MEMORIES of PORT GERMEIN 1954-1962

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Inspired by a trip back to Port Germein, South Australia, and meeting 2 primary school friends after thirty years, I decided that some memories of a lovely childhood should be recorded, especially as there seem to be few local histories about Port Germein. I lived there for 8 formative years, from 1954 until 1962, and the sound of the waves ebbing and flowing just outside my bedroom window was as familiar to me as my heartbeat.

Listen to Ann Jones describe her walk along the jetty in 2015.

The following dot points encapsulate my memories.
I'd love it if you would share yours too.

• strawberry fetes with lovely baskets of home made lollies. The fetes were held in the Pt Germein Institute and usually arranged by the Methodist Congregation. Stalls were erected around the edge of the large dance floor, selling all manner of interesting things and beautifully decorated, often with colourful crepe paper. The stage was set up attractively with its dark red velvet curtains pulled to the side, imposing floral decorations, a microphone for announcements like the drawing of raffles, and musical equipment for the band which would play at the dance which would usually follow. The stalls would sell lollies, bowls of fresh strawberries with whipped cream, drinks, crafts, bric-a-brac and there would be cake and craft competitions and more. Merilyn can remember back in the 50's when her Grandmother & Mother got into huge strife with their fellow Methodists because they cooled the strawberries off in the hotel coolroom ready for the Strawberry Fete...they thought the strawberries might get contaminated, being next to the alcohol.
• bikes decorated with coloured crepe paper at the school fete
• sawdust used to polish the floor at dances where the Mitchells' band, pictured below, often played - Donald Lampre on the left. Photo courtesy Susan (Mitchell) Franklin
• Harold Raymond concerts at the institute when he played songs on his multiple collection of cow bells
• When I was young I loved "Milly Molly Mandy" books, especially the warm and cosy kitchen.
• reading and loving Famous Five books but not being impressed by Secret Seven
• collecting Nurse Cherry Ames books
• the boys' Biggles books
• borrowing books from the institute library
• collecting my copies of "Schoolfriend" and "Princess" from the shop
• Rupert annuals for Christmas
• going to stay with a friend for a weekend and reading our way through a pile of comics about 2 feet high
• getting 2 shillings pocket money, putting on clean clothes and walking over to the shop (photo courtesy R. Shaw) to buy an icecream, a comic and 6 pence worth of lollies

• Grandma Duck with her boots and gaiters and driving her car with Huey, Louis and Dewey in the boot, the Beagle Boys and Uncle Scrooge diving in money were some of my favourites in the Disney comics. The Phantom turning up in Diana's bedroom with his pet wolf was also romantic
• going to the Red Cross second hand bookshop in the side street opposite Myers when we went to town and buying lovely old books
• shopping at Rigby's when we went to town and checking books and craft gear for Mum for school
• buying icecream from a real American ice cream parlour in Woomera, when Dad was working at Pimba
• climbing confidently to the top platform of the swimming pool in Woomera-after all, I dived off the jetty all the time at Port Germein-and realising with horror how far down it was, but there were too many people behind me for me to go back
• mass on Sundays at the institute or later in the supper room
• saying confession in the stage confessional, a draped curtain around a wooden frame that could have been a clothes horse - I never knew what to confess
• First Holy Communion at the Institute

• school concerts at the institute including the wonderful little musicals mum produced, especially "Cinderella."
• the glorious sunsets
• watching my brothers play tennis at the courts on Saturdays and the fantastic afternoon teas they would have
• travelling to all the local towns during the footy season for the football matches and parking the car around the oval
• our dog Tammy having puppies in the drain pipe under the esplanade road and lots of little kids crawling in and bringing out 8 fat and shining black, white and brown kelpie/collie puppies

• movies in the tin hall behind the church on Saturday night. The adults sat in the seats and us kids sat down the front on the benches. "Tammy" was the movie I most loved although I remember a very exciting movie starring the gorgeous John Saxon (Courtesy of IMDB, I believe it was "The Unguarded Moment" released in 1956, and also starring Esther Williams and George Nader)
• occasional trip to the movies at the Ozone in Port Pirie and listening to the Salvation Army band playing, looking down from the toilet windows.
• even rarer trips to the Shandon Drive-In when it opened in Port Pirie (1957)-the glamour, especially the canteen!
• hanging pillowcases on the end of the bed for Xmas
• making paper dolls by tracing around Betty and Veronica in Archie comics and drawing outfits for them to wear based on pictures in the The Women's Weekly
• drawing ballerinas and admiring Margot Fonteyn who featured a lot in the English story magazines like Schoolfriend
• trying to learn to tap dance in the back room at the Mitchells' place, the post office (Kerry Mitchell's birthday party at right) Photo courtesy Susan (Mitchell) Franklin
• playing chasey around the police cells with the Mitchells and Stevens, and getting locked in a cell
• a beautiful scrap book that my Nana made, sticking picture from cards on the pages of a Women's Weekly, I think.
• the arrival of TV-we got one and watched it through a cloud of snow-the only time it was any good was in thunderstorms
• watching 77 Sunset Strip despite the snow
• collecting cards of singers and movie stars- Fabian, Connie Francis, Brian Hyland come to mind

Here is what a quilter visitor to Port Germein in 2006 wrote:"One of my favorite places to visit is the small town of Pt Germein originally settled as a deep sea trading Port in the late 1800's. The historic timber jetty is still the longest wooden jetty in Australia. When built, back in 1883, it was the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere at 1,664 meters (5,459 feet) Storm damage reduced its length to 1,283 meters (4,209 feet).
I had the luxury of time to walk the Jetty and take photos. As I walked, I suddenly realized it was the first time I had been alone since early December. I love the solitude I encounter on my travels; it is a way of focusing and refreshing the spirit. The day was just perfect, and in my shorts and T and warm sun I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, but more was to come. Was that a sign with a quilt on it in the main street? Of course the quilting car stopped automatically. What a find! The store was filled with all sorts of exciting bric a brac, vintage handicraft goodies, antique quilts and all manner of old sewing supplies. I browsed for a while, then from the bowels of the store came a woman dressed in the most interesting style. Her appearance fitted the store perfectly. A skirt made up of antique fabric, laces, buttons and large Suffolk puffs. A vest of Asian origin and a wonderful big Aussie hat with a bright blue feather. Oh and boots of course to finish the overall ambience. Not known for quiet clothes I felt quite plain in my shorts and T-shirt. We talked for ages. Where did the old quilts come from? One by one they were unfolded and their origin was explained. There was the one made from men's suits - even the pockets had been left in. It was just wonderful.

SCHOOL

• making little roses from plastic covered cord and setting them in plaster of Paris
• Children's Hour magazines at school and cutting out the poems to put in a scrap book
• many colours of plasticene
• music broadcasts on the radio and learning the songs
• tracing books
• Epapinondas(?) books Epapinondas, you ain't got the brains you were born with
• Derwent pencils and home sewn pencil cases with a compartment for each pencil
• wooden pencil cases where the top part slid out
• covering books with the nicest plastic I could find
• saluting the flag-and Mum fighting to make sure it was an Australian flag we saluted at school

We solemnly said the following and accompanied it by appropriate hand gestures:
I am an Australian
I love my country
I salute her flag
I honour her queen
I promise to obey her laws
• Playing rounders every recess and lunch time for years-we even got a proper bat, eventually. Usually you just threw the ball in the air a little, hit it and ran- I don't remember that the ball was bowled. There were 3 bases and you tried to make it round in one go for a run.
• Hula hoops came into fashion and we spent hours learning to spin them round our hips.
• The yo yo crazes-I was never any good.

• marching girls came into fashion and so did marching at school. The music would be put on and we would march around the netball court, peeling off to left and right and meeting up again to march down the middle of the court together.
• Friday afternoon movies-the films arriving in the big round tins and shown on the old reel to reel projector
• A trip to Port Pirie to see the Irish guards. Teddy Flanagan got too close and one of the guards said, "Watch it, sonny."
• inkwells and learning to write with a pen and nib, before the fountain pen came in
• fountain pens with a rubber bladder
• Indian ink-what a mess it made
• sewing lessons in the library, learning to hem and gossip, while the boys did woodwork
• folk dancing including the Maypole dance, all to the music over the loud speaker system
• school sports days at Weeroona Island. The prizes for the races were a shilling, sixpence or threepence and we always got a bag of mixed lollies and a blood orange. For lunch there was a fantastic spread made by the mothers. The toilets were among the mangroves-hessian covering a frame. Wonderful days.
• walking to school along the track through saltbush and the crackle of the salt encrusted dirt if you got off the track

In December, 2013, Port Germein Primary School closed after 132 years.

HIGH SCHOOL

• catching the school bus to Pt Pirie and the bus breaking down all the time
• the school bus having to stop because the red dust blowing across the road was so thick you couldn't see
• someone putting penny crackers under tin cans and letting them off while we were waiting for the bus
• singing "My Bonnie lies over the Ocean" every day for about 6 months on the way to school in the school bus
• paddy melon fights when the bus broke down
• getting to school late and rushing to the canteen to order lunch-Oh those delicious brown square biscuits with an almond in the centre-what were they?
• the teacher being angry because we were late again, and still had to order our lunch
• our handsome teacher wearing white socks-so trendy we swooned
• singing "Maurice Stanley Jonathan Hood" to the tune of "Robin Hood" from the TV show, when we talked about our English teacher
• Mick Nunan fitting into one of the metal lockers
• the boy who sent me cartoons during lessons and the teacher asking what we were laughing at. When we said we weren't laughing he asked why our shoulders were shaking.
• a Domestic Art lesson making lemon fluff which we saved by putting through a sieve to get rid of the lumps
• learning how to wash a jumper and clean windows in Domestic Art, wearing our cross over coats and little Dutch caps

THE JETTY AND THE BEACH

• spending hours digging forts, covering them with bits of corrugated iron and furnishing them with odds and ends
• the tunnels we dug and played in down by the post office-we were lucky none caved in
• walking along the fence by the caravan park and swinging on the swings next to the beach for hours
• walking down the jetty and jumping in in our clothes because it was too far and too hot to go back and get our bathers
• looking for sharks from the jetty
• the boats moored on the sand with their nets
• swimming lessons at the creek
• sliding on the slippery mud into the creek
• Graham P. bouncing on a board we'd stuck in a mangrove tree for diving into the creek, the board breaking and him going down like a stone-still one of the funniest thing I've ever seen
• almost drowning during lifesaving class at the creek when a little kid got me around the throat
• mangoves and the smell of sulphur
• the feel of hot skin covered in sunburn cream to which the sand has stuck
• icy poles after swimming
• chocolate Golden North ice creams after swimming
• sitting on the jetty while Elaine told stories of movies
• the storm when the tide came in so far they had to sand bag around our house to stop us being flooded
• building the road on the foreshore to stop the floods

THE PALAIS

• the soccer machine, table tennis and the carambino table
• counting out lollies from the lolly boxes in the glass topped counter
• second hand magazines for sale spread out on the big table at the end of the counter
• Dad going in to Pirie and bringing home the big padded canvas bags containing the tins of icecream kept cold by dry ice
• sweeping, sweeping the floor
• the windows were of wooden mesh with flywire on the inside. There was no glass in the building
• collecting bottles of drink from the Moyles factory in Port Pirie
• getting groceries from the big grocery warehouse in Port Pirie
• serving icecreams at the Palais, so many ice creams
• little metal pots of tea on metal trays
• Mum and Dad making dozens of home made pasties in our kitchen to sell at the Palais, mincing the mutton with the old hand mincer and then coming up with the idea of mincing the vegetables too, rather than hand dicing. Twelve dozen was the most at one time, cooked in the wood stove
• the rock and roll dances when a band came out from Pt Pirie and played
• 'King Creole' played over and over on an old radiogram at the Palais, forever to represent the sound of heat, summer and the beach for me
• hundreds of cars parked in rows on the beach on New Year's Day
• beautiful watermelons sold from the back of a truck on the beach behind the Palais
• cracker night on the beach behind the Palais which is shown above right. Early pictures show it based on the ground but it was raised on stilts after a big flood in 1934. There was a concrete ramp at the front door. The building was made of corrugated iron, multi sided and painted in a variety of colours, a different one each side. Inside there was a huge wooden floor and, around the edge, a "fenced" off area with a bench along the wall where people could sit during dances, I presume.
• You could buy Moyles' Sparkle, a pineapple flavoured soft drink. This was special because you usually only had soft drink at Christmas time and even then, not necessarily a full bottle for yourself.

THE HOTEL

Read about the other hotel in Port Germein, The Pier Hotel, on wonderfully informative Beer Adelaide webpage.

• Mum sliding along on her bottom so that she could clean the floor, wearing calipers after polio
• meeting Virginia for the first time on the corner under the verandah: "What's your name?"
• a visitor to the pub playing Smoky Dawson songs on the guitar
• the glorious Christmas tree right up to the roof we had one year at the pub. Auntie Ellie made artificial snow and there was tinsel and balloons.
• "I don't want her, you can have her, she's too fat for me" played on the record player
• sliding down the banisters
• so much action in the kitchen as Mum and the staff cooked tea, especially for the travelling salesmen
• the huge laundry with the mangle for the sheets
• eating a whole packet of sultana biscuits while hiding in the laundry-never been able to eat a sultana biscuit since
• a gigantic spider in the outside toilets in the yard-as big as a hand
• the bamboo that grew behind the pub. We used to cut down pieces and use it for doing the high jump at school- it was light enough that you didn't do any damage to yourself when you hit it. A death adder was found among it.
• when they filmed Robbery Under Arms using the hotel and on the other side of the street erected flats with shop fronts
• Prests shop opposite the pub-I can faintly remember it being open on certain days

Photos: Fortunately the hotel has been returned to its former glory with a proper verandah which we photographed first in April, 2004. My brother and I next to a Christmas tree in the porch of the hotel.

CLOTHES

• pink plastic pop beads and plastic pop together belts of daisies worn at the waist of flared skirts
• rope and net petticoats and flared skirts
• the lovely white tiered skirt dress for my First Holy Communion and another flock nylon for my confirmation
• A white dress with blue flowers that I remember because the ties and a bit at the front were of blue satin
• wearing shorts, flip flops and my brothers'checked shirts all summer
• A new coat and hat and lovely red shoes to wear to mass
• Mum's 'topper' coat she made from watermelon coloured material and I made one the same for my doll
• big grey boxes arriving from John Martin's, packed with lovely clothes mum had ordered from the catalogue
• the matador pants mum got for me and we only realised a couple of years later that they were 3/4 length, not full length pants
• my green suede desert boots and the the first zip up cotton windcheater known to exist
• Mum's floral dress she made from nylon, the new fabric, with a matching dress for my doll
• My cousin's gorgeous gussies and being enormously envious
• My cousins had high heeled shoes to dress up in but I never did because mum could only wear flats
• a beautiful gypsy outfit Mum made for me from plain coloured seersucker-pink and green and another gorgeous yellow dress of the same material, and a gypsy outfit for my doll too, of course
• Chris coming home with an army friend who was wearing tartan trousers
• laughing at the Italian pea pickers coming into town in their tight pants and winkle picker shoes- and realising years later that they were the height of fashion
• bodgies and widgies in tight black clothes, fluorescent pink and green socks, motor bikes, slicked back hair-at the Palais
• first stockings and first little heels, white with small punched holes as decoration and a strap across the instep and a similar pair for winter in black. I can remember walking along the main street looking only at my feet and legs in immense satisfaction.

• playing soccer in the yard with my brother
• having a go at driving the Mini Minor ute and running into the prickle bush outside the gate
• the old tray truck painted yellow and dark pink
• chopping wood for the chip bath heater
• the chip bath heater chuffing
• playing with the mops who were visiting for afternoon tea and Mum patiently making polite conversation with them
• Mum doing the washing in the outside laundry-the copper bubbling away and using a pot stick to move clothes from trough to trough
• the bluo tied in a stocking to make the clothes white
• the serials on the radio: "When a girl Marries" and "Portia Faces Life"
• Carter Brown stories with lurid covers owned by my brother
• the Marlon Brando and James Dean pictures my brothers had on the wall
• the doilies mum made out of blue and white material with white rick-rack braid
• our cow Cherry
• separating the milk in the separator and watching the cream come out
• washing the separator especially all the little 'cups' (I don't know what they were called)
• sitting around the radio listening to serials after school
• sitting around the radio on Sunday night listening to Sunday night theatre like this.
• sitting with my feet on the oven door of the wood stove with clothes drying out in the oven
• nearly stepping on a Death Adder that was sitting in the gateway of the inner yard fence
• the lovely smell of those flowers which open in the evening-small pink and yellow- as common a weeds but so pretty (4 o'clocks a.k.a. Miracle of Peru)
• moving the wooden step outside the door and seeing huge centipedes that seemed to grow there

• Mum, Dad and the aunties playing euchre late into the night -the soft sound of "pass, pass" a steady lullaby, interrupted by shouting when someone made a mistake
• running across the yard to the backyard dunny and trying not to get spat on by my brothers from the tower in the yard
• the fantastic view across the bay from the backyard dunny
• one red dust storm so bad that with every door and window shut, the dust filtered into the house so thickly that everything was covered in a thick layer or dirt, including clothes Mum had been ironing.

Photos: Above right is the front verandah of our house through the tamarisk trees, taken 1962. Below R. is a Malleys chip bath heater, available from Chas Geddes in Port Pirie for 75/- in 1954. The wood stove was photographed in the kitchen after the fire. I was thrilled to find (Nov 2019) the lovely black and white sketch of the harbourmaster's house, below, in the book, "Reluctant Harbour" by Nancy Robinson, page 201. It was drawn by Jill Francis in 1975. I include it because it shows the tower, still then in place, though the cottage to the right was not there when we lived in the house.

Port Germein fire causes $50,000 damage
Posted Sun May 28, 2006 7:45am AEST
Investigators are still trying to determine what started a blaze which gutted a house at Port Germein, north of Adelaide, last night. The fire broke out in the Fourth Street house just before 11:00 pm, causing about $50,000 damage.

This ABC news story is about the fire which damaged our former house in Port Germein.