every picture tells a different story...

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ChrisGreaves
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every picture tells a different story...

Post by ChrisGreaves »

This image popped up on my randomized wallpaper this morning.
003526 (Copy) [640x480] [320x200].png
We arrived from England in Perth Western Australia mid 1956 and moved to Southern Cross. On the twice-annual shopping trips to Perth, local friends would offer to, and take great pleasure in, driving us around town. Such trips always included a nighttime northbound drive up Melville Parade (now overshadowed by the Kwinana Freeway).

The highlight of the tour, always at night time, was the view of the expensive sailing yacht at anchor on the north side of Perth Water on the north bank of The Swan River. (If you squint your eyes at this poor image and let the Swan Brewery drop away you get an idea of what it looked like at night with on-coming car headlights helping to blur your vision).

The same friends would of course arrange a trip northbound up Melville Parade the next morning and behold and Lo! the "yacht" had disappeared. This was well before the Narrows Bridge was built in 1959, so the trip concluded with a long drive along Mill Point road to cross at The Causeway, with much time to speculate on who owned the yacht, and so on. Great stories could be fabricated.

At that time my parents did not know that the 5milex5mile stretch of The Swan was so shallow that you could walk across it from side to side, so shallow that the water came up to your knees for all but a 100-yard wide tidal channel, and that No Way could a yacht that size and draught be in the river.

For years my parents would drive down to Perth and drive along Mounts Bay Road on the north bank of the Swan looking for the "yacht", to no avail. These trips were always in daylight; the children had to be in bed before 8 P.M.

This trick was practiced not only on gullible pommy immigrants, but yokels from the wheat belt and goldfields. All of Perth was in on the joke. Every souvenir shop in town, including those greeting interstate travelers at the airport supplied postcards showing The Yacht at the brewery - but only at night time. Suckers asked in vain for a postcard of the yacht photographed in the glaring light of day.

This was WA's private equivalent of the Great Australian Drop Bear.

P.S. Don't believe that " Governor Charles Gairdner was also the first person to drive across the new bridge"; he was preceded by an un-named labourer driving a road-roller to smooth out the bitumen. Also the truck drivers who deposited the bitumen. Also the drivers of concrete-supply trucks who ...
Cheers
Chris
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An expensive day out: Wallet and Grimace

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Argus
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Re: every picture tells a different story...

Post by Argus »

ChrisGreaves wrote:
02 Aug 2021, 16:18
Every souvenir shop in town, including those greeting interstate travelers at the airport supplied postcards showing The Yacht at the brewery - but only at night time.
The souvenir shops were open only during the night? :blackteeth:
ChrisGreaves wrote:
02 Aug 2021, 16:18
P.S. Don't believe that " Governor Charles Gairdner was also the first person to drive across the new bridge"; he was preceded by an un-named labourer driving a road-roller to smooth out the bitumen. Also the truck drivers who deposited the bitumen. Also the drivers of concrete-supply trucks who ...
Ah, but that was the second new bridge.
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/11/26
Byelingual    When you speak two languages but start losing vocabulary in both of them.

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ChrisGreaves
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Re: every picture tells a different story...

Post by ChrisGreaves »

Argus wrote:
03 Aug 2021, 08:58
ChrisGreaves wrote:
02 Aug 2021, 16:18
Every souvenir shop in town, including those greeting interstate travelers at the airport supplied postcards showing The Yacht at the brewery - but only at night time.
The souvenir shops were open only during the night? :blackteeth:
Good point Argus! Apart from the syntactic convention that the phrase must apply to the nearest subject, I doubt that the airport was open at night. Australia's two-airline policy meant that TAA and Ansett-ANA took off (and frequently landed) within 15 minutes of each other - by law! - and once the last pair had flown the coop, that was it. A night time flight would have dropped you in Adelaide or Melbourne sometime between 1a.m. and 4a.m.

Perth didn't have a jet runway (apart from Pearce[1]) until we got The Commonwealth and Empire Games in 1962. The dreaded two-airline policy was still in effect when I returned in 1980.

I remember that the last #72 bus left St George's Terrace at 10:30 at night, and that was probably put on for people who had been to His Majesty's Theatre on Hay Street. Far too often I wore my make-up back to College, flushed with excitement and sweating if I had had to run for the bus.

ChrisGreaves wrote:
02 Aug 2021, 16:18
P.S. Don't believe that " Governor Charles Gairdner was also the first person to drive across the new bridge"; he was preceded by an un-named labourer driving a road-roller to smooth out the bitumen. Also the truck drivers who deposited the bitumen. Also the drivers of concrete-supply trucks who ...
Ah, but that was the second new bridge.
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/11/26
Yes! I didn't know that The Narrows had put on weight and grown wider until I looked for a reference two days ago.
I do wish they wouldn't change things without asking me first ...

[1]Note the line of aircraft sheltering from the sun!
Cheers
Chris
An expensive day out: Wallet and Grimace