What were some of the games we used to play, growing up as a kid in the 50s, 60s, and 70s? Long before the ‘age of entitlement’, children had far less toys to play with, so we made do with what we had. Today it seems almost every kid is given more toys at Christmas […]
The telephone has come a very long way, just in our lifetime! In the 50s and 60s when very few residences had the phone connected, any necessary calls were made from a red public phone box, found dotted around the suburbs of Adelaide. Most had the phone book missing, had that faint smell of urine […]
The Hills Hoist is now an Aussie icon of course but had its humble beginnings right here in Adelaide in the mid-1940s. The legend goes that when Lance Hill returned home from war in 1945, his wife started nagging him about her clothesline. It was strung up between two posts and propped up in the […]
A distinct childhood memory of many trips to and from Adelaide was a cactus garden we would pass along Port Wakefield Road. It’s strange, the things that stick in your memory, but the sight of all the cacti on the side of the road, was an indication that we were near the end of a […]
Whenever the word ‘Amscol’ is mentioned to an Adelaide raised baby boomer, their eyes glaze over and they seem to drift off with sweet memories of hot summers and an ice cream cone at the beach, an Eskimo Pie at the pictures or the special ‘once-a-week’ luxury of a slice of Amscol ice cream from […]
Remember the incredible freedom we had as kids growing up in Adelaide in the 50s, 60s and even the 70s? Once school holidays arrived our parents would rarely see us as we took off for adventures, down the beach, dive bombing off the end of the jetty, swimming in a creek or river, sledding down […]
Do you remember the yo-yo craze that swept Adelaide (and indeed Australia) back in the 60s and 70s? There would be very few baby boomers who, as teenagers in those years, didn’t own at least one Coca Cola yo-yo. Not surprisingly, I’ve found that many have kept them as tokens and souvenirs of their childhood. […]
Remember when we all sat around the kitchen table each night to look at the wireless and listen to the radio serials? It’s almost impossible to imagine that scene now, a family sitting down together to watch the wireless, but most Baby Boomers will probably recall the scene from their own childhood, in the days before […]
When we were kids we built our own billycarts. There were no plans or instructions to be followed, just a set of four wheels, two per axle, an old apple crate, a wood paling from somebody’s fence, a bolt some nails and a bit of rope. The most important part was the four wheels. Back […]
Keith Manson posted a question recently on the ARW Facebook page regarding a well known old landmark of Adelaide; “This is about as vague as they come but, in the early ’80s, I can recall a statue of King Neptune (I think it was) somewhere on South Road, somewhere south of Clovelly Park. It wasn’t lifelike […]
