Transcription
1 Millers Point Oral History Project Summary Report
2 Contents Written by Frank Heimans for Housing NSW 223-239 Liverpool Road ASHFIELD, NSW 2131 Locked Bag 4001, ASHFIELD BC 1800 General Enquiries: 1800 629 212 www.housing.nsw.gov.au The Millers Point Oral History Project 4 History and People 6 Ethnicity 8 The Plague 8 Reputation 10 The Great Depression 10 Second World War 11 Community Spirit 11 Shops and Commerce 13 Observatory Hill 15 Housing and Amenities 15 Children s Lives 16 Education and Job Expectations 18 The Waterfront 20 The Pubs 24 The Residentials 27 The Maritime Services Board 28 Housing NSW 29 Community Activism 32 Battle of the Landladies 33 Youth and the Mentoring Scheme 34 Darling House 36 Death at Millers Point 36 Changing Demographics 37 Heritage 38 East Darling Harbour 39 Physical Changes to the Precinct 40 Conclusions and Future Prospects 41 Appendix A: Millers Point Chronology 44 Index to Recordings 49 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project
3 The Millers Point Oral History Project In February 2005, Housing NSW through the NSW Department of Commerce commissioned an oral history project to add to the understanding of the history of Millers Point and its community to assist in the formulation of management and interpretation strategies for the area by the various stakeholders. The project was commissioned in response to recommendations in the document Conservation Management Guidelines for Department of Housing Properties at Millers Point, prepared by Heritage Design Services for the Government Architect s Office, NSW Department of Commerce, for Housing NSW. The Project Manager for the Department of Commerce was Verena Ong while Michael Modder represented Housing NSW during the course of the project. The project brief to tenderers stated that the long-term residents of Millers Point provide a rich resource of oral information contributing to an understanding of the history of the area and the community. It also recognised that it is important for Housing NSW to assist its understanding of residents needs, expectations and the community s attachment to the place and thus in the formulation of strategies, such as social housing, local area plan, community options and others. The oral history consultants were expected to explore what it was that made this part of the city a community and investigate their aspirations for the future and how they saw themselves as a part of Sydney. In March 2005 Cinetel Productions Pty Ltd was selected as the preferred tenderer and Frank Heimans and Siobhán McHugh were nominated as the professional interviewers, while four local volunteer community interviewers, Margaret Anderson, Fiona Campbell, Brian Harrison and Beverley Sutton Cross were trained and also carried out interviews with residents. A Steering Committee, made up of representatives of the Department of Commerce, Housing NSW, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, Council of the City of Sydney, The National Trust, Millers Point Estate Advisory Board and an independent heritage consultant oversaw the project. The project called for the recording of 50 individual interviews with residents. Some of those interviews were joint interviews with another family member. At the end of March 2005 the community was alerted to the commencement of the project by a letter box leaflet drop to all 600 houses in Millers Point, asking for people who wanted to have their stories recorded to come forward. This resulted in about 12 positive replies and the rest of the interviewees were selected by the consultants. The consultants also researched several previous oral histories recorded in Millers Point by Paul Ashton and Kate Blackmore in 1985, by Richard Raxworthy in 1990 and by Nadia Iacono in 1992. These were documented but do not form part of this project. The first of 50 interviews was recorded on 23 June 2005 with Harry Lapham, born in 1911, a resident of Darling House who died in 2007. Over the next seven months the remaining interviews were recorded by the professional historians and the four community volunteer interviewers. Most interviews were logged and key interviews were transcribed in full. Interviewees each received an audio cassette of their interview and a letter of thanks. Photographs of each interviewee were also taken at the time of recording. The Summary Report was written, the project was completed in February 2006 and materials were delivered to the Department of Commerce early in March 2006. Altogether the project consists of 79 digital audio tapes, representing approximately 60 hours of recording with 55 participants. The Millers Point community was generous in their assistance and told their stories with great passion and conviction. A real picture of a living precinct emerged during the interview process. Many expressed their sense of place, of belonging to Millers Point but also expressed their anxieties in what was to become of the suburb and their future in it. The collection of oral history interviews, when released by Housing NSW will be deposited in the State Library of NSW Oral History Collection. Copies of tapes and transcripts will also be deposited in the Library of the City of Sydney and the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority where it will add to existing knowledge about Millers Point. The oral history consultants would like to express their thanks to Housing NSW who made this project possible and who have supported it from its inception. The oral history consultants would also like to following people who guided the project to successful completion: Verena Ong, Siobhán McHugh, Rosie Block, Joan Domicelj, Michael Modder, Lynda Kelly, Margaret Penson, Mara Barnes, Shirley Fitzgerald, Beverley Sutton Cross, Bruce Pettman, Fiona Campbell, Margaret Anderson, Brian Harrison, the 55 interviewees who so generous made themselves available and the Millers Point community as a whole. Frank Heimans Oral History Producer April 2007 4 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 5
4 History and People Millers Point is associated with the earliest Sydney settlement, named after John Leighton, known as Jack the Miller who in 1826 fell to his death from a ladder when drunk. It s an historic heritage precinct with a distinctive village within a big city feel, a selfcontained neighbourhood close to the CBD, but never part of it. It has a very integrated community who love living there and have a sense of belonging and allegiance to the place. Many of our interviewees could not imagine living anywhere else. The residents have a rich reservoir of memories of living at the Point, going, in some cases, as far back as six generations. They were born, worked, lived and died in the houses at Millers Point. They also have a strong sense of history and heritage. It s a community within a community where everyone knew each other through work and place of living. Some interviewees describe it as a company town (virtually everyone worked for Maritime Services Board or was connected with it or the waterfront in some way). Most of the people of Millers Point are connected through marriage a boy would normally marry a local girl, or vice versa. Marie Shehady married a Millers Point man in the early 1960s: I remember when we first came here I met one of the mothers at the school and she said to me, Marie, you are new in the area don t say a word about anybody to anybody else because nearly everybody here is related. (Marie Shehady, Tape MP-BSC3, Side A, 04:59) The two main religious sects generally got on well together but lived in specific streets of Millers Point, as Beverley Sutton recalls: When I was allocated the house in Merriman Street my father was absolutely horrified and he said to me, Well I don t want you going around to that street I don t like that street. I hope I am not doing him a disservice here, but I think the inference was, Well, they are mostly Catholics around there, that s not a Protestant street. The Protestants seemed to live in Lower Fort Street, Windmill Street there was some sort of demarcation. (Beverley Sutton, Tape MP-15 Side A, 11:19) Bill Ford Ford s mother knew the religious preferences of every employer at Millers Point - which companies would hire Catholics and those who wouldn t. Marie Shehady Pointers as they called themselves strongly identified with the area and even groups of streets within the area: You had this clear relationship with wherever you lived, whether you were a High Street boy, or a Windmill Street boy or a Lower Fort Street boy or a Trinity Avenue boy that was important. (Russell Taylor, Tape MP-FH13, Side A, 17:01) Beverley Sutton Bill Ford s mother was a Protestant but his father was Catholic: There was an attempt by the churches to keep people within the faith. I remember very vividly once one of the Catholic priests coming to our house at No. 23A (Dalgety Terrace) you had to walk up the stairs he came to tell my father he was living in sin and he should stop it. I remember my mother coming to the door and sort of sending him scuffling down the stairs. I am not sure what happened to the priest but he never came back again. (Bill Ford, Tape MP-SM16A, Side A, 09:41) Caporn s Map of Sydney, 1836 Russell Taylor 6 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 7
5 Ethnicity The Plague The origin of the population is mostly Anglo- Celtic. In the 1950s there were a few Chinese families, some Maltese, two Aboriginal families and a smattering of Italians, Lebanese and Greeks: I can remember at the local shop, milk bar it was on the corner of Kent Street I can remember my father saying go up to the Dagos and get whatever, and I thought their name was Dago when I was little. It wasn t until years later that I realised that they were Greek. (Marie Pearson, Tape MP-MA1, Side B, 42:05) Millers Point has always been connected with maritime activity. Whaling ships came from the 1830s, then the wool clippers and later other cargo ships called. It was the place where the bubonic plague of 1900 was first recorded and the people of Millers Point were accused by the press of the time that their precinct had been the cause of the plague: In fact as many people were affected by the plague in places like Redfern as they were at Millers Point and that was because some of those places actually had wool stores too, and so the wool that was being unloaded at Millers Point and transported to somewhere else. As they transport it they are also transporting the rat, with the flea, with the plague. (Shirley Fitzgerald, Tape MP-FH23, Side B, 34:40) that meant efficient use of the wharves. In terms of Millers Point it meant getting hold of that private wharfage so that it could be redeveloped as more efficient work space. The plague I guess was a godsend because it did give them the excuse to resume, and they resumed the wharves and they resumed a certain amount of housing as well. (Shirley Fitzgerald, Tape MP-FH23, Side B, 33:10) Although large parts of Millers Point were resumed in 1900 by the newly set up Sydney Harbour Trust, fine housing for sea captains and store owners had already been constructed, particularly in Kent and Lower Fort Street and these remained intact. After the First World War, the Sydney Harbour Trust completely rebuilt Pottinger Street and Hickson Road, causing further loss of heritage housing. In the 1920s the demolition of Princes Street, Harp Street and other now vanished streets occurred to make way for the Bradfield Highway and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, as some of the older interviewees recall: I remember what the place looked like before, Princes Street and that. We used to go up to St Patrick s over the hill and there was a square there called Grosvenor Square and there was this big Grosvenor Hotel, much like Petty s, it s one that all the country people stayed at. Buchanan s whisky place was next to it. When the Bridge was built I can remember it starting and all these places being pulled down. They pulled some nice houses down in Princes Street and it altered the whole place really. (Alice Brown, Tape MP-FH43 Side B, 42:17) Alice Brown Marie Pearson Shirley Fitzgerald The plague gave the government of the day the reason to demolish large parts of what they deemed to be sub-standard housing but they also seemed to have had an ulterior motive: I do think there s a lot of evidence to indicate that (the plague) really was the excuse the government was looking for. They had a genuine concern about the state of the wharves, that a lot of the wharves were fairly unsanitary, and more importantly, inefficient. The colony, the nation we d just become a nation had just gone through a major depression and a major collapse in trade and so on, and there was a very strong need on the part of the government to involve itself in efficient trading practices and part of Remodelling the Rocks, 1902 8 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 9
6 Reputation The Great Depression Second World War Community Spirit For most of its existence, Millers Point did not enjoy a savoury reputation. In the 1950s, everyone (except the Millers Point population) considered it as a slum. Sydneysiders in other suburbs assumed that Millers Point people were uneducated blue-collar workers and would not want to live there if they didn t have to. When Janet Farley first came to live in Millers Point people told her: Why would you want to live there, it s nothing but a dump. Now people are paying millions and millions to move into the dump. (Janet Farley, Tape MP-SM11 Side A, 22:15) Some of our interviewees lived through the Great Depression and recall the hardships suffered by their parents and the strikes on the waterfront while they went barefoot to school. Agnes Phillips recounts that three families shared her house. Unemployed men set up tents and tried to survive at the park at the end of Merriman Street where the Eye Hospital, the Eye Ozzie, had once been. Phyllis Flynn lived through those times: There was a lot of people when the Depression hit who couldn t pay their rents. They had to move so a lot of them went out to what they called Happy Valley, out at La Perouse. That is when they built their own little humpies out of tin and all that, I suppose, and that s where they lived. (Phyllis Flynn, Tape MP-FH33 Side B, 47:56) Pointers recall the declaration of war and watched their lovers and husbands leaving on the troop ships, going to war, as they sang The Maori s Farewell. They practised drills in the air raid shelter under the Bridge, boarded up their windows and lived on ration coupons. They also remember the attacks in Sydney Harbour when the HMAS Kuttabul was torpedoed by Japanese submarines with the loss of 19 lives in 1942: The night the submarines came in the harbour I d come up from Manly, could have been there when they were in the harbour, I don t know, but I m not very long home when the sirens went off. My grandmother wouldn t get off the lounge and you had to open your windows a bit and then I got under the table and there we had to sit until the siren went off. (Alice Brown, Tape MP-FH43 Side B, 57:19) At the end of the war Pointers saw their loved ones return home: I can remember the end of the war in Lower Fort Street and they were all dancing they sent us home from school. I remember the American planes after the war did a fly-by and a couple of Spitfires went under the Harbour Bridge. (John Ross, Tape MP-FH16 Side B, 46:52) Despite its poverty, Millers Point s great attribute is its extraordinary community spirit. Newcomers to the area still discover a strong sense of cohesion, belonging and loyalty: I felt very rooted to the spot because my family were here so long, we have roots in the area from my grandparents being here, from this area and that connects me in a way to my grandparents and my mother, the three most important people in my life and they were all here. They ve all passed now, those three people and being in the area gives me a sense of connectedness to their memories. (Teri Carter, Tape MP-SM6 Side A, 21:25) Janet Farley Phyllis Flynn, 1940s The one thing residents of Millers Point had in common was poverty. Families were generally large and Bill Ford s family of ten all lived in one small house at 23A Dalgety Terrace. But people did not complain: We were all just struggling together. Most people didn t have much but the interesting thing about not having much, of course, just in retrospect was that we didn t know we didn t have much we were happy with what we had. (Marie Pearson, Tape MP-MA2, Side A, 20:49) John Ross, 1950 Teri Carter This community spirit manifested itself in the way that people would address each other as aunty or uncle even though they might not be related, in the way they would drop into each other s houses for a chat and a cup of tea, shared or bartered food, washed and swept their neighbour s stairs, looked after sick families and fished together: In the summer season, down at Dalgety Wharf there d be easily 60 or 70 people there at dusk each night throwing a line into the water. (Frank Hyde, Tape MP-SM3 Side B, 40:44) Frank Hyde 10 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 11
7 Shops and Commerce (My father) was a good fisherman. Central Steps, which we called the Metal Wharf - he fished off that wharf for many years. I d come home from school and go down and catch small yellowtail and then when he knocked off work he d come down and get the yellowtail and he d fish for the big ones. He d bring home jewfish as tall as him, he was five foot three and that is how big these fish were. (Des Gray, Tape MP-FH28 Side A, 13:57) We used to have the Village Green with a fence all around it and I always wondered, and people told me about the Tree of Knowledge and I finally found out where it was from a photograph. It s on the far end of the Village Green up near the Lord Nelson there s a tree there and people, mainly men would come out of their houses and they would stand around the Tree of Knowledge and talk about the day s affairs. (Brian Harrison, Tape MP-FH3 Side B, 50:02) The Millers Point mob are we, the Millers Point mob are we. We re always up to mischief, wherever we might be. One day in the courtyard a copper said to me, If you belong to the Millers Point mob, well come along with me. He grabbed me by the collar and tried to run me in, I lifted up my hairy fist and hit him in the chin. How many eggs for breakfast, how many eggs for tea? A loaf of bread as big as your head and a lousy cup of tea. The kids sang that all the way through the city. (Judy Taylor, Tape MP-FH45 Side B, 28:59) Some of our interviewees have extraordinarily vivid memories of neighbours, shops and places of commerce at the Point. They recall enterprises long gone, such as the blacksmith s shop, the cooperage in Kent Street, Playfair s meat factory and the wool and bond stores. There were little shops where they would buy their groceries, the butcher, chemist, fish shop and shoemaker. Harry Lapham remembers Asher, the pawnbroker, the Ham and Beef shop and John Holly s milk bar whose foundations sank 18 inches and had to be condemned. There was Rube Lewis, a particularly interesting local character who sold comics and cigarettes to underage kids, kept a gun in his shop and was reputed to be a baccarat dealer in his spare time: Reuben Lewis had the barber shop which was infamous because he sold condoms on display in the front window during the war. Apparently he made an absolute killing from the armed services. Rube used to know how to cut hair one style: it was called a Basin Cut. He put his hand on the top of your head and he had the hand clippers and a pair of scissors and the clippers were never-ever sharp, they pulled the hair on the back of your neck but he basically trimmed to the top of your ears in a circle. You looked like you d come out of a Franciscan order or something, it was a cruel haircut. There was another barber just up the road but he was twice as expensive, so if your mum gave you a shilling to buy a haircut and you went to Rube Lewis you had sixpence to spend over, but when you went home your mother knew where you got your haircut, you never went to the good barber, you know. (Russell Fitchett, Tape MP-FH42 Side A, 22:24) Des Gray On summer evenings the community would get together: The steps up in Munn Street - I can remember there were eighteen stairs and in summertime you d see the neighbours, they d all come along and we d sit on those steps at the bottom, the mothers and the parents on the steps, and it was nice. Everybody would talk and pass the time until about nine o clock at night. (Betty Borg, Tape MP-FH20, Side A, 23:19) Betty Borg Brian Harrison At Christmas, Aunt Biddy, a local lady, would do her good deed: Christmas time when Martin Place would have the Christmas tree up Biddy would come and collect all the kids of Millers Point and they d start at the Village Green, which was in the Argyle Cut, and they d walk down the Argyle Cut, up George Street to Martin Place, do the circle of the city and then come back up Kent Street. Then she d deliver them back to all their respective homes. The kids had their Millers Point song and they used to sing The Millers Point Mob as they walked through the city: Judy Taylor Pointers would close off the street if they had something to celebrate. On Boxing Day Kent Street was blocked off and people put out tables of food and beer. On New Year s Eve the Bischell family would carry their piano out onto the street to entertain the neighbourhood. A huge bonfire would be lit on Dalgety Hill, a local boy would dress up as Father Time and everyone came out in the street to wish each other a happy New Year. During the year there were the Wharfies, Painters & Dockers and Maritime Services Board picnics to keep the people socially connected. Mothers got together to help the nuns at St Brigid s and cleaned St Patrick s, the local church. On Sundays, whole families went on the tram to picnics at Nielsen Park or Clifton Gardens. 12 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 13
8 Observatory Hill Housing and Amenities Russell Fitchett Shopkeepers offered credit to the people by ticking it up entering the debt in a book which the family would pay off in weekly instalments. Often the shops threw in an extra item or two, such as a dozen eggs or an extra loaf of bread if the family was needy. In addition to the shops there were a variety of colourful hawkers who called and sold milk, bread and other necessities from their carts. The coal man sold coal in winter and ice blocks in summer. The rabbitoh could skin a rabbit in ten seconds. Rabbit fur was an extra penny. The rabbit man was also the fish man on Fridays. Frank Hyde was the local milkman until he forged a career for himself in football and broadcasting. Jacko was the fruit and vegetable man. There was a knives-and-scissors sharpening man and a clothesline prop man who sold Y-shaped tree forks to hold up the washing: Charlie Wong was a door-to-door salesman and all his wares he carried in like a suitcase, and it would have been about 24 inches long, 18 inches high, and he d have in that a pair of slacks, a jumper, a nightgown, maybe a pair of towels, something feminine, like a petticoat, or whatever. He would knock on your door and he would show you his wares and if you liked anything I bought a couple of jumpers from him you would tell him what size and the next week he d come back with it wrapped in a brown paper parcel under his arm. You had credit, you would pay it off, you would give him five shillings here and 10 shillings there. That was his little business and when you gave him some paper money, like 10 shillings, he would take out of his pocket a wad of notes, like the size of a mandarin and roll it around and stick it back in his pocket. (Marie Shehadie, Tape MP-BSC3, Side A, 24:24) The highest part of Millers Point, Observatory Hill is a place of special significance to Sydneysiders. Observatory Hill slopes down to the harbour. The Observatory used to fire a one o clock gun so that ships could set their clocks when that proved to be too dangerous the cannon was replaced by a valve that opened and released a falling ball on top of the Observatory, a visual clue to shipping. As a child, Russell Fitchett lived in No.2 Cottage on Observatory Hill: No.2 Cottage was originally called the Messenger s Cottage. There was a set of flagstaffs up on Observatory Hill which was semaphores for shipping, because you could look down directly to the harbour, to the Heads and the messenger had a bike and what happened in the house next door they had photos and paintings of ships for identification purposes and they d identify the ship coming in to the harbour, which were usually sailing ships. I had seen a lot of the old photos and paintings when I was a kid. They d send the messenger and the messenger would go to the shipping company, usually in Hunter Street or down that area they d find out what wharf the ship had to go to, the messenger would then ride back up the hill and tell the Semaphore Station, who d semaphore the ship, or the tug that used to tow them around, and so the ship would know what berth to go to. When we were up there it was called the Messenger s Cottage but because of the tenancy that my family had there it s now listed in books as Fitchett s Cottage. It directly adjoins the Observatory. There was only the three buildings there and there was another cottage, the Weather Bureau Cottage at the back of Observatory Hill. (Fitchett, Tape MP- FH41 Side A, 18:50) Fitchett recalls seeing the disused cannonballs that were still stored on racks in the Observatory. He also informs that there used to be a bowling green at the Observatory which was removed when they constructed a new building to house the telescope. Housing stock at Millers Point dates back to about the 1850s. Betty Borg s house at 20A Munn Street was typical of the style of architecture in the street: Well the stairway you go up 18 stairs I remember you went up and it branched a doorway to the right and to the left. My grandparents lived in the left, in 18A, and there was a wall jutted out, a sort of a dividing wall, and my mother s place was 20A. As you looked down the stairs on the front veranda went right along over the stairway and it had like a wire mesh on top of a wooden railing that you could see into the stairway, you know if somebody was there. Then when you went in the front door there was one bedroom to the right, a small one, which ended up being mine. The kitchen was to the left of that hallway and up in the corner was the bathroom, it was an inside bathroom that was very good, but you had to carry the hot water in from outside into the bathroom because there was no water running through there. Then you turned right up to another hallway and on the left was another room, which was on its own, sort of. You went past that and you faced the veranda door and that led out onto the veranda. Then you turned left up there, at that veranda door without going out, staying in the hallway, and you went into the big bedroom. The wall of that bedroom and the wall of the room that was on its own, just after the bathroom belonged to the hotel. (Betty Borg, Tape MP-FH20, Side A, 21:05) Living conditions were hard Warren Cox s sister slept in a cupboard under the staircase and Eileen Pearson s children slept in the attic. Ron Joseph s gaslight was replaced by electric light only in 1940 and washing day could take all day everything was boiled, blued and starched. 14 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 15
9 Children s Lives I can remember when I used to do all the sheets they were washed by copper, you d light up the old fire and you would throw the sheets in and you would boil the heck out of them. Then you had to be nearly a bodybuilder to lift them out and into the tub and rinse them in cold water. I had a wringer, one of these things that you sit on the side of the tub and you turned the handle around. (Marie Shehady, Tape MP-BSC3, Side B,36:30) Fuel stoves were fed on coal and wood and when in the late 1950s Sydney removed its tram tracks, thousands of blue gum woodblocks were dug up, sold and burnt for fuel. Bathing facilities were primitive: The bathroom was down the back a tin bath, and if you wanted to have a bath, you used to light the copper up and had to carry buckets of water down the stairs, so you didn t do that every day and my brother, being the last one, he used to sit in the copper. He was only tiny and that was still warm from the fire underneath. (Flo Seckold, Tape MP-FH10 Side A, 03:25) Flo Seckold Children enjoyed a way of life that can only be envied today. They played at the King George V playground, practised football in the park, played basketball, netball, racquet-ball, paddle tennis, vigoro, fished at the Met or swam at the Chains. Des Gray raced billycarts: We used to race from the top of High Street, there was a street called Munn Street - it used to go all the way down into Dalgety s Wharf which had a very sharp bend on it and went round into Sussex Street, the Hungry Mile. We used to race down there. There was one day we built a billycart, and about half the size of this room the box would have been, we got it from some store down in Erskine Street, carted it all back home, put axles on it, wheels, and about 15 of us got in it and down the hill we went. Well, we didn t turn the corner because it just wouldn t turn, so we went straight through the gates of Dalgety s Wharf, big steel gates. There was quite a lot of people got hurt that day. I ve still got a scar up here actually, underneath my chin there. (Des Gray, Tape MP-FH28 Side A, 19:02) Bill Ford swam at the Met : We learned to swim off the Metal Wharf and one of the fascinating things is you dive in off the Metal Wharf and you swim about five strokes and you turn directly back onto the steps. There were sharks in this area so you dived in with great bravado, swam your five strokes and turned at right angles. The first school swimming carnival I went to I dived in, swam and turned 90 degrees and ran slap bang into the side wall of the swimming pool and put my hand up as if I had finished. So that s where we learned to swim. (Bill Ford, Tape MP-SM16A Side A, 27:33) Cricket was another popular pastime: Every Sunday morning there was a game of cricket down in Hickson Road, and a good standard of cricket too, I might add. Every quarter of an hour we d stop to let a car go by. (Ron Josephs, Tape MP-FH35, Side A, 12:33) Ron Josephs We used to have to play cricket in the streets there, in Pottinger Street or down in Hickson Road where one Sunday morning we got pinched for playing cricket because it was Sunday. Anyway, there were quite a few of us, we had to go to the Children s Court up in Albion Street, we got a lecture. Those over 18 had to go to Central Court and they got fined 2. (Harry Lapham, Tape MP-SM2, Side B, 56:24) Dalgety s Wool store on Dalgety s Wharf was an unlikely place for kids to play: It was just a great big store, a monstrous big building with stacks and stacks of wool in it. That was one of our playgrounds, we d go in there and play. The guys who worked in the wool sheds, I don t know what they were called, if they caught us they used to take our pants off and wipe this red dye on our testicles and send us home. Mum would always know then, Ah, you ve been to the wool sheds all day. (Des Gray, Tape MP- FH28 Side A, 19:57) Children climbed the arch of the bridge or made their way up the pylon to the room where the Cat Lady lived with her 20 white cats. They saw circus elephants unloaded on the wharves for Ashton s circus, drank milkshakes in Charlie Conran s milk bar, played cockylorum, chase the tin or hitched a tram ride to Luna Park where the first 200 kids would be given a bag of lollies and tickets to free rides at Coney Island. They watched the boats coming into the harbour and knew which line it was and where it would berth. For Teri Carter Millers Point was a world full of imagination: As a child I remember spending a lot of time in the park across the road in Dawes Point Park. There s one tree near the bus stop at George Street North there, right on the park. That was my favourite tree to sit up because no-one would know I was there and I would watch people come and go and it used to amuse me that I was up there and I had a rich fantasy life, being an only child, so I spent a lot of time on my own, so I would be up the tree thinking I was in Africa somewhere. (Teri Carter, Tape MP-SM5, Side A, 25:50) The copper would also become useful at Christmas: The copper would be scrubbed out until it shone and the Christmas puddings would be boiled in it. Then after they were cooked it was cleaned out again and when the ham had to be cooked the ham was put in it, then it had to be cleaned out again. (Alice Brown, Tape MP-FH43 Side B, 35:51) Harry Lapham 16 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 17
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