Whenever the discussion turns to beautiful old buildings that have been lost to our city over the years, the first one that comes to my mind is the South Australian Hotel which stood proudly on North Terrace for almost 100 years. The ‘South’ opened in 1879 and represented the finer things in life. In 1964 […]
When fences were lower, fruit and veg was currency and kids just roamed free How different to today was your neighbourhood and the neighbours as you were growing up? I was a child in the 50s and neighbourhoods were mainly made up of working class families. Some fathers worked in offices or ran a small […]
“I used to love going here as a kid, so sad my daughter will never know how good it WAS!!!” The ‘Adventure Park Playground” at Monash brings back a lot of happy memories for many Adelaide and country families. It was started in the late 60’s by engineer, Grant Telfer and was developed over a […]
Vinyl records, radiograms, transistors and cassette recorders … what fun we had before computers! Vinyl record sales in Australia have increased by almost 100 per cent this year. It seems a younger generation has rediscovered the world of “fantastic black plastic” in the digital age. I asked one of my (much) younger colleagues why he […]
Do you recall the huge two-storey indoor amusement park that occupied the top levels of the REMM Myer Centre in Rundle Mall? Dazzleland was a theme park, developed as part of the original centre itself, built between 1988 and 1991 at a cost of $1 billion. It was sold some years later for just $140 […]
I must confess to some fascination about Adelaide’s ‘other car’ the Lightburn Zeta. As a city we have a proud reputation in automotive production with Holden and Chrysler cars but back in the 60s, there was also a third car, Australia’s ‘micro car’, manufactured by Lightburn industries which had, until 1963, manufactured tools, cement mixers, […]
Remember when we referred to George as a gorilla? George was an orang-utan and was always one of the most popular animals at the zoo, but growing up as kids, we always talked about him as a gorilla. He was a real character whose favourite possessions were his old hessian bag and an Australian Rules […]
Back in 1979, Brian Doddridge was just 14 years old and thought that pigs might fly. Well, at least his pig. Brian had entered the Channel 10 annual Adelaide Birdman Rally and, with the help of some friends and family, had created what he planned to be a giant pig that would fly. The rally […]
Following my column in the Advertiser ‘Boomer’ magazine recently on Rowley Park Speedway, Advertiser photographer Barry O’Brien wrote in to the paper with his own memories of “those adrenalin-pumping nights at the dirt track”. Barry started photographing Rowley Park, also known as “the pughole”, for the newspaper in 1958 and attended the track on regular […]
Did you grow up in an Adelaide suburb that no longer exists? It might have been Finchley Park or Washington Gardens or perhaps Little Chicago or Sassafras. Adelaide has lost many suburbs over the years when the name is changed, for one reason or other, or the suburb is swallowed up by a larger suburb. […]
