Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 37
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[Page 37]
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cemetery at Bunnerong near Botany Bay. To serve the Eastern Suburbs, small single-bogey cable cars rocked their way from Erskine St, Darling Harbour, to Ocean St, Woollahra, via King and William Sts, Kings Cross, and Rushcutter [Rushcutters] Bay, where the steam powered winding engines were located. The railway services for the Western and the Northern Suburbs consisted of small steam locomotives drawing a number of long carriages fitted with closely spaced cross-seats each side of a central passageway.
Except for horse-drawn buses, public transport for the South-Eastern Suburbs, was by boxy little steam locomotives pulling up to three small carriages with hard wooden cross-seats. They clattered and puffed, sometimes in a swirling cloud of smoke and steam, from Circular Quay along Elizabeth and Oxford Sts to Darlinghurst Junction, where they branched either to Coogee or to Bondi Junction: at the latter point the tramlines divided again, one branch going on to the roundabout terminal at the south end of Bondi Beach, and the other to the high ground immediately above Bronte Beach: fares for adults were based on a penny a section; threepence from the city to one of the beaches. On some Sundays and on Public Holidays special low fares were advertised for excursions to the seaside. The public responded with a will, and I have seen the carriages close-packed inside, and rows of men standing on the footboards or sitting on the roofs; a practice that was legally prohibited a few years after.
While I was at Woollahra Public School we were all allowed out early one moring to see the first electric tram pass the top of Ocean St on its way to Bondi Junctin: almost an historic event for Sydney.
At the beaches there was not much to do but paddle, only legs and feet bare, in the water's edge; picnic among the sand dunes; clamber about the big rocks at the beach ends; or patronise the big rambling teahouses, usually the only buildings on the beaches. Large notice-boards right on the beach proclaimed that it was illegal to bathe "between the hours of sunrise and sunset", even in "neck to Knee" costumes; "Mrs Grundy" was a power in the land, and the so-called "wowser vote", representing