Remember when Adelaide’s streets of fear were streets of cheer? | Peter Goers

Once upon a time our streets of fear were streets of cheer, writes Peter Goers. But scenes like this are now long gone.

When you are older than you ever intended to be, the present is foggy, the future indefinite but the past is golden and affirming. So here’s a suburban reverie.

Streets of fear were once streets of cheer. Now few of us know our neighbours (and when we do, we often wish we didn’t), we have big houses on small blocks and the streets are crowded with 4WDs too big to fit into feature garages.

Kids no longer kick a footy down the street and do they play with kids across the road?

My remembrance of things past is enlivened by the many and valuable vendors and deliverers of yore.

Up and down suburban streets. I’m recalling Glenrowan Rd, Woodville South, in the 1960s and early ’70s in the lee of the then new Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which was once a farm owned by the Connor family.

Silveracres and the Connor family home, viewed from Glenrowan Road, Woodville South in about 1946. Picture: Supplied/Judith Parkinson

Oldfield’s Bakery delivered bread and finger buns daily from a horse and cart. The dear old horse knew exactly where to stop along the street.

The horse defecated into a canvas sling at the rear and the baker didn’t. We were delivered cylindrical “round” loaves which were the best thing until sliced bread and it was tempting for hungry kiddies to pick out and eat the middle of the loaf.

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The bread was white, much like Australia at the time – before the boon of multiculturalism.

In the pre-dawn witching hours you’d hear the clink of milk bottles and collected coins as the milky cometh.

The luckiest family member would get the cream from the top of the bottle on their cornflakes.

Adelaide milkman Murray Williams, 42, of Windsor Gardens, delivering milk bottles to homes on his early morning round in 1971.

A painting by artist painter Charles Frydrych.

The rabbitoh hawked a brace of rabbits (“underground mutton”) for seven shillings and sixpence. I so loved eating rabbit.

A greengrocer came along once a week and my mother would buy brussels sprouts (yuck) and cauliflower, which she’d cook until they were grey and rhubarb to be served with custard.

We’d never heard of kale or bok choy, and silverbeet was strictly for the chooks.

We didn’t buy much fruit because we all grew it and there was a moment in every SA summer when you had “too many apricots”.

A fishmonger (Peter Malinauskas’ grandfather) sold fish fillets (generally garfish) from the back of a truck and the fish sat under a tarp on a cooled galvanised tray. Squid was used only for bait.

Garbos collected galvanised rubbish bins from the nature strip and carried them aloft on their shoulders.

There were no garbags or recycling except for beer bottles and the garbos actually returned the bins to the back of the house. At Christmas the garbos were rewarded with a bottle of beer or a homemade cake. Bought cake was a wanton luxury.

Loy’s soft drinks were delivered and rolled-up The Advertiser, Sunday Mail and The News were thrown (thump) on to the front lawn or into the silver birch or oleander.

SA politician John Quirke with Loy’s Drinks SA manager Sav De Palma, cutting ribbon at official opening of new Loy’s Drinks premises at Cavan in 1992.

Once a month on a Saturday morning a lad would come to collect the money for the newsagent and there was always a scramble for cash. I delivered the Messenger Press every Tuesday from the back of my deadly treadly.

The postie delivered mail twice a day and once on Saturday and whistled as he did so.

Butchers sold meat from carts and trucks – and gave a slice of bung fritz to the kiddies.

There were bottle-os and rag-and-bone men and rubbish carts for unwanted stuff.

An oil painting by Charles Frydrych when it was up for auction by Adelaide Auctioneers.

The German immigrant artist Charles Frydrych sold beautiful Heysen-esque watercolours door to door and my mother bought one for five pounds (more from feeling sorry for him than an appreciation of art) and it was the only picture we had and I love it still.

Mr Whippy came along the street but I never had ice cream because my father told me that Mr Whippy only played Greensleeves when he’d run out of ice cream.

The streetlights went out at 1am and the streets were dark but our dreams were bright.

I thank all those vendors and deliverers for being part of our cosy world, when Sunday was the Sabbath and fast food was a Bush Biscuit.

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