History’s dumpster is filling up with relics of our recent past

Ladies Lounges in pubs. Hitchhikers. Cassettes. Using torn-up newspaper dangling from a nail as dunny paper. We are leaving so many iconic features of our past behind us. What will I miss most?

A calling card to the past: cassettes with music and books were a staple for every long car journey.

Let us consider what’s “going, going, gone” into history’s dumpster, into landfill. What’s been left on the footpath for council collection, or donated to Vinnies. Or what might turn up on TV’s Antiques Roadshow for identification. Random order. Don’t hesitate to augment.

Superman-style phone booths. (The current style would leave Clark Kent indecently exposed below the waist). Phones inside requiring pennies. Pennies. Phones with dials. Blackberries. 45s and 78s – though some still enthuse about LPs. Audio cassettes. VHS and Beta cassettes. The Sony Walkman.

B features at cinemas. Movietone and Cinesound newsreels. Bugs Bunny cartoons. Saturday matinees for kids. Sam Katzman serials. Rolling Jaffas down the aisles. The Queen sitting on Winston (the horse, not the PM) as they played the British National Anthem at the end of each Hoyts session. The pre-emptive stampede to the exits. Smoking in cinemas. Smoking in anywhere.

Yoyos. Lolly shops. Ladies Lounges in pubs. Hitchhikers. Truckies using CB radio and funny call-signs. The Australian Communist Party. The DLP. The Bulletin. The National Times. Nation Review. The hit parade. The Argonauts Club on the ABC. Mr Squiggle. Aunty Jack.

Capital punishment. Using torn-up newspaper dangling from a nail as dunny paper. The dunny man – a.k.a the nightman. Coppers for washing. Wringers. Having firewood, blocks of ice and bread delivered by horse and cart.

The current style of phone booth would leave Clark Kent indecently exposed below the waist. Picture: Gillianne Tedder/Bloomberg News

Holdens versus Ford. Clockwork Hornby train sets. Wind-up record players. Meccano sets. Spud guns. Footy cards. Schoolyard wars between Micks and Proddies. TB. Polio. Measles. Smallpox. (Take note, Robert F Kennedy Jr). A world without Trumps.

Pre myxo, uncontrolled plagues of rabbits. Pre cane toads, uncontrolled plagues of prickly pear. Fruit and veg shops. Short-back-and-sides at the barbers. Dinking on bikes. Playing marbles in the school playground. Chanting “go back to your own country” to “reffo” kids. The White Australia Policy.

A time before pizza with extra pineapple, before Big Macs and the KFC “thrift bucket”, when the only fast food came from the local Chinese restaurant – a couple on every shopping street (“Eat in or take away”). Such gourmet delights as steamed or fried dim-sims or sweet-and-sour something. Pre the plague of celebrity chefs.

Apart from playing marbles and hoppo-bumpo and abusing reffo kids, the most popular sport at East Kew Primary was chanting “Catholic dogs stink like frogs jumping out of hollow logs” to the Mick kids over the road. To which they understandably replied with a chant of their own – “State state fulla hate!!” Shades of Belfast.

Back to less fraught matters. The Holden versus Ford wars of the future were waged in the bicycle sheds at schools across the nation. Back then it was a fight-to-the-death competition between the most desirable bike brands. Healing versus Malvern Star. Pommy Raleigh bikes? Only for sooks and sissies.

80 years later it is, for me, down to competing Zimmer frames.