Ettalong - vastly different in the 40s and 50s
In our quiet times in the 40s and 50s, comics were popular.
Not new comics, but swapped comics - swapped with a sibling, with a friend or, after a ride on your bike down to Murray Rd, Booker Bay, in the front room of Mrs Kurnock's house.
Mrs Kurnock was a lovely old lady with considerable health problems that found her lying down most of the time.
Her front room was set up as a small library where for a fee you could swap books or comics.
She was quite trusting and would lie there while we searched through what we wanted, put back our returns for her, perhaps got her a drink of water or passed her something else she needed.
A trip to Mrs Kurnock's house was usually followed by a mammoth reading night as we devoured our latest Phantom, Archie and Jughead, or Superman comics.
We all had our favourite characters we followed in those pre-television days.
Ettalong was vastly different back then.
There was a doctor's surgery in Booker Bay Rd, opposite Webb Rd, where Dr Hillman practiced.
He could be a little scary when you were young.
My memory is of a stern serious voice and I have no recollection of receiving a sweet or a balloon for "being brave"!
Radford's Pharmacy was a large shop located on the corner of Ocean View Rd and Ferry Rd.
As well as chemist lines, it had gift items, china, souvenirs and a milk bar that operated in the summer months.
For some years, the shop next door was Mortimers, a mini version of the large Mortimers store at Gosford.
Mortimers Gosford was the country town version of a department store.
Next door to Radfords on the Ferry Rd side was a dental surgery where a coffee shop exists now.
Where Ettalong Markets are now was McLeary's store.
McLeary's was a variety store of sorts selling gifts, ladies' apparel and umbrellas.
It was McLeary's you went to when you needed a new pair of stockings.
They came in a neat little box lined with paper and this box was taken from one of numerous drawers that lined the store.
What wonders those drawers seemed to hold - underwear, socks, suspender belts and, of course, stockings!
They were very expensive so we were very upset if we laddered a pair, sometimes with our fingernail when we were merely straightening the seam.
Yes, that's right, seams!
In the 40s, the post office was diagonally opposite where the ambulance station is now, next door to a tiny little general store run by Miss Manning and her sister Mrs Breen.
There were lots of hidden goodies to be found in Miss Manning's shop.
On the other side of Ocean View Rd was Solomon Brothers general store which consisted of groceries, fruit and vegetables, delicatessen and a large milk bar.
The post office was later moved further down Ocean View Rd thus changing forever the "busy" end of the shopping area.
My first memory of the newsagents was that it was located on the corner of Ocean View Rd and Broken Bay Rd where the drycleaners are now.
It was run by the Smith family and later sold to the Marshall family who ultimately built a new shop on the corner of Memorial Ave and Ocean View Rd where there is now a real estate agency.
The Commonwealth Bank was in Broken Bay Rd and the building still looks much the same now occupied by a solicitor.
Of course in those days one had to enter the bank and go to the teller for a transaction and the bank was open from 10am to 3pm.
Just down from the newsagency was a fish and chip shop run by the Bird family and next door to that one of their sons had a barber shop.
In the 50s, the Bird family built a large dance hall on The Esplanade.
After a few years, they turned this hall into a roller skating rink and for the teenagers of Ettalong this was just so wonderful.
We had something to do, somewhere to meet our friends and many of us took to roller-skating like ducks to water.
Years later, the hall was pulled down and a large water slide erected. That has long gone and the area is now part of Ettalong Beach Club's car park.
Ettalong Hotel went through the block from the main road to The Esplanade.
The Esplanade side was more for accommodation and that site is occupied by a motel now.
The police station plus dwelling was next door.
Across the road at Ettalong Beach during the Christmas holidays, the Baptist Church ran a daily kids club each morning for a couple of hours.
They had a canopy set up and all of us local kids would rush through our home jobs so we could get to the beach for kids club where we would be joined by the children on holidays.
How we all loved kids club, from the fun stuff to the "build on the rocks and not upon the sand" stuff.
We enjoyed it all and as we cooked under the awning we were well ready for a swim at the end of kids club.
We usually played in the water, often with big black tyre tubes to dive through or float on until lunch time when it was time to wander home for lunch.
Ettalong was a popular holiday spot in those days.
Many families didn't have cars and so they would catch the steam train from Sydney for a two-hour journey to the Central Coast where they would rent one of the many basic cottages available for casual lettings.
Those were the carefree days.
On the corner of The Esplanade and Memorial Ave where the Ettalong Beach Club now sits was the Ozone Cafe, a convenient place to buy an iceblock while at the beach.
Next door to the cafe was a large hall which was the original Ettalong Beach War Memorial Club.
It was later replaced with a brick building closer to Ocean View Rd.
In those days, if your dad was a member of the club, you were invited to the Christmas party which consisted of gifts from Santa for the younger children and races for the remainder of the children.
The races were conducted by club members at Ettalong Oval at the end of Picnic Pde and cash prizes were given.
Somehow they seemed to ensure that every child won some money for something.
The ice-cream man would come along on his modified bicycle with thick green bags strapped to the bike.
The bags contained dry ice which seemed to smoke out when he opened the bag to give you your bucket of ice-cream.
The ice-cream was deliciously cold but of course always tasted of the cardboard container it came in.
When the last race was run, we all walked from the oval down to the club hall where a delicious party tea was set out for us by the ladies of the auxiliary.
How we looked forward to that day, the excitement impossible to describe.
Now, back to the main street of Ettalong...
The fire station was located roughly where the cake shop is now, next door to IGA supermarket and opposite Pacific Ave.
Next door to this was a little shop run by a man who did small appliance repairs, in the days when you took your toaster or iron to be repaired instead of discarding it and buying another.
I can't recall exactly when but it was probably the early 50s when the fire station burned down.
What mayhem! What delicious excitement! People came from everywhere to watch the fire station burning down, fuelled, rumour had it, by crackers from the repair shop next door.
Crackers were sold in lots of small stores then.
The fire station was never rebuilt in that spot.
In those days, sewerage had not yet reached Ettalong and every house had a pan toilet.
The night cart, or "dunny cart" as we called it, would come around in the wee hours of the morning and the dunny man would carry the empty pan up the rear lane and into the back of the toilet.
These strong men would then heave the very heavy full pan up on to their shoulder, and trudge back down the lane or side of the house and out to the truck.
One day the news went buzzing around us local children that the dunny cart had tipped over in Memorial Ave outside the club.
For those of us who didn't have the worry of cleaning up this awful mess, this news was one of the funniest things we had ever heard and was followed by lots of unseemly "poo" jokes.
In the main street, opposite the hotel, was the Scout hall which was also used by Guides and Brownies.
Where the senior citizens hall is now located was Ettalong Picture Show run by the Riley family, a very popular venue on Saturday afternoons for the local children.
It didn't matter what was showing, we went anyway, and it was always a double feature.
At interval we would line up at the little kiosk spending our precious pocket money on refreshments.
I loved my bottle of "sparkling cocktail" drink made by our local drink makers, Margins of Woy Woy.
Not for us the drinks from the big city!
The Riley family also had a picture theatre at Woy Woy and Mr Riley would take the number one feature film to the other theatre which would then play it as the second feature - A very neat system which seemed to work very well for many years.
Cec Paul's shop began down near the Commonwealth Bank and later moved further into the main road near the post office.
One could get just about anything from Cec Paul's including haberdashery, clothing, shoes or fabric.
If you couldn't find what you wanted anywhere else you always tried Cec Paul's.
I find it interesting that these days we would have trouble surviving without our huge supermarkets, shopping centres, K Mart and Big W.
But back in my youth we got by quite nicely with our corner shops and our Cec Pauls.
We probably took for granted that old-fashioned personal service.
Our needs were so much simpler then.
The corner of the main street and Picnic Pde where McPhee's pharmacy is located has had a chemist shop there for as far back as I can recall.
At the beach end of Picnic Parade stood the Church of England where there is a group of shops now including dentist and real estate.
Just past where Centrelink now sits, a new milk bar was opened by the Tull family in the 50s.
They brought the hamburger to downtown Ettalong Beach and how we embraced this new taste.
Just near them was Aub Robert's butcher shop complete with sawdust on the floor and the large round chopping block in the centre where the serious cuts were made.
The chops you asked for were cut in front of you, and lamb cutlets weren't a luxury item.
If you couldn't remember exactly what Mum told you to buy, there was every chance in the world that Mr Roberts would know exactly what cut mum wanted and how many she would need.
Letter, 3 Jan 2010
Gay Binder (nee Solomon), Ettalong Beach