A Nostalgic Trip Without Leaving Home

From the time I was about 4 years old until I was almost 11 we lived in a western suburb in Adelaide.

Our house didn't have a number because there were no other houses in the street and for a long time the road wasn't sealed.  We had market gardens opposite us and on one side.  

Behind us was a building supply depot, where my father worked and beyond that was the River Torrens.  It wasn't the beautiful Torrens Lake that you see on postcards of Adelaide.  This is the part of the river after it has meandered through the city and the lake, and is on it's way down to the sea.  No beautiful sculptured gardens here. Just steep, scrubby, banks leading down to the water, which at that point is a narrow muddy creek.  Young boys used to catch yabbies there.

Recently, feeling a bit nostalgic, (as I seem to do more and more often these days) I went for a tour around this old neighbourhood.  And, thanks to Google maps, I didn't even have to leave Brisbane.

Naturally, after so many years, things have changed and our street is no longer recognisable as the place in which I spent my formative years.  Our house is gone!  The market gardens have been replaced by commercial and industrial buildings, and the building supply depot has expanded, and appears to have taken over the entire block on our side (northern) of the street.

Luckily, about 10 years ago, I went to visit one of my sisters who still lived in Adelaide at that time, and we did a real tour of this neighbourhood.  Things had already changed dramatically, of course, but our house was still there and I was able to get some photographs of it. 

This is one of the pictures I took. Sadly, we could see that its days were numbered even then. 

But the thing that was really astonishing, was how small it looked. I had always thought of this house as huge. By the time we left there, my parents' family was complete - six daughters aged from 17 years to 3 years.  How on earth did we all fit?

Here is a picture of me and my younger sister taken at the side of this house, probably not long after we moved there.

Here is a picture of me taken in the driveway of that house.  I was probably about 5 years old at the time. Check out the car in the garage.  Also the clothes prop.  This was pre Hills Hoist time.

I have so many memories of living in that house and in that neighbourhood ...... but they'll have to be for another post.

Love,