older than me and used to connive the others to go against me.  If we were in someone elses yard, I would leave if she joined in the playing.

Religion never played a big part in my life.  My family weren’t religious.

Mum made me go to a Sunday School from about age 4 or 5 which was held weekly in a garage in nearby Mitchell Street.  We used to colour in pictures of God etc. but when it came time for Ian to make the decision as to whether he wanted to continue with religious study, he couldn’t get out quick enough.

All I can remember of those days was colouring in drawings of jesus and his friends.

Shopping was all different in those days.

We had a local shop about 120 metres away in Bourke Street, near the corner of Mitchell.  Later a butcher and green grocer were built adjacent to it.

The businesses are no longer there, the buildings are though and have been turned into accommodation.

The mixed business shop sold most things, from breakfast serial, cold meats to kerosene, there weren’t supermarkets then as we know them.  Mum would buy when things were needed, there was no weekly shopping as is the case now.

I nearly always had to walk or mostly ride on my fixed wheel bike up to the shop. 

About 3 people worked in this shop at one time.  The original owner was a man called Adams.  He sold out and purchased the Olympic motel at Port Macquarie.  The next guy was foreign, a greek I think and not a bad bloke and he had it for a fair time. 

I can always remember buying broken biscuits.

Biscuits came in big square Arnotts tins, about 300x200x200mm and shops would have them sitting up on a shelf behind the counter.  There were no packets as we have today.  Biscuits were purchased from the tin, transferred into a brown paper bag, weighed and then to the customer.

In the course of trade, biscuits would break and you could buy 1 penny (2 cents) or three pence worth of broken biscuits.  The storekeeper would use a metal scoop to put these into a bag for you.

I didn't receive much pocket money and thought it was Christmas if ever given the chance to by broken biscuits.

Sometimes on my travels to the shop talking to myself and chatting away I would be accosted by an old fellow in a run down house on the corner of our Street (Caley) and Bourke. 

He was a cripple and an alcoholic and could only get to his front door which was on the side of the house.  He would yell out to me as I walked past.  He got me a couple of times and I had to buy him a bottle of metholated spirits which he would obviously drink.

He would only do this when his family wasn’t home.  I informed my mother about this who told me not to go into his house and not to buy the metho for him.

From then on I would run past his house to save being given the job, whilst he was alive.

The butcher shop opened and most of the locals shopped there.  They were the days when butcher shops had to have saw dust on the floor, ostensibly to catch blood and other liquids I imagine.  This shop had a first floor flat, only one of such kind in the district.

The green grocer opened next door to him but virtually in the yard of the butcher shop.  First it was just a covered in leanto.  Later, this man built a shop and residence in Mitchell Street which is located right next to Chifley Public School.  I believe it still operates as a mixed business.  For a while after he closed his green grocer shop down he plied the streets selling fruit and vegies from his panel van.

We didn’t have a refrigerator.  We had an ice chest.  It looked like a refrigerator but instead of an electric motor, a big lump of ice (400x200x200mm) would be placed in the top portion of it which would provide a type of cooling for the food.  The ice usually lasted a couple of days.

This ice was delivered by a man we called naturally enough, the “iceman” who travelled the streets in a horse and cart to his regular customers.

There was an ice works at Matraville, near Dives Brick works on Bunnerong Road and I think thats where the ice came from.  I don’t know how much was paid for the lump but I'm guessing at two shillings (20 cents) each.

Bread was also delivered by a man in a horse and cart, this time with the rear of his cart built-in from which he could open and close the small door to access the bread.  This was prior to pre-packaged bread.  The first bakery I remember who supplied sliced and packaged loaves was Tip Top.  Othewise there were two big bakeries at Matraville and one at Maroubra.  The mass produced pre-packaged bread put these places out of business.

The last man I remember with a home delivery horse and cart was the milkman who delivered our milk early in the morning with Mum having to leave the money and empty bottles out on the front porch.

These horses would just walk to their next stop and wait until their master had delivered his goods.

Residents who had a garden would readily scrape up the horse shit if they were fortunate to have the horse relieve themselves on the outside road.

I think these businesses survived because most of the women of the house didn't work and were home when the supplier travelled past and because it was a fair way before

Dad built our house during and after the war.  Besides food, building materials were very scarce.  I still have food coupons which were allocated for me back in the late 1940s, thats how scarce food was after the war.  Most of it was being sent to war ravished England.

I can remember going with my father to where Mawson Parade, Chifley is now located.  There were no streets or houses there then instead some type of a old military dump and from there stole water pipe, tied it to his bicycle and pushed it home with me in toe.

He didn't have a car and either walked or travelled to most places by push bike.

I also remember going with him to Malabar tip (opposite Malabar Public School) and watched his scavenge bits and pieces from the refuge.

He would tied these lengths to the part of the bike which joins the handle bars to the seat and walk them home.  I can remember saying something detrimental to him about taking things from a tip and he gave me one hell of a tongue lashing to the effect that if he didn’t do this we wouldn’t have the electricity connected to this or the water couldn’t be connected to that. 

One thing my father was a great improviser.  He was a person with vision, who through necessity could see the value in a piece of equipment and putting it to another use.

On the south west corner of Caley and Bourke Streets, one house from our place and across Bourke Street, lived Stan McKeeton.

He was another alcoholic, or he appeared to be and a bricklayer.  My sisters used to tell me tales of him belting christ out of his two boys as they grew up.

There was always shouting and yelling coming from his brick house.  The boys got their revenge.  When they grew older one time, he picked on them in a drunken state but the boys had learned to be a bit streetwise and finished up belling shit out of their father.

Well, my father, who was not a builder and certainly not a bricklayer, began laying the bricks as the foundation to the house he eventually built.  It must have been in about 1944 or so.

Well, old McKeeton apparently had come home from work and walked over to see how 'Charlie' was progressing with his newly developed brick laying skills.

Seeing that they were improperly laid, he immediately kicked the wall of about 150 or so bricks over.  (This is the correct way of dismantling newly laid bricks).

Later, when my shift working father came home from work and not knowing the reason for his actions he immediately saw red and was about to knock McKeeton’s block off - he could have a wicked temper.

McKeeton quickly explained the situation and set about relaying the brick wall for him.

Much later a toilet was erected opposite the wall and I often mused at the thought of my father’s actions when, with the toilet door open, (it was a plastic concertina door - not worth closing) and sitting on the dunny you could notice the difference in the brickwork.

My two sisters and brother all went to Malabar Public School, which was probably the closest.

Mum took me there when I had turned five in 1953 to sign on but I was too young or they had too many kids or something and they wouldn’t accept me.

At the headmaster's suggestion, she then took me over to the Matraville Soldiers’ Settlement School where I stayed for the next 8 years or so.

The Soldiers’ Settlement School was built in 1926, particularly for children of the WWI returned soldiers who moved into the then new 50 odd houses which were constructed for them and their families.

From what I have read the building of this village was a community effort, a remarkable feat with much of the material brought to the site via the trams because of the poor roads of the time.

They were brick and strong looking houses, mostly containing older men and women when I started school.

The streets there were named after towns and places in France and Belgium where our soldiers had fought in battle.  There was Menin Road, Beauchamp Road and Poziers Avenue to name a few.

My sister, Beverley, used to be the Brownowl (leader) of the brownies group who met in the local church hall which was just across the way from the school.

Since all but one of the old houses have been demolished to build crappy looking townhouses.  I though that was desicration of icons of the past.

The school was a brick structure containing three or so classrooms catering for Kinder, Transition (a timber concertina door separated these two rooms which then doubled as a large assembly hall) first and second classes.

Kids two grades up from me had to go on to other schools when they grew older.

The classrooms had those old timber desks with wrought iron side supports and a shelf under the top for books.  These desks were bolted to the floor and all contained inkwells.

Initially I walked to and from school along dirt roads.  New houses were being built around the school so it gained more pupils.  Later I rode my bike.

Former NSW Premier, Bob Carr attended the school, although he was a year ahead of me.

As I moved up in grade the Department of Education each year built new classrooms and after a couple of years developed a site about 400 metres closer to my home where they established the primary school.  The first mentioned then became the infants school.

My friends who lived around me all went to Malabar school so I developed a new group of mates.

Most remained with me until high school when many of us went off in different directions.

I was an attentive kid.  Clever and keen to learn.  My favourite subjects were Social Studies (history) and English.

Weekends were my favourite time.  The three of us mates used to don hats, grab a stick and “go on an adventure”.

Before we left, one would say “Blaxland” the next, “Wentworth” and the slowest of us would become Lawson for our trip out and about.

If you recall, these were the names of the three explorers who crossed the Great Dividing Range in 1813 and if we were going off onto our expeditions, then we had to have one of the famous explorers names.

We’d be away for hours.  No money and no food but having fun checking out places where we’d never been before or revisiting our favourite haunts.  I'd always get into strife for being home late.  I was such an inquisitive kid.  Keen to learn.

Some of the haunts I mentioned included the tunnels on the coastal point between Malabar and Maroubra Beaches. 

There were gun emplacements there during the war (the guns had long since gone), a two storey lookout and underground accommodation for soldiers and ammunition.

It was scarey, dark and damp.  Bats lived in the tunnels and so did some old tramps in the early days.  Everything is still there, you can still see the two storey building from Malabar Beach.

There was a concrete water reservoir in the grounds of Bunnerong Power Station.  Someone had wrenched the lock off the metal door and we used to climb the inside ladder up to the water and go for a swim.

We also used to go swimming at the runout from the power station.  We’d slide down the concrete canal into Botany Bay.

We often went to La Perouse, and to Bare Island which was built as a fort but then was a home for old men.

We’d watch George Cann with all his snakes in the snake ring of a Sunday at La Perouse and then slip down to the pier and kiosk and watch the black kids diving into the water to retrieve money which visitors would throw.

These were later destroyed in a bad storm in 1974 when the waves wiped the place out.  I went out there and saw it.

We often went swimming at the rock pool at Malabar and was it obnoxious.

You didn’t care then but after diving in you’d surface into a pool of turds, condoms and congealed fat.

Sometimes we’d go to the then new Randwick golf course at Malabar looking for balls.  We’d often knock balls off when the golfers couldn’t see or catch us.

When I was really young I used to go rabbiting with my brother over the back of the our house near Forest Street Chifley.  We sometimes caught some rabbits.  I loved rabbit stew then.

Matraville High School was being built when I was young and we used to play in the sand hills on which the high school playing fields now stands.

I remember we were hiding under a wattle bush there (and smoking) from a boy who was looking for us and our smoke gave the position away. 

I was astonished to feel water falling over me when it didn’t even look like rain only to find that the kid outside had found us and was proceeding to piss on our cover.

My sisters were a good deal older than myself and although Beverley was said to have looked after me a lot when I was a nipper, I cannot remember it.

Both girls used to get up early for work, one Pat worked at Rosebery whilst Bev worked at Alexandria, both in clerical positions.

After breakfast they would walk (mostly run because they were late) to Matraville and following that, catch a tram to their destination.

When the buses took over from trams, they would walk down Burke Street, towards the power station and to the Matraville bus terminus next to Toms’ Bakery.  Truth be known, it was probably the same distance down Franklin Street.

Bev used to work Saturday Mornings and would always buy me a 2/6 Golden Story Book each week.

She stopped that when I did something naughty, which was pretty much the norm for me.

They were both married in 1956 when I was only eight, so you can see why I had little memory of them.  Really, as I got older I was almost an only child.

I can remember the girl's 21^st birthdays.  They were big affairs by today’s standards.

Pat had a lavish do at the Kensington Masonic Hall with well over 100 invited.  That was in 1954.  Charlie put on a keg and her future husband, Roy nearly came to blows when he told Uncle Harry (Corowra, remember?) & Co. who were standing around the keg to shut up whilst the speeches were taking place.

Bev had a surpise party at home, four months before her wedding.  Considering the cost, you can see why hers was held at Caley Street.  Pat was married later in the same year.

We didn't have television when I was young.  TV came to Australia in 1956  when I was 8 but we didn't get our first television, a HMV Brand until 1958 after my parents together with my brother had won the twelve thousand pound lottery.

Televisions were inordinately expensive then.  When they first came on the market they cost in excess of one hundred and fifty pounds which was around 8 times the average weekly wage.

So before we had a television we would eat tea around 5.30pm or so then I would make a bee-line into the lounge room to listen on the Gramaphone to Tarzan at 6:00pm, The Sea Hound at 6:15pm and Hop Harrigan at 6:30pm on 2GB or Biggles at the same time on 2CH.  Smoky Dawson was another on 2UE at 6:30pm before the news.

I used to always have fights with my brother as to what we would listen to and often feign a few "ahhhh" or "stop in Bobby" screams to attract the attention of my parents in the kitchen who would immeidately blame him for attacking me.

Mum would always want to listen to When a girl Marries at 7:15pm on 2UE and if I was allowed to stay up later on Wednesday, I would always try to the Bonnington's Bunkhouse Show back on 2GB at 7:30pm.

The parents of my friend, Allan McGregor who lived across the road had a television and I was one of the young locals who used cadge an opportunity to sit and watch it, as did many others in the street until they would subtly suggest I go home or my mother would be looking for me.

Television was such a novelty when it was first introduced that people used to crowd outside suburban electrical stores of a night just to watch it.  These were only ordinary shops which sold refrigerators, washing machines and tvs.  No Harvey Normal type stores then.  Universally the proprietor would place the black and white television set in the front window of the shop with a speaker directed out onto the footpath.  It would attract scores of people to watch, many standing there in their coats and ties with women very well dressed.  There was one such shop in Perry Street Matraville where it intersects with Bunnerong Road and at least one other, Mountfords in Maroubra Road, Maroubra.

I can remember when we got our first television.  I conned mum so I could stay home from school just to watch the black and white mode of television of those days.  I even sat through all the midday womens shows, the ads and the test pattern.  It was just like Christmas for me and this was two years after tv had been introduced into Australia.

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