Treasure Chest Thursday
Views of Sydney and the Hawkesbury River Bridge, New South Wales.
Jim Davidson Australian postcard collection, 1880-1980.
I'm really scratching around for something to write today. So I thought I would transcribe some of my mother's memories.
I just have these fragments here and there, written on paper, not in any particular order, so here goes...
My mother's twin sister lived in Newcastle. They were very close & not tolerant of being separated for long. Consequently, there were many trips to & fro between Sydney & Newcastle from my earliest recollections.
The train, was, of course, exciting, but it became a very familiar environment. The carriages must have been all wooden in those days. Some were better than others. The box carriage was to be avoided, with no connecting corridor in which one could stretch one's legs during what appeared to be very long periods of sitting still in sometimes crowded conditions of wartime. There seemed always to be at least one soldier asleep in the compartment, the uniform appearing to me as rough & unappealing - certainly unflattering to just about everyone who wore them.
The compartments were lined with timber panelling of a rather reddish-brown colour, with black & white photographs mounted above the bench seats. These favoured mostly scenes of mobs of sheep or cattle with drovers in attendance or views of the Hawkesbury River Bridge or similar local beauty spots en route to the destination. They seemed to me at the time to be somewhat remote as any figures appeared to be clothed unfamiliarly & unfashionably from a period in the distant past.
Above the windows, which seemed prone to stick maddeningly when leapt at by passengers on the trains entering a tunnel, was always a water bottle with a chain attached to its stopper, on either side oft he bottle were two glasses mounted in metal brackets. Watching the water sloshing around in the bottle provided apprehensive interest during the tedious hours confined in the mostly dreary environment which, during the not infrequent trips which occurred during hours of darkness, seemed always to e inadequately lit rendering reading most difficult or at least unsatisfactory.
The Hawkesbury River Bridge was generally the highlight of the journey: the train slowed when crossing the bridge thus enabling one to crane at the window to look down into the green-grey water of the river & watch fascinated the huge jellyfish swimming so strongly through its rather murky depths.
The other high point was arriving at Gosford when refreshments would be bought. These were the days of no dining cars & people customarily provided themselves with a packed lunch & flasks of tea; coffee was still not widely drunk or perhaps it was only that it was procurable in these years.
Nevertheless, the halt at Gosford encouraged many people to alight from the train in order to stretch their legs or plunge into the frantic melee of the refreshment rooms for scalding hot milk coffee (essence, perhaps?) & hot buttered toast. These were the only two items I recall people buying. There were glass cases in timber moulding mounted on the high counters, which contained unappetising blocks of plain Madeira cake or the inevitable marble cake of hideous tones.
But I remember on the coffee which I could not drink because it was so hot & the delicious, wicked buttered toast. Forbidden in our normal daily routine because it was "white" when my mother bought only wholemeal & certainly not "sandwich" loaves which I somehow understood to be not quite proper. One bought Vienna loaves perhaps but mostly round-topped double loaves - not sandwich loaves. Nothing tasted quite as good as the toasted sandwich bread from Gosford Refreshment Rooms; it was sheer luxury.
Here's a film from the NFSA to give you a sense of it.
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