Who remembers?

[red750]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[onetrack]

I'm old. I can remember all of them, and I've used them all. But what about wood-fired coppers for washing, and hand wringers? Kerosene fridges? Aladdin (petrol) pressure lamps for lighting? Wooden spoke wheels on cars? Tourer soft tops?

Vacuum-powered windscreen wipers? The worst invention of the automotive age! Just as you go to overtake someone in the rain, and you floor it to try and get all 70HP to the back wheels - the wipers nearly stop!

And what about the "go-faster" drum brakes? GMH specialised in them. That's even if you could get them to pull up in something resembling a straight line. Most of the time you had to prepare yourself for the brake pull, to either one side or the other.

 

When I was in the Army and based in Sydney for about 7 mths, I bought an FE Holden sedan to get around. It cost me $300, and that was about 25% of the cost of a new Holden - and it was 14 yrs old, and well worn!

I was coming back into the base at Liverpool (Casula) one Sunday afternoon, and as came down a long gradient with traffic lights at the bottom, I put my foot on the brake pedal - and it went straight to the floor!!

 

No "dual master cylinders" in those days! Despite my initial horror, I was still calm enough to take my foot off the brake, and then pump it. Thankfully, the brakes then started working again!

I took the FE into a car yard a few days later, and traded it on a nice 5 yr old HD Holden automatic sedan, that had been previously owned, and lovingly cared-for, by a nice lady in Katoomba!

 

Edited June 7, 2022 by onetrack

[facthunter]

My first car was a  39 Flying Standard eight had cable brakes and a "sporty" canvas top. and wooden planks floor. Cars were hard to get in the 50's. I'd had only motorbikes up till then... Nev

[red750]

There were more in the collecction.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Marty_d]

That's a waste of material, you could get another whole pair of jeans out of that.

[onetrack]

Yep, I've had them/done them all. I'm pretty sure the first one is one of the earliest toys I can recall getting, I think I was about 4. I didn't get a lot of toys as a kid, but I think I got more than my older brothers, who grew up in a WW2 deprived era, when you couldn't buy much by way of toys.

They're girls flares, the boys flares weren't as big.

[facthunter]

WE didn't have a freezer. Just an icebox and no washing machine or car either. My job was on Monday morning light up the copper to boil clothes and I mowed the ;lawn (kykuyu) with a push barrell mower... Most of the kids in my first school had no shoes.  You could by a "penny frozen Orange' from a shop near the school.  We had "coupons " for much of  the food items  and there was a concrete air raid shelter on the footpath outside the Primary school in Brunker Road  which was the Pacific Highway in Adamstown., Newcastle. Nev

Edited June 8, 2022 by facthunter

[onetrack]

Someone's forgotten home-made hill trollies. Fabricated from scrap wood and scrap pram wheels/axles, if you were lucky enough to find some. Lots of nails holding it all together. A pivoting front axle with a centre bolt made for steering.

Two ropes attached to the front axle gave you some kind of steering ability. Brakes weren't even considered, you wanted to GO!, not Stop. Guaranteed to take skin off multiple areas of your body, on a regular basis. Helmets? Unheard of.

I nearly got run over one day, when a car appeared very quickly over the hill, out front of the farm, that we were using for the hill trolley. We only saw maybe 3 or 4 cars a day on that road.

[facthunter]

The best ones were old very large ball races for wheels. Best on Tar sealed Surfaces. Steering by feet on the front or a rope which is just the reverse of how a plane steers on the ground. THAT didn't help me when I first got in a Chipmunk.. Just as well it was an all over field. No defined runways. Nev

Edited June 8, 2022 by facthunter

[red750]

34 minutes ago, onetrack said:

home-made hill trollies

Otherwise known as billy carts.

[facthunter]

Not sure about that.. A Billy Cart is the large box on two cast wheels I sold Sunday Newspapers out of, if my memory serves me correctly. Nev

[onetrack]

I think everyone has their own local nomenclature. We knew hill trollies were sometimes called billy carts, but they were hill trollies in our neck of the woods. A billy cart was usually a 2 wheel cart pulled by a goat, here.

[facthunter]

in my case I was the goat pushing it.  Nev

[red750]

In all the places I lived as a young'un, never heard them called hill trolleys. And we moved around a bit. The old man used to say when a moving van went past, the chooks rolled over to have their legs tied.

[facthunter]

A rose by any name would smell as sweet. You carry your clothes in a" port" in NSW and say Hoo roo when leaving.  Nev

[willedoo]

35 minutes ago, facthunter said:

You carry your clothes in a" port" in NSW

and Queensland. Only weird people say suitcase up here.

[willedoo]

But then again, NSW and Qld both play the same footy, so it makes sense that we'd both have ports.

[willedoo]

On that note, the Queensland footy team have all packed their ports and gone to Sydney for the night.

[facthunter]

If they meet any Storms they will need  a Port..  Nev

[Old Koreelah]

Still have it and sit on those chairs every meal.

My wife wore out two of these and only recently got a mower with an engine.

 

[facthunter]

They are not easy to push, either,. Nev

[red750]

If y ou search billy cart on the net and select images, you get these:

 

          

 

 

Search "hill trolley" and you get golf trolleys (buggies), trolley buses, but nothing like the photos above.

 

[pmccarthy]

Billy carts it was, I never heard of a hill trolley. Sounds like something to take out the washing.

[old man emu]

Hey, Disco Duck!

 

 

[old man emu]

Too young, eh Clinton?