ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

G'day,

While we are on a nostalgia trip - what about the games we played. Equipment = zero.

I can remember game for sticks and stones and bottle tops etc. go for it.

You want to hear about Doctors and Nurses Zondrae???

The year was 1949 when aunty arrived in a very pregnant state. I was eight and my sister was six and a half. So went out to the dam to get some yabbies for lunch while there I slipped and fell in the mud. As you could well imagine I! being a boy was mud from my rear end to breakfast time so I stripped of to my jocks and started to wash the mud of my cloths before mom saw the state I was in and would kill me as the saying goes. Anyway at that moment my sister come over the lip of the dam dropped her knickers and lifted her dress and patted her bare tummy and said that’s where babies are, Just then mom came over the dam lip saw us there gave my sister a smack and I got a whale of a hiding and told don’t ever do that again and to this day I still do not know what I did wrong.

ah Doctors and nurses Maureen such memories !!!


Doctor Bob

I played cigarette cards at school. You would get an empty cigarette packet, peal of the sides of part that contained the cigarettes, hook that over the back of the packet, then challenge some kid for a game. You would flick your card up against a wall the other kid would do the same. The closest to the wall won. If you won you keep the other kids card.


John

My goodness Maureen,

I was referring to = 'fly' or 'bottletops', which seems a lot like the cigarette card game already mentioned
and what about chasings or hidings (and I don't mean the type we got with the razor strop.)
then there were the playground war games, with 'sides' battling for territory.
and rhyming games we played with paper boxes on our fingers. (remember the pointed triangles with boxed holes where your fingers go) We folded the paper first to make the little gizmo that was pushed in and out, I bet you can still make one

one of my Mothers favourite expressions was "Go out side and play."

Oooooh! Those sort of games.

I noticed the other day that the local council is in the process of removing a lot of playground equipement from the local parks deeming it to be unsafe. The sad part is that some will not be replaced.

I can remember those big wooden swings that you could sit about 20 kids on and all swing at once. Sure you sometimes got a splinter in the bum but that was all part of the fun.


Bob

Yes Zondrae, I remember those games with the folded paper, you picked a number then a letter and got a little message at the end. My five year old granddaughter plays a palm sized computer game instead of simple things like that .


You can't do cigarette cards now John, because the packets are all nondescript and they must be disposed of in a rubbish bin. I wonder where we got them back in the fifties, people must have just dropped them on the ground ?


Yes Bob, the councils are very concerned about safety, that's why they demolish the swings and build skateboard ramps instead.

Correct Neville.

In the OLD days, cigarette packets littered the footpaths.

Some Names:

Old Chums
Cavalcade
DeReske
Craven A
333
Black & White
Galaghers
Capstan, blue, brown, navy, red.
Peter Jackson
Ardarth
Abdulla
Garrick
and one brand had a flying horse? Yes, Turf.

The above are a just a few I remember.

I played bottle tops too.

You would put bottle tops on your elbow: and then move your arm dowards quickly and see how many bottle tops you could catch.


Regards,

John