Transcript of AE 1431 - Aussie Childhoods Were Epic! What Do We Miss Most?

Pete:
Scarn on. Scarn on, Dad.

Ian:
Scarn on.

Pete:
Scarn on.

Ian:
Scar non.

Pete:
What's going on?

Ian:
What is going on, Peter? Yes.

Pete:
So what felt absolutely magical as a kid, but now seems completely ordinary?

Ian:
Playing in the backyard.

Pete:
Yeah. You do that frequently at the moment?

Ian:
No, I need to mow the backyard before I can play in it. But yeah, I think it was that, that sort of. Yeah. Now you would consider it to be ordinary, you know, going to the beach, playing in the backyard, going down to the, you know, playground, the local playground, kicking a footy on the oval. All of those things were sort of magical and fun and, you know, getting out of the house and stuff. But now you look at it and go, well, yeah, big deal.

Pete:
Been there, done that.

Ian:
Been there, done that. Yeah. And maybe it's because it is the been there, done that. Or maybe it is just because there are many more things that are now available to you as an adult. First time I drove a car.

Pete:
Well. Yeah, that was pretty magical. It felt weird, right? You're sort of like. It feels like I should have someone next to me. There's no one there.

Ian:
But the- literally the first time I drove a car.

Pete:
Ah. Okay. Okay.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I thought you meant. Yeah. Sorry.

Ian:
No, not not.

Pete:
On your license..

Ian:
After I got a license. That was that sort of weird, but. But not magical as such.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah, that was a weird one. Being in control of such a large machine.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
I was thinking. Oh, shit, I could kill someone and I don't know what I'm doing. And it would have been a manual, right?

Ian:
It was. Yeah, it was my grandfather's car. I was 14, and he decided- he used to call me Jim because his name was Jim. And the arrogance of.

Pete:
I keep calling my kids Billy, and they just get so angry. And they're like, why? And I'm like, it's from South Park. One of the granddads in South Park.

Ian:
Calls everybody Billy...

Pete:
Because he's got Alzheimer's! So I keep calling my son Billy and he's like, It's not Billy! It's Noah! Yeah, I know, dude, I'm just being silly.

Ian:
Yes. No sense of irony in a seven year old?

Pete:
No.

Ian:
Yeah. So he just, I was 14. He just said, come on, Jim, bout time you learn to drive. And I thought, Oh, we're just going to sit in the driveway and, you know, drive up and down the drive. And he said, No, no, get in the car and drove off. So he actually drove up to the local football ground and we were in the car park. And you know.

Pete:
That's illegal.

Ian:
Yeah, well, exactly. And then they said, oh, well, we can drive home now.

Pete:
I'm wasted!

Ian:
I said, hang on, I don't have a look. I'm 14. I said, oh she'll be right. They'll just blame me.

Pete:
That's it.

Ian:
Yeah, that was pretty weird. But yeah, it's very it's, you know, driving a car now is completely mundane, but.

Pete:
It's true.

Pete:
G'day, guys. Welcome to the Aussie English podcast. Grab a cuppa, get comfy and let's have a yarn. Childhood wasn't perfect, but there were lots of tiny moments that felt magical. Today we're remembering those little experiences that made growing up in Australia special. Not because life was necessarily better, but because everything felt bigger, slower, and more exciting.

Pete:
So what tiny event felt like the biggest thing in the world when you were a child, Dad? What tiny event felt like the biggest thing in the world?

Ian:
Eating chocolate?

Pete:
That was an event, was it?

Ian:
It was an event. It was! Because it was only. It was only a special events. Yeah. We didn't, we didn't have treats as such. You know, treats were the biscuits. You know what we would now call cookies. Thank you America.

Pete:
Biscuits. Biccies.

Ian:
From, that my mother had made. And you know she'd make them about once a month and that was a treat. But it was not.

Pete:
To spoil you.

Ian:
There was never chocolate in the house or anything, so.

Pete:
Really?

Ian:
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, about once every. Yeah. Take out Easter, where you get Easter eggs. But, you know, once a year, my father would come home with a block of chocolate and we'd get a piece of chocolate.

Pete:
Really?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Oh my gosh.

Ian:
Wow.

Pete:
You poor thing. Lived like animals.

Ian:
Exactly. We was poor in my day!

Pete:
Can you hear the violin in the background, guys?

Ian:
No violin. It was. It was exciting. It was.

Pete:
I understand.

Ian:
Magic.

Pete:
It's interesting because I guess. Yeah. Today we're just so spoilt for choice. Right? And it's all become normalised, probably through my lifetime. I assume. When I was a kid there was more access to things like chocolate, but we didn't have the kind of easily, readily available treats. Chocolate berries is a good one, right? Like when we were kids, we lived in a house in the Dandenong Ranges. And I remember in the backyard there was a raspberry bush, right? And every, I don't know, spring.

Ian:
Spring, summer.

Pete:
There would be raspberries growing on it. And I remember a few times you got us to go out there and fill up a container, plastic container with, with raspberries off the bush. And it was sort of like a big deal because you couldn't get them.

Ian:
No.

Pete:
But besides, when they were in season. Right. And now it's like.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
They're in season everywhere! Around the world at some point...

Ian:
You pay a fortune for them.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
You know, that's and that's the other thing too, is that, yeah, we when I was a kid, we, you know, we were sort of, you know, just middle class, didn't have a lot of money but didn't want for anything.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But, you know, things like eating chocolate that was considered to be just excessive.

Pete:
So that wasn't just you, that was everyone in society.

Ian:
Well, not everybody necessarily, but a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. It was just considered to be a you know, this is a treat. This is not something you don't put chocolate on the weekly shopping list. You know, it's.

Pete:
Was that because it was expensive or there just wasn't a lot of it?

Ian:
It was around. It was it was no more relatively it was no more expensive than it is now. Chocolates ridiculously expensive now.

Pete:
Wow. Yeah.

Ian:
But...

Pete:
Droughts in Africa, is that what caused it or Brazil?

Ian:
Who knows?

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But yeah, I just look at it. That was probably the cause five years ago. But it's now just it becomes the price.

Pete:
The thing, the moment I noticed that, I used to remember getting, is it Lindt dark chocolate? At the supermarket, when I was in my 20s? That would be my treat when I was a health nut and it was like 80% or above. And it was $4 usually, I think. And they did it go on sale for less?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
It's like $8.

Ian:
I know.

Pete:
A thing now. I'm like.

Ian:
100g of chocolate.

Pete:
Nope. Even when it's on sale and it's six bucks for like, I'm like, no, no, no, I don't want it that bad. Like.

Ian:
So, you know, obviously now we've got, you know, more money available to us to spend on those things than I had when I was a kid. But I think it was just one of those things that you just didn't do it, you know.

Pete:
You know, the thing for me was Christmas.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Christmas was always like a massive thing that I guess it's the anticipation. Almost bigger than your birthday, right?

Ian:
Oh, much bigger.

Pete:
Yeah. Like your birthday is...

Ian:
Everybody does it at the same time.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly. And everyone, I guess is equally celebrating. It's not just you and about you and you getting presents, but everyone is. But having our Christmas lunches at Nana and Grandpa's house was always something that I like...

Ian:
So it wasn't just the presents, it was getting together with the family, and...

Pete:
Yeah, I think from a young age and you would just, oh, I get to see my cousins. Oh, I get to play with other kids. Oh, we get to go across the road and play sport. Oh, we get presents. And I don't know what it's going to be. And you know, then we get to play with them. You know, while the parents sit around chatting about garbage, you know.

Ian:
Chatting about kids, playing with their presents.

Pete:
That's it. Yeah, I remember that used to be such a thing. And then the older you get, you're kind of like, I don't really give a shit anymore. You don't have to get me anything. I just want to see my kids excited. I want to see them enjoy themselves. I don't really care too much about me.

Ian:
Well, you know, Christmas is always about kids for me.

Pete:
Yeah. When does it when does it become like, at what age does it no longer become about you then like as a child? Is it like when you get to 12, 13, 14?

Ian:
I was a teenager, I reckon. Yeah.

Pete:
That's when it starts wearing off.

Ian:
Then it just became a- well, then it was the getting together with people more than the presents.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And, and then it was just sort of, well now it's just pointless. And then you have kids of your own and it all starts, the cycle starts again. So you have grandkids and the cycle starts again.

Pete:
What, what did the last day of school feel like before holidays?

Ian:
Oh, yeah.

Pete:
Did you anticipate that sort of thing as well?

Ian:
Yeah. It's not so much anticipate. But when it came it was at a woohoo. You know you got two weeks off. Yay or...

Pete:
Two weeks always felt so long, too, right? I remember between semesters or I guess it would have been terms, right? At school we had four terms and we would get two weeks off between them all and then six weeks over the summer.

Ian:
Summer.

Pete:
But it would always feel like, oh my God, two weeks.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
That would be like a year to me now, you know, I'm like, what am I gonna do?

Ian:
Well, that's one of the sort of it's not a mystery, but it's, it's one of those anomalies in our lives that a year gets shorter the more of them that we have.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
When you're a kid...

Pete:
Relative to everything all the time that's passed.

Ian:
Well, yeah, logically that's true, but it's just...

Pete:
A smaller and smaller...

Ian:
The experience. I remember like primary school felt like forever.

Pete:
I know.

Ian:
High school felt like five minutes. Ten years at university was just a blink, you know?

Pete:
Yeah. But I think it's also you're progressing through these, like categorical stages, right? Like when you're a primary school student, a Prep seems, you know, miles away from a Grade One, which seems miles away from a Grade Two. Yeah. And then you're...

Ian:
Like a 5 year old and a 12 year old.

Pete:
It's the weirdest thing seeing my daughter who's in Prep at the moment and she's, you know, running around school. And there she's got a buddy who's a year, 12, year six, she's 12 years old. And the it's like the difference between me and a 12 year old, you know, it's just like they might as well be other species, right? Like it's just bizarre seeing them there, but they're only 6 or 7 years apart, right? Yeah. What did you always look forward to when you were younger? Besides chocolate?

Ian:
Going to the beach.

Pete:
Goin' to the beach.

Ian:
Goin' to the beach. The beach. Because we lived near the beach and we spent a lot of time at the beach. And that used there were two questions for six months of the year. When we got home from school, there were two questions, one of which was completely redundant what time's dinner? And it was 630 every night, so I don't know why we ever asked, but what time's dinner, mum? 6:30. She never went idiot. It's the same time as it's been for the last five years. And then. Yeah. And then it was, oh, can we go to the beach? And that was it, you know, and except it was pouring with rain in winter we wouldn't want to go to the beach, but. Well, sometimes we did.

Pete:
Do you think you would still be if you grew up in that suburb with your parents? All conditions the same. But today, do you think you would be as obsessed with the beach, or do you think there's all these other things in society now that would distract you from it?

Ian:
I don't know, I I'm it's hard to separate your experience from the hypothetical because I love the beach and I've always loved the beach, and I still do. And so I can only put myself in that situation now with that experience and go, yes, I would still go to the beach, but I didn't grow up with TV readily available with, you know, the internet with computer games,

Pete:
Smartphones!

Ian:
Smartphones, none of that existed. So. Well, TV did, but we weren't, you know, we hadn't got one when I was about six, I think. And we.

Pete:
Had no control over it.

Ian:
No control over it. No, it was you can watch this half an hour and then it goes off again.

Pete:
Was that a like tiny bit huge moment when you got control of the TV as a kid and got to watch what you wanted to watch?

Ian:
I don't know when that ever happened.

Pete:
This is not for you.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
Just around the corner. You got like, you can watch, but you got to be outside.

Ian:
Exactly.

Pete:
Oh. Far out. What about renting DVDs or buying CDs and that sort of stuff. I remember you, you, me...

Ian:
You've jumped, you've jumped into your childhood.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
So CDs and DVDs and things didn't happen until I was an adult.

Pete:
Yes. But you would have had records.

Ian:
Yeah. Records. Yes. Yeah. Vinyl records. And.

Pete:
Did you. Because I remember Video Ezy and Blockbuster when I was a kid. And that was always something...

Ian:
Renting videos.

Pete:
Looked forward to..

Ian:
VHS videos.

Pete:
Cause it'd be like Friday night, right? We would get fish and chips. We would or pizza. We would go to Video Ezy and we would rent some overnight ones or weekly ones.

Ian:
Yeah. You usually get you usually get a couple of weeklies for free if you've rented an overnight or something. And then.

Pete:
It would have been what, ten bucks or something like that?

Ian:
Something like that. It was a lot of money.

Pete:
I guess that would be the equivalent of what, 20, $30 now?

Ian:
You could and that was a bizarre thing is you could buy one for $30.

Pete:
Yeah. But you wanted to see the new one.

Ian:
Yeah. But you could buy that. But it'd cost you $10 to rent it. Yeah. You pay the $10. I'm never going to watch this twice, but, you know, And then you watch it five times in the two days that you've got it.

Pete:
I guess it's about browsing though, too, right? You can browse all the new ones and the new releases. And I don't know, was there a gap between like, they would be out at the cinema, at the movies, and then they would be new releases.

Ian:
6 to 12 months...

Pete:
And you would have to wait for them to come out to buy.

Ian:
Yeah. And then they'd be on overnight only.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
And then they would go on to the, you know, the weekly, you know, you could have one for a week for $2 or something.

Pete:
Yes. Yeah. I used to always love that. What about pocket money? Did you get pocket money from your parents and look forward to that?

Ian:
Yep. Sixpence every Saturday morning.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And then when I think I turned ten years old it became a shilling. No, by actually, by the time I was ten, it was $0.10.

Pete:
What did you give us, five bucks a week?

Ian:
No.

Pete:
Would have been five bucks, wouldn't it?

Ian:
1 or 2.

Pete:
Oh, when we were super young. But then later on, yeah, it became about five bucks a week or something..

Ian:
Something like that. When you actually did something for it. Other than just turning up.

Pete:
Yeah, that's it!

Ian:
You're still breathing? Here's a dollar. Yeah.

Pete:
I know. That's my kids. I'm constantly like trying to give them tasks, and I sort of mainly pay them for the tasks. But then I don't know if I'm doing the wrong thing because they should just do the tasks.

Ian:
Yeah, give them the list of tasks and they have to do them in order to get their money at the end of the week, not you get a dollar every time you put something in the rubbish bin.

Pete:
It's so hard. Sometimes we're out and about to and Noah will be having a tantrum and I'll be like, Noah, if you cut it out, I'll give you a dollar. And he'll just totally cut it. And I'm just like, I should not be doing that.

Ian:
So okay, well, you only do it once and you're okay. Now I know you can stop!

Pete:
Yeah. That's it, that's it. Did you have a pizza night or, like, a fish and chip night with your parents every week?

Ian:
Fish and chips? Not each week, but fish and chips was probably every once every 2 or 3 weeks.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And I think I was eight years old when I first got the responsibility of walking down to the fish and chip shop and buying the family's fish and chips on the Friday night.

Pete:
So just all by yourself?

Ian:
By myself.

Pete:
How far was that?

Ian:
Oh, 500m away.

Pete:
Jesus.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah. So that did that feel weird when you got to do that by yourself?

Ian:
Well, it didn't feel weird. It felt like it was. Oh, this is pretty special. I'm a big kid. I'm a big kid.

Pete:
How are ...

Ian:
Eight.

Pete:
Far out. Yeah, that blows my mind. Letting Noah do that in a year.

Ian:
I know. And at the same time, I, when I was eight years old was the first time I went on public transport by myself.

Pete:
Child abuse, man.

Ian:
Caught a bus from Beaumaris to Sandringham to go before there was a library in Beaumaris, and we used to catch the bus to before we got. We didn't get a car until I was probably 7 or 8 years old.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And, so we used to catch the bus to Sandringham to go to the library and borrow books and catch the bus home again. And then I got to about 8 or 9 years old and mum just said, well, you can go by yourself. You know how to get there.

Pete:
Far out.

Ian:
I know.

Pete:
Would we get in trouble for doing that today?

Ian:
Probably.

Pete:
Yeah. Because that's what I don't know what the rules are...

Ian:
Negligence.

Pete:
I feel like I would...

Ian:
Neglect.

Pete:
Yeah. It's like it's one of those things. It's like a sort of social agreement. Now that you kind of don't let young kids go out by themselves.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I don't know where the cut-off is. Like, is it ten? Is it 11? Is it...

Ian:
18? 22? I know it's...

Pete:
I remember we were living around the corner when we were renting. And there was a family, I think this woman was doing a lot of drugs and had been in an abusive relationship. And she always had. She had three kids and they were just always outside. And we lived in this area where there was kind of this like square shaped park.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Between all these different streets, all the houses kind of faced onto the park. And these kids would just be there at 9 p.m. and they would have been like five, six, seven years old, like Noah's age. Easy, easy, and like zero supervision.

Ian:
Yeah. See, when I was a kid, we would be- mum's standard line would be, go and play outside.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Get out, get out. Which meant playing the yard. But the yard extended to the road. Out the front.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And we had 5 or 6 families with kids around our age.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
All within 100m of our place. And we'd all end up playing out on the road and going from backyard to backyard and the sort of the the social agreement among parents was you send every child home at 5:00.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. And so but that six, seven, eight years old.

Pete:
I think I miss that kind of freedom. I think I got the end of that right. In the 90s, I was I remember being able to go to the neighbour's house by myself in Callisto, where I grew up, in the Dandenong Ranges, and I think I would have been, what, seven, eight, nine when you would just let me go across the road to play with him by myself, and I didn't you didn't take me over. I didn't need help.

Ian:
No, no. Says I'm going to Daniel's. All right. Come back at five.

Pete:
But I feel like. Yeah, nowadays it's I don't know if it's warranted, but it's definitely that kind of like.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Even now, letting them walk into school by themselves, I'm like, am I, am I abusing my kids? Is this like neglect? Like, am I, I'm not actually holding their hands all the way in..

Ian:
To the classroom.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly.

Ian:
Yeah. But schools, you feel like that, but they, they are totally independent at school while they're there.

Pete:
Exactly, yeah.

Ian:
So, you know, morning playtime, recess and lunch time, they're out fooling around in the schoolyard, and then they get back to their class all by themselves.

Pete:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's weird. Like anytime I do this, they're pretty happy to go in by themselves and they, you know, obviously there's no problems. But if I go in with Joey, the youngest one at the moment, she's five. She will have quite often a tantrum and be like, I want you to stay.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
But if I stay...

Ian:
You drop her at the gate.

Pete:
Yeah. She's fine. Yeah. It's it's so interesting. What smell instantly reminds you of your childhood?

Ian:
Rice pudding.

Pete:
Rice pudding?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
That's a weird one.

Ian:
I know.

Pete:
You probably haven't had that in a long time.

Ian:
Not homemade rice pudding. No, no, but it does. It's that, you know, you just get that. Oh, we used to have this a lot.

Pete:
So is this, your folks cooked this for you when you were a kid?

Ian:
Yeah. Yeah, it used to be. And rice pudding was one of those. It was the, the leftover dessert. Yeah, you'd have some dish with rice in it and always cooked too much rice.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And then...

Pete:
There's never too much rice!

Ian:
Well. And exactly. So the next day she would just use the leftover rice and make rice pudding.

Pete:
So how did you make rice pudding? What did you do with it?

Ian:
I didn't make it, but it was. So normally you would cook the rice in. Yeah. Yeah. And then in milk and sugar and it's basically milk sugar and and rice. So but our rice was already precooked so it took about ten minutes to make rice pudding.

Pete:
You know, one of the ones that gets me and I remember, I don't know if I've told you this before, but I remember your mother, my grandmother grad, I used to call her. Oh. What happened? It would have been when I was like, maybe a teenager grad had passed away when I was 12. I hadn't seen her in a long time. Obviously, when I was a teen, a few years, and I remember buying some just juice, orange juice and opening the bottle and bang! I was back in her kitchen looking up at her, holding my hands out, waiting for a plastic cup of just juice, orange juice. And I was like, fuck. She was using the same brand, and that brand had a very specific smell. Yeah. And it just it's crazy how powerful smells are out of being connected to memories and evoking that, that, that, that image in your mind.

Ian:
Another one from my childhood with mum, was floor polish.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
The smell of floor, floor polish. We've never used floor polish in my entire adult life. We have never polished a floor.

Pete:
But. But it was there somewhere in the past.

Ian:
But in the past, it was because we had lino floors. We had carpet in some rooms, but lino in other rooms. And the lino used to get polished and mum's version of polishing it to entertain the children while we were really little, was that, you know, she would put the polish down on the floor and then. But polishing it off was used to use old jumpers. Yeah, old woolen jumpers and have us sit on them. And she would drag us around the the room for 20 minutes. So it was a game for the kids.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But the floor got polished at the same time. But that smell of floor polish. And then every now and then you smell the same thing and go, oh, where's the jumper for me to sit on and get dragged around?

Pete:
Isn't that funny? The other one for me is the rain in the forest near Callista.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Like just all the wet. The smell of wet forest.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Any, any time I've gone up there, I just open the windows the moment I get into the forest.

Ian:
Oh, yeah, well...

Pete:
And you can just smell it.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And it's almost that it's either after rain in some places or it's when you're in a wet forest.

Ian:
It's the leaf mould. But it's also the eucalypt eucalyptus oil.

Pete:
Yes. It'll be the combination of those things, but that I remember obviously living there for the first nine years of my life. I was just smelling that constantly.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
And I didn't realise, you know, that we can smell that, rain mould, interaction, smell thing. You know, when it rains and that smell comes out that we're like 200,000 times more sensitive to that than sharks are to blood in water. It's something ridiculous that that we've for some reason, we evolved a sensitivity to that smell.

Ian:
Wonder why?

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
What's the evolutionary value of..

Pete:
Is water that way?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
What about sounds? Are there any sounds that bring you straight back to childhood? For me, it would probably be the, the sound of the wind through those large trees in the forest.

Ian:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Pete:
And then also the waves at the beach in the background from your house in, you know, near the coast when we moved there. Being able to hear those waves when there's big surf, you can't really hear them on a normal day. But if there's big surf at night, I remember I would be lying there at night and being able to hear the waves would be. Or the roar. That.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
That in the background. I love that. Yeah. I love that.

Ian:
Rain on the roof?

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Just, you know, lying in bed as a kid when it was pouring with rain. And when I was, we had a flat roof. And it was, it was, it was a foil roof with bitumen on it.

Pete:
Okay.

Ian:
And pebbles in the bitumen there, white pebbles to reflect because you don't want a black roof.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Just absorbing heat. So the white pebbles on it and the rain hitting those pebbles is just a completely unique sound. It's very different from rain hitting on a metal roof.

Pete:
Ah okay!

Ian:
Which we have now, the corrugated iron, is.

Pete:
It's softer like.

Ian:
Yeah, well it's, but it's you can't describe it. It's just yeah, yeah, I can. If I heard that sound again, I'd go, yep. That's the, it's the sound of the rain on the, the home when we were kids.

Pete:
I've just realised the other one for me and we've just gotten back from my grandparents farm is the sound of the fire there.

Ian:
Yeah. The crackling.

Pete:
The crackling and the hissing of the fire with the logs on there, That is definitely one that I remember quite a lot, and probably the smell of lanolin because of my grand. My grandparents had this farm and they used to have sheep on it that they took care of and sheared and everything. And I remember that smell distinctly because we would go up there once a year, well, multiple times a year, but once a year to do the shearing. And it would that smell would be everywhere, right?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And you it, it was great. I love that. That was great. So you were just allowed to disappear when you were a kid until dinner time. Your parents didn't expect you to be anywhere nearby. Did they expect to be able to yell out to you?

Ian:
They- it was, it was a sort of an unwritten expectation that if you went outside, you would stay outside. You wouldn't go into somebody else's house where. And without telling them so often, we'd be playing out in the street and you know, it'd be, oh, you'd run back inside. I'm going to Marian's who was five doors down, or I'm going to Andrew's, who was about ten doors up the other way. And, and so that was the the expectation was that you'd tell them where you were going.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But if you were just outside and they could walk out the front door and yell and you'd come back, that was fine.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And I can't remember whether it was certainly my I've got two younger sisters, one of whom is less than two years younger and one's four and a half years younger. And so the two of us, the one who was two years younger than me, we would be out there together. I don't think the same rule applied to the one who was four and a half years younger by the time she was that age.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Because she didn't have a supervising older sibling. But and I think, you know, by then the parents had got a little stricter. But.

Pete:
Yeah, I think you let us out at least once. We'd moved to the coast and we were a bit older until the lights came on. Right. We would have the street lights, the lamps, and you would be like, you can, you can go out and just come back when they turn on. And it wasn't necessarily a fixed time. It was more about the darkness, right? We didn't have phones. We didn't have torches out there with us. It was like, if you want to take your skateboard or your bikes and go play in the street.

Ian:
By the time you're like 10 or 11.

Pete:
Yeah. You can go do that. But just once the lights come on. And I remember you just have to keep an eye on them constantly and then see them flicker on and be like, oh, I gotta go. Yeah, I'll be back. See you guys tomorrow.

Ian:
Usually didn't worry. Usually you were home going, I'm hungry. Where's food?

Pete:
Yeah. Okay. So that was the trick, was it? Keep us hungry. And you knew we'd be coming back?

Ian:
Yeah. No food after school. Just come back at dinner time.

Pete:
Did you, did you invent games as a kid with your friends?

Ian:
Constantly.

Pete:
I guess you didn't have a choice.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
No. No smartphones.

Ian:
No smartphones!

Pete:
No video games.

Ian:
No video games. Yeah. Well, we used to play, you know, cricket in the street was one of the big things, but it was like cricket with a tennis racket and a tennis ball, you know? Because you, you can't have eight kids playing tennis. So, you know, one tennis ball and one racket or a stick or something, and you'd make up a game and, but then, yeah, there were always games. And I, it's funny because I used to watch you and your sister doing the same thing with your friends. And now...

Pete:
Whereabouts was that? When we were super young in Callista?

Ian:
Yeah. And now, you know, the four grandkids, your kids and your sister's kids who you get together with us, they end up making up games where the entire time is spent discussing the rules, and then you never get to play the game.

Pete:
I remember, mums and dads...

Ian:
That's the funniest...

Pete:
Mums and dads was one they were obsessed with at day-care and I remember being like, why is this so important to them? But I guess...

Ian:
That's their only experience of life. Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah, they're just acting out what they know.

Ian:
They don't go, we're going to be farmers. What's a farm? You know, what does a farmer do? But I know what mums and dads do. Yell at the children.

Pete:
Yeah, well, and that would be the thing. It would be so funny that one of them would have the subordinate role, and the other one would be the dominant role of telling them..

Ian:
I'm going to be the mum. Yeah, sit down.

Pete:
You're the baby, do this, do this, do this.

Ian:
And the baby is going, waah! I know.

Pete:
I remember being like, how is this fun, kids? This is just super annoying.

Ian:
Just just replicating life.

Pete:
Yeah. Did boredom feel a bit different when you were younger?

Ian:
I was never bored.

Pete:
You were never bored?

Ian:
No, seriously. Never bored. There's always something to do, I guess. I think I probably was bored, but for me now, in reflection, that was when mum would be go and play outside.

Pete:
Ah, so it was like...

Ian:
Ugh, I've got nothing to do.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But then it was just, well go and play outside. I have to go outside and find something to do.

Pete:
That's it, I have that battle with my kids so often too, where they'll they'll be watching TV and I'll be like, that's enough time for a break. And they'll be like, we don't know what to do.

Ian:
What are we going to do?

Pete:
And I'll be like, think? Like, come up with something. This is your problem. Find a solution. Like, work it out!

Ian:
Work it out.

Pete:
But we don't know what to do. And I'm like, you know, it's just, well, I don't know what to tell you, like.

Ian:
Make it up.

Pete:
That's it. And then I'll leave. I'll go do something for five minutes and then they're perfectly fine coming up with some Lego drawing. Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Playing some little thing. They'll often have pillow fights and, you know, make cubbies and be like, let's bring the guinea pigs in and make a cubby for them. And I'm like, sure. Okay, there you go.

Ian:
Just count the guinea pigs before you finish.

Pete:
I know, I know. Well, the main thing I'm, I'm fearful of is they bring them in and we have to put the cats in one of the rooms, obviously, because we don't want them becoming the guinea pigs. Becoming dinner. Yeah. And the kids. I'm always worried I'll go away and do something, turn my back and they'll let the cats out.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
And then and and it's funny. It's so funny. They're like, oh, but but our cats are so nice. They wouldn't eat a guinea pig, would they? And I'm like, they're nice to us because we're bigger than them. The moment you turn your back and that guinea pig makes a noise or moves, they will hunt it down. Like instinct will kick in, right? So were friendships simpler when you were younger?

Ian:
Uh...

Pete:
Do you think it's harder as an adult? With managing friendships? Or do you think like, because I always make friends with everyone and anyone.

Ian:
Yeah, friendships are just more complicated when you're an adult because you have expectations.

Pete:
And organisation, right?

Ian:
When you're a kid, you just.

Pete:
Schedules..

Ian:
You just. Yeah. You're right. There are plenty of times when you were a kid, you'd be. We'd be playing at the park for half an hour and then. Yeah. What do you mean? I've been playing with my friend. Yeah. You've been with him for five minutes? Yeah.

Pete:
Noah had that for half an hour. Noah had that moment where we went and we were playing footy at The Oval. He just like kicking the footy around. And one day this young kid came and he was just talkative. I don't know, he would have been like ten, 11 and he's like, I'm Daryl, how are you guys going? And I was like, oh yeah, good. Daryl, you want to have a kick with us? And he's like, yes. And then Noah instantly. Will you be my friend? Daryl?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And I'm like, dude, you can't just ask that!

Ian:
Kids just do...

Pete:
I know. And Daryl was like, Daryl's like, yeah, man, no worries, you know, but I'm just there like, you bastard. Like, this is so unfair. I wish I could do that with adults. Like, I wish I could just walk up to someone...

Ian:
Will you be my friend?

Pete:
Will you be my friend? Can we hang out? Yeah. Stop touching me. Like. I know I get jealous sometimes of just the ease at which they, they make friendships.

Ian:
Yeah. Yeah. But they, they make and break them as well.

Pete:
Well they. Yeah. They just walk away from them.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly. You've never seen Darryl again.

Pete:
100%. Yeah. And it was so important that day when we got in the car afterwards. And I was like, he's my friend. Right. And I'm like, well, I mean.

Ian:
But that's. Yeah. And a lot of kids like that, not all, but a lot of kids are, their ego is massaged by their approval from other people.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah.

Ian:
And by somebody calling themself your friend, it means they approve of you.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
And so whereas and that's the same for adults, it's just it's much harder to get somebody's approval when you're an adult.

Pete:
I miss- I'll tell you what I miss, I miss going to school and just having ten, 20, 30 of your mates or, you know, just people you knew just around acquaintances. Yeah. And even if you weren't super close with them, like best friends.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
You would have different classes and you'd be. Yeah. And you would just be chatting to them, hanging out with Sarah in this class. And the next one, I'm next to Dave and now I'm with Ben. And then at lunchtime, I hang out with like ten of them playing soccer or doing something else, I missed that. That level of social interaction with the same people on a regular basis, you know, that would, I guess, ideally..

Ian:
If I reckon that's probably what you remember most about school. Certainly what I remember.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah. Pretty much.

Ian:
Yeah. You spend 80% of your time in a classroom, but it's the 20% of time outside the classroom with other people and fooling around that you that you remember.

Pete:
Yeah. Oh, that that and uni I think it was after I finished uni. I was just like, oh, fuck. Like.

Ian:
I've got nobody around.

Pete:
Yeah, well, they was the best years of your life, right?

Ian:
In terms of you just have a captive social group there and there.

Pete:
And usually, I guess for those periods, all the people that are in your classes and everything are in the same age bracket, same part of their life, same...

Ian:
Just wandering along the fence next to...

Pete:
Every fucking day. There's about four of them though, but you would all be in the same stage. And now it's like if you join a club or something, everyone's from all different ages, backgrounds, doing different stuff. You're not sort of all like, oh, we're trying to achieve the same thing this year.

Ian:
And you've all got the same experience.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Roughly. Yeah.

Pete:
I know, and that's it's funny. My kids are always like, we want to be adults. We want to get older. And I'm like..

Ian:
No, you don't.

Pete:
Fuck that man. Stay young. That's it. Enjoy what you've got.

Ian:
Pretty much. You only get one childhood.

Pete:
This is like knowledge is a curse, right?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
By the time you work out what adulthood is like, you look back and you're like, God, I wish...

Ian:
I don't want this anymore.

Pete:
So did you. When you were hanging out with your mates when you were younger, what sort of activities were you doing? Like, were you kicking the footy, going for a bike ride, exploring a river or creek.

Ian:
Beach.

Pete:
The beach!

Ian:
Beach.

Pete:
Down the beach!

Ian:
Yeah. Down the beach. Well, playing in the street cricket, footy. Well we didn't play football on the on the road so much. We went up to the local oval, which was 150m away. Riding bikes around, just generally fooling around, riding bikes to the beach, playing on the beach, walking to the beach. You know, growing up so close to the beach, that was what we did. So.

Pete:
Yes, we did that. Yeah. It was definitely skateboards in the street, bikes. When we got older, we used to you'd remember probably that, like I'd have a whole bunch of mates over and we'd be like, let's just walk to, you know, the next town.

Ian:
Yeah. Go to Barwon Heads!

Pete:
Yeah. It's like 12km there and back. And you look at the end of the day and be like, God, that was actually quite a long walk. That was like three hours. But you'd be like, nah, that was fun. You know.

Ian:
Something to do.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly.

Ian:
And you just shooting the breeze as you go.

Pete:
I know I keep, I'm always thinking about what do we talk about? Because you hear young kids having conversations and it's just trash.

Ian:
It's nothing.

Pete:
Yeah. I guess that's what didn't matter. You were just it was more that you were just spending time together, working out things. Did you do much of like, collecting things when you were a kid?

Ian:
Ah, yeah!

Pete:
Were you a collector?

Ian:
I was a bit of a collector. I, I was sort of half a stamp collector, mainly because my father gave me his stamp collection. Then I, you know, used to collect a bit, but...

Pete:
At what age?

Ian:
Oh. Ten?

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
Matchbox tops were a thing.

Pete:
Matchbox tops?

Ian:
Yeah, the. Yeah. Matchboxes.

Pete:
Like a top you spin?

Ian:
No. The the an actual matchbox. Used to come with different labels on them.

Pete:
Oh I was thinking because you've got Matchbox cars, right?

Ian:
Ah no, no no...

Pete:
So maybe it's another matchbox selling...

Ian:
... actual boxes of matches. Yeah.

Pete:
So you would just try and buy different brands and collect them all?

Ian:
Buy them or swap them. And yeah, there's a couple of friends that used to do it. So we had enormous collections of them.

Pete:
Really?

Ian:
Yeah. And.

Pete:
I guess that would have been a period where there was much more of it.

Ian:
And it was a thing for a while where, you know, Redheads matches, which was the that was the Melbourne company that produced...

Pete:
That's the one that one out.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
That's the one that's common everywhere now.

Ian:
It is. But but they, back in those days, in the 60s and possibly the early 70s, they would produce different top match, you know, labels on their, you know. Different pictures and things on them. So every box you got was a different one. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, so that was..

Pete:
That was the original Pokemon. Yeah.

Ian:
It was! And, and, and particularly when a lot of people smoked. And so matches were common around the place you go. Yeah. I've had the same box of matches in the kitchen.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
At home. For 20 years I reckon.

Pete:
Well, you probably don't use them unless there's a blackout or...

Ian:
Yeah, you'd have to light a candle...

Pete:
Candle lit. Yeah.

Ian:
So, but yeah, they were just common. So that was one thing we used to collect. I collected rocks for a while.

Pete:
Yeah. As in minerals?

Ian:
Yeah. No, no. They're just rocks!

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. This is a bit of sandstone, you know, nothing valuable. But.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay. I had that, I remember having crystals, but then at school it was like, I remember, you know, the earliest thing I think I can remember collecting were tazos in packets of chips. These were these little circular plastic, plastic ring shaped things that had, or discs, I guess that had, was it? Oh, God. What is it, Looney Tunes.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
On it. And I still have them somewhere. And there was a Cheetos one at the same time as well with the Cheeto character. But.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
They were lamr. They were- compared to. Yeah, the Looney Tunes ones. I can even see in my mind those original like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Daffy Duck. Yeah, that was great. I love that. And then I think it was.

Ian:
Swap cards were always a big thing.

Pete:
Swap cards?

Ian:
Mostly girls, but when it was one of those.. Swap cards was a sort of wasn't seasonal so much, but it was, it was just cyclical thing where for six months every kid had swap cards. Well, the girls started doing it. Don't ask me why girls did it rather than boys. But then once the girls got interested in it, then boys would go, oh, what's going on here? Oh, show us your swap cards. Oh, have you got any spares? And then you've got ten of them. And then you'll swap two and you get it. And everybody walks around the schoolyard primary school with their piles of swap cards.

Pete:
I did this with Pokemon cards.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And then I think it was marbles where we used to play.

Ian:
Ah yeah. We used to play marbles.

Pete:
We had- the game of it for us though, was that you would have your collection. Every person had their collection of them and you would fight, fight, take on, compete with someone where one of you would throw one and the other one had to try and hit it from where they were standing. And then if your if your marble missed, you had to do it in such a way that hopefully it didn't land too close so that the other person would pick it up and then try and get yours.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And I remember I was fucking good at this game. Do you remember that bum bag that I had?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah. I had an epic bum bag full of game...

Ian:
Marbles game used to be you draw a a circle probably, I don't know, half a metre wide, in the sand.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Or in the dirt at school. And you would, you know, somebody, would you decide who was going to put their marble in and then you had to try and, you know, flick your marble off your finger.

Pete:
And get the other person...

Ian:
And knock them out of the circle.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And if you didn't knock it out, then they pick theirs up and had to knock yours out. And if you knock when you knocked it out, that marble became yours.

Pete:
So I remember the interesting thing for us was that we had all these different sizes. So there were like toms and there were like, I think it was like kings, queens, and then the dragons. Dragons were these ones the size of a fist. It was literally the size of your fist and it was like purple and speckly on the outside. Some of them were more sought after than others. We had we had one that's called sperms, and they were the ones with that little colour on the inside of the thing that look like a sperm. I don't know, and it's so funny thinking about it. I'm like, we didn't even think about sperm as in the gamete. No, we just- someone called it...

Ian:
It's what marble was called!

Pete:
So there were these cats eyes and sperms and clouds. And then planets.

Ian:
And bots for us were the ones that were just pure glass. There wasn't any pattern or anything in them.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had those and we had planets like craters were the ones with the speckles on the outsides and everything. But I remember you would have to kind of be strategic with if you challenge someone, they would have to match the same size or same type as yours.

Ian:
Oh yeah.

Pete:
And you would have to- like if it was a small one, you could kind of not throw it too hard. You could kind of do it on a smaller scale. But if you're doing it with a dragon, you would have to throw it from like, you know, ten metres away and hope to God yours didn't land anywhere near theirs.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Because they would just be, plonk!

Ian:
Dronk. Yeah.

Pete:
And that was like seen as I think, you know, there were obviously some kids that took their parents to the toy store or whatever, and you'd get one of those for like five bucks. So they were like the seriously hard to get rare marbles at the time. Somehow I ended up with a bunch, but yeah, marbles was epic. And then yo yos.

Ian:
Yeah, yo yos used to do and yo yos was Coca Cola used to bring yo yos out.

Pete:
Yeah, okay.

Ian:
All the time. About once every couple of years.

Pete:
All of these companies manipulating kids.

Ian:
I know, of course they did. And it was just this fad that went for three months and then just disappeared.

Pete:
Those Labubus.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Labubus are...

Ian:
Two years later. But but but Coca-Cola used to hold competitions.

Pete:
Ahh...

Ian:
Yeah. Yeah, they were competition yo yos.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
And, you know, you could buy one for a dollar or something. Back when I was a kid. But they'd hold competitions and you'd end up one of your mates would go, oh yeah, I went in and I won a, you know, who knows what you win. But you know, I won the, the local competition for yo yos doing all these different tricks. So, so that was the thing. You'd be learning all the different tricks with the yo yos. And then they'd disappear! And nobody had a yo yo for two years. And then the same yo yos would appear again and nobody ever kept them. It was sort of a, you didn't have the bottom drawer and go, oh, I'll get my old yo yo out. You had to get a new one.

Pete:
God, I would kill to have some teacher that stayed at the same primary school for like, you know, teaching for like 50 years or something, keeping a diary of all the different things the kids did. Are there these cyclical patterns that just keep coming back? Because our kids got obsessed with yo yos for a bit as well.

Ian:
Frisbees did the same thing.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
Frisbees came out and they were for a year. Everybody was playing with a Frisbee, and then they just disappeared. And then five years later, frisbees came back.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that was the case with like marbles and yo yos, because again, our kids got back into yo yos and I was like, I didn't realise that was still a thing, but they're always for sale at Woollies, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's, it's an interesting one. What did you notice when you were a high school teacher? What were kids doing then? That was sort of like, you know, collectable or trading and all that.

Ian:
Very little. There were high school, wasn't it? Mostly kids were basketball cards were a thing because everybody got into basketball. And so basketball cards, which are a very American thing. There wasn't an Australian version of basketball cards. So it was all, you know, NBA cards. And who's your favourite player and you collect your favourite team and all that hooha.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
That was the only one I can remember.

Pete:
Yeah. So what tiny things used to instantly make your day when you were a kid?

Ian:
Chocolate. But that was very tiny, but it was it was exclusive. Once a year you might get a bit of chocolate. We've already given that story.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
I don't know. I can't think of anything really.

Pete:
Do you remember when I was a kid you used to give us. I don't know if it was pocket money or we would ask you for some money to go to the milk bar and gets. Usually it would be. I remember it was with my mates, Luke and Adam. They lived in the street. Adam was in my year. Luke was a few years younger. We were on weekends. I assume. We used to walk through our hometown Ocean Grove and there would be. The bag of Ocean Grove was like all empty of just like, paddocks effectively. And there was a milk bar nearby and it would be a kilometre or two away. We'd walk all the way there and I would get, you know, whatever it was a minimum chips with chicken salt.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And we might get some ghost lollies, those ones that made your mouth a different colour, like green, red or, and you and your poop. It was obviously a lot of food dye!

Ian:
Yeah. Non-digestible food dye.

Pete:
Yeah. It was very, sort of disconcerting. The first time that happened, I was like, oh, my shit's blue.

Ian:
I'm dying!

Pete:
Yeah. No, but and we would get the fish and chips. And I remember distinctly walking home and you would open up a hole in the top of the fish and chip bag, and all three of us would just be shoving our hands in their taking chips and then rubbing the salt off.

Ian:
Yeah. For us, it was probably the, you know, going and buying a bag of lollies.

Pete:
Yeah. A mixed bag of lollies or getting your own?

Ian:
Oh no. Yeah. They were mixed bags. But you got to choose. So you go to the, the milk bar.

Pete:
And then choose the bags? Or choose the mix that you put in there?

Ian:
They would have this whole...

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
With 50 different types of candy, lollies in there.

Pete:
With like scoops or tongs or something.

Ian:
And no hands. You didn't get to choose them. They picked them out. You'd stand there and go..

Pete:
Ah, okay!

Ian:
I'll have one of those, and two of those. And and this is...

Pete:
So her hands, his hands, whoever...

Ian:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, in your little paper bag and then you take your paper bag away and you eat those. But they. When I was, you know, very young before decimal currency came in, when I was about eight, you could get a bag of lollies for three pence. Three pence, you know, $0.02.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And you'd have 20 lollies in there.

Pete:
Yeah. Not anymore.

Ian:
No. Exactly.

Pete:
That'll be five bucks probably. Yeah. I think the other day I got it for my kids. I went, I just was, you know, in town and...

Ian:
You go to the self-serve lolly...

Pete:
Well, there was one of those lollipops and I'm like, ah, fuck it. I'll just go in and get them a little bag each. And it was like eight bucks!

Ian:
I know.

Pete:
And I was just like, Jesus!

Ian:
Yeah, it's like $40 a kilo or something.

Pete:
Yeah, I was just like, good grief! Like, I don't remember it being that full on.

Ian:
The other one was, again, milk bars going and getting a, a milkshake or a spider.

Pete:
Yeah. The spiders. I remember you getting them for us as a kid. What's a spider?

Ian:
A spider is ice cream with lemonade or and usually, usually it was plain lemonade in our case. But they would put, they would put different coloured syrup in...

Pete:
Different soft drinks with ice cream, right?

Ian:
You could have a raspberry spider. It'd be raspberry syrup and...

Pete:
Do you remember the flavour I used to love?

Ian:
Is it Coke?

Pete:
No.

Ian:
No?

Pete:
Creamy soda.

Ian:
Creamy soda.

Pete:
Yeah. Is it creamy or creaming..

Ian:
Either.

Pete:
Yeah. Creamy soda. The red one.

Ian:
Yeah. No, it was...

Pete:
Oh my God, that was so good.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
With ice cream. That's one of those ones. I have that memory of that in the Dandenongs.

Ian:
And in our, in our case, there was no takeaway. You couldn't go and buy a takeaway milkshake.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
You had to drink it out of the metal steel cup.

Pete:
Yeah, that's...

Ian:
They'd make it in.

Pete:
Keep it cold, at least for a bit.

Ian:
Or they'd pour it into a glass for you and. Yeah, but you had to drink it at the, at the milk bar.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
So and that I remember when the first time I probably bought one of those, it probably cost, I think it cost about sixpence. $0.05.

Pete:
What..

Ian:
Milkshake.

Pete:
What other things...

Ian:
They were $10.

Pete:
What other things would be at the milk bar that you would. You know...

Ian:
It was bread and milk basically.

Pete:
Just. It's a tiny convenience store.

Ian:
Yeah. And every now and then somebody would have, you know, a can of tomato soup and a packet of, you know, a toilet roll or something. But it, it wasn't like the 7-Eleven sort of super, you know, super convenient stores that we see now, most of which have actually been taken over by service stations.

Pete:
Yeah. True..

Ian:
They combine the station. They combine the two things...

Pete:
Well, they make more money from all that stuff...

Ian:
They don't make any money out of selling fuel, but just a captive audience. Yeah. And funnily enough, the counter is always at the far away as you can possibly get from the door, because you've got to walk past all of the, the chocolates and the, you know, everything else. So yeah, milk bar was just, it was literally you'd go and buy your milk, or bread and lollies. That was about it.

Pete:
Do you, did you have the routine of your parents taking you there to get an ice cream? And then going somewhere?

Ian:
Yeah, we used to get ice cream. Often we would get ice cream on the way home from the beach.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah.

Ian:
Because the, the little shopping centre, little strip mall, shopping centre we had that had two milk bars in it, which is sort of ironic. It was only about ten shops in it.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Two competing milk bars. One of them was was Peters Ice Cream and the other one was Streets ice cream.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And I always preferred Peters ice cream, but, that but yeah. So you'd get a, a threepenny, you know, little child scoop in a cone for 3 pence, $0.02. And the dog would always get a free one.

Pete:
The dog?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Get a...?

Ian:
Yeah, the dog used to get ice cream with us. Yeah. The, the milk bar owner used to give him like it was mum and the three kids or mum and dad and the three kids. So the three kids would, you know, get their $0.03 by the time, you know, the dog lived long enough for them, they were probably $0.05 by the time they got to me. But yeah, they'd give the dog a little child scoop of ice cream in a cone.

Pete:
Lucky bastard!

Ian:
Lucky. Lucky butch. Yeah.

Pete:
We take- oh, I take my kids quite often after school down to the milk bar.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And there's a, it's so funny. There's a Chinese guy in there, and he runs the milk bar, and he's super, like, he doesn't really interact that much. And it's funny, I had I had some Chinese.

Ian:
Take your money, get out.

Pete:
Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. He he's always, he has this sort of like routine of like, hello. And the way he says, it's like, it's almost an inconvenience. The fuck did you want? And he's like, he's like, hello. And I'm always like, I'm like, hey, ni hao ma! And he's always just like, yep. And then, you know, What do you want? Anything else? No? Oh, that'll be $5. See ya. And then, I was chatting with some of my students and one of them one day, I can't remember if it was in the Academy, Shu or Helen. It was one of them was like you. When you talk to a woman, you can say "mei nu", meaning like beautiful young lady. And you would use this to refer to like a waitress or something. And I think the other one is like "shuàigē", right. For the handsome man. Anyway, each time I go in there now, I'm always like "Ni hao, mei nu!" And he's he just pisses himself. I'm like, Hello, pretty lady! And he just, he just pisses himself. So it was really funny that it took me learning that to kind of break his, his sort of deadpan face of just being like, What, what do you want? You know, and he's like, Learning Chinese? Very good!

Ian:
Learning very slowly.

Pete:
I know, that's it. But we would go in there and it's funny, the Buffalo Bill ice cream, the one...

Ian:
Yeah. The one with the...

Pete:
Bubble gum nose...

Ian:
Bubble gum.

Pete:
Yeah. That's still a thing!

Ian:
Bubble O Bill.

Pete:
Bubble O Bill, right? Buffalo Bill? Bubble O Bill. Yeah. And, I guess it's a piss take on Buffalo Bill, right? Yeah

Ian:
Of course it is. Yeah.

Pete:
So anyway, my kids are always getting that. And, what's the other one? The, the, the sandwich thing. Ice cream sandwich thing.

Ian:
Oh.

Pete:
Maxibon!

Ian:
Maxibon.

Pete:
They love those, yeah.

Ian:
Used to be the Eskimo pie when I was a kid. Was literally an ice cream sandwich.

Pete:
A little too politically incorrect.

Ian:
I know.

Pete:
We get an..

Ian:
Inuit pie is just not the same thing!

Pete:
It's even worse. Yeah. The kids are always half eat them and they're like, you can finish it and they'll hand you this half melted- I'm just like, what the fuck am I gonna do with that?

Ian:
Just don't, don't bring it near me.

Pete:
I know. Can't you just break it in half?

Ian:
... covered in it.

Pete:
Just break it in half. And you eat the first half. And I'll have the nice second half.

Ian:
No.

Pete:
No. But we always go down to the boat ramp nearby.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I think it's funny. I notice these things now as an adult with kids, I'm like, these are gonna be cool memories. You know. Like, if I do this on a regular basis.

Ian:
Like ice cream at the boat ramp.

Pete:
They'll be like, do you remember how we used to go to the boat ramp or the lookout and have ice cream? And it's funny. We go there and again, talking about them making their own games. When we go to the lookout, there's these wooden fences, like two posts with a wooden beam between them. And the kids would be like, it's time to do parkour, like.

Ian:
Jumping off the fence.

Pete:
And they will. They try and get from one side. It's about, I don't know, 40m, 30m, and they try and go from one side to the other without touching the ground. I'm always like, don't fall off the cliff, guys. Be careful. We will! And then what else? I guess the other thing they're probably gonna remember, at least that I'll remember is they're getting fish and chips going down to the boat ramp and then feeding the seagulls.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I remember when, you know, the, the scraps at the end. The first time when Noah realised that was a thing? Blew his mind.

Ian:
You could actually.

Pete:
Yeah. I remember handing him the chip and just saying, Chuck it. And him just looking at me like, what?

Ian:
What?

Pete:
And I was like, trust me. And then the seagulls went ballistic and he just lost it laughing. It was just like, blah. And you're like, the seagulls are loving it. Yeah. So what about homework, dad? Did you enjoy homework?

Ian:
Yeah, I did yeah.

Pete:
Yeah?

Ian:
Yeah, I was a- here's a, here's a word for you. A conch.

Pete:
A conch. Is that like a shell?

Ian:
No, a conscientious kid. It was that..

Pete:
Conch!

Ian:
Contraction of "Ooh, you conch!"

Pete:
That was a slang term? I never heard that.

Ian:
Oh yeah. It was an insulting slang term. If you...

Pete:
Really?

Ian:
Yeah, yeah. Conscientious kid. So I actually enjoyed schoolwork and homework and I always found something to do.

Pete:
I'll have to add that to the slang ebook! Like, I don't think, I don't think that one's in there.

Ian:
Words beginning with C.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I don't remember really enjoying it that much. I definitely remember having it, but not really blowing my mind with it.

Ian:
Oh, there were times where it was irritating, but mostly I'd sort of done it at school.

Pete:
Yes,

Ian:
Yeah, but then I'd always find something to do.

Pete:
So what did you like most about, like, going to school? Was it the socialising side of it or was it the learning side of it as a kid?

Ian:
I like both.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Socialising was always important because, you know, you always got friends and you know, sport and doing all that sort of things, mucking around. But I enjoyed most subjects at school.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Didn't particularly like learning languages. Don't know why. I wish I'd learned it now, but.

Pete:
You learn English pretty well.

Ian:
Yeah I did, yeah.

Pete:
That was a conscious.

Ian:
No, exactly. I could do that by the time I was two.

Pete:
Just kind of happened!

Ian:
Yeah. No, I.

Pete:
What do you what do you think that is? Why do you think you didn't like languages as much? Was it a little more difficult for you than the other stuff?

Ian:
Probably, yeah. Maths and science were easy and I enjoyed them and I was interested in them.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
Funnily enough, what I, I suppose irritated me more than anything else about learning languages was all the sort of para learning that went on.

Pete:
What do you mean?

Ian:
When you're studying French? Right. We're going to study about Paris today. Fuck that. Just teach me how to speak French.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
I'll go to Paris myself and learn. Learn about it.

Pete:
Well, but the hardest part is you have to find things that people are going to enjoy and then use. Use that as the way in which to teach the language. Right?

Ian:
Yes, but.

Pete:
But back then, it's so artificial.

Ian:
You do an assignment on, you know, French agriculture.

Pete:
Underwater basket weaving.

Ian:
Exactly. French agriculture, none of which is written in French. Yeah. But yeah, so, you know, language is probably ironically, I did two languages at school. I chose a second one eventually and did Bahasa Indonesia as well for a couple of years. But everything else I really enjoyed.

Pete:
Yeah. What do you miss most from your childhood?

Ian:
Not caring.

Pete:
Yeah. Having the, the lack of..

Ian:
Lack of responsibility. Well, the lack of existential crisis. Yes, but but that's a that's a sort of a conscious thing, but.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
It's just that lack of caring about things that you're your life is experiential.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
Rather than planned. And, you know, and that's a young child. Once you're a teenager and things, your responsibility is, you know, the day to day stuff that you just the grind that you've got to do. But yeah, I just miss that carefree...

Pete:
I know. That's what I try to convey to my kids. I'm like, guys, you don't have to worry about bills. You just all you do is wake up and enjoy yourselves. And people tell you where you need to be at what time, what you need to do, and.

Ian:
Yeah, you don't want to be telling me...

Pete:
I know! And yes...

Ian:
But if you don't. Tell you what to do, you come to me and go, I'm bored. What am I going to do?

Pete:
If someone came down out of the sky right now and said, Pete.

Ian:
Here's your life.

Pete:
We will pay for everything that you need and take care of you. Just go to school, learn this, learn a language. I'd be like, fucking done. Like you. You cook for me, clean for me, like pay the bills. And all I have to do is just learn these subjects? I will totally do that. Yeah, yeah. I'm, I think the social aspect of it definitely like from the start that we were talking about earlier on, that's what I miss the most. Just having good friends all the time nearby around, not necessarily the same people every single day, like a really tight knit small group, but just seeing the same, like, you know, yeah, shooting the breeze with people you like.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And I think I kind of enjoy school pickup and drop off at times.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Because you have that. It's a little bit of that seeing the same people every day.

Ian:
Yeah. And it's like..

Pete:
Although it's kind of controlled and very.

Ian:
It is, but it's the it's also the noncommittal thing because you're only you're only gonna be there for 15 minutes.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. And you can say, hi. How are you going? Oh, yeah. Good. Yeah. How's Betty? See you. Yeah. That's.

Pete:
Yeah. It's funny, I find myself, though, sometimes, like, my kids will take forever to come out of school. And...

Ian:
And you're one of the last ones, standing there.

Pete:
Adam. Adam, one of the dads, has really taught his kid to just go get out. Because the problem we have, there's this car park at the primary school where you have to drive in, and then you have to, there's probably about 200m of this dirt pile that you have to drive down behind, come around, and then you can park. And so if you don't get in there to park, you have to park out in the field. And by the time the kids come out and all the parents get back in their cars, if you are not within the first few minutes...

Ian:
Right hand turn as well...

Pete:
You have to wait. You have to wait about ten minutes to get out. So anyway, he fucking hates waiting. So. So he's always just like, I don't know what he promises his kid, but his kid will just come out running, running first every time. And so I...

Ian:
Dive in the back of the car.

Pete:
I always get disappointed because he always says, Alright, see you! Like. And I don't get to chat to him for very long. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's go through some rapid fire questions and finish this one up then. Backyard or beach?

Ian:
Beach.

Pete:
Yeah. Beach. Zooper Dooper or Paddle pop?

Ian:
No.

Pete:
You didn't have either of those as kids?

Ian:
Oh we did! But no.

Pete:
You just don't like them?

Ian:
Oh, we had Sunny Boys, which were a pyramid-shaped tetra pack. Hence the word tetra.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ian:
Which were liquid.

Pete:
That's right.

Ian:
And then freeze them.

Pete:
Sort of like a Zooper Dooper, but the shape of it was.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah. That's right. I don't even know...

Ian:
And then they came then, then they, they were, they were orange, Sunny Boys were orange.

Pete:
I think I had them.

Ian:
And then Glugs came out. Glug was a cola-flavoured Sunny Boy.

Pete:
Oh, nice.

Ian:
They were the thing. They were the duck's nuts.

Pete:
My. My kids are constantly going after the cola Zooper Doopers. I don't know what it is about that flavour. And the cola lollipops.

Ian:
They have caffeine in it.

Pete:
You reckon?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I, I would have thought that that would...

Ian:
They have caffeine in it. That's the...

Pete:
That's the addiction.

Ian:
It's the instant hit. Yeah.

Pete:
Bike or skateboard?

Ian:
Bike.

Pete:
Skateboard. Summer or winter holidays?

Ian:
Summer.

Pete:
Yeah. Summer. Saturday morning cartoons or movies?

Ian:
We didn't watch movies on a Saturday morning. Sunday afternoon was movies.

Pete:
I think we had a Saturday mornings we would have cartoons.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And then Rage. Or Rage would have been...

Ian:
Rage. Rage was before...

Pete:
Yeah. Rage was all the music...

Ian:
6:00.

Pete:
Music show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember there would always be that, the woman doing the calisthenics type class as well beforehand. And you'd be like, oh, come on!

Ian:
Get on with it.

Pete:
And now you get older and you're like, you should have just been watching that, Pete! Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. The movies though, Sunday, Sunday afternoon movies were, Epic Theatre it was called, I think Channel Nine used to run them. And now all these old dubbed Italian movies, you know, super hero, old Hercules movies and stuff, they were a riot.

Pete:
Is this where you got into the spaghetti westerns?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
All right. Sleepover or camping?

Ian:
Camping.

Pete:
Yeah. Camping. Well, that's, both are good. Favourite childhood snack?

Ian:
Oh.

Pete:
I'm trying to think as well. I'm like, God, I can't, I can't think what I had.

Ian:
I, the...

Pete:
Biscuits and cheese with salami.

Ian:
Yeah, me, it was savoys and Vegemite.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay. Savoys and Vegemite. That was one that we used to have, too.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Favourite childhood smell?

Ian:
Favourite childhood smell.

Pete:
I'd probably say the forest and the rain. Sort of the wet forest smell.

Ian:
Beach.

Pete:
Beach? Salt.

Ian:
That salty iodine-y...

Pete:
Yeah. Seaweed. This is why you like whisky so much. From the island of Islay, the Isle of Islay. Favourite school holiday activity?

Ian:
Sport.

Pete:
Yeah, I think just being outside with friends..

Ian:
Whatever it was. Yeah.

Pete:
Favourite family tradition?

Ian:
We didn't have too many family traditions.

Pete:
But that was the tradition.

Ian:
Yeah. The traditions is there is no tradition. Christmas Eve dinners, Christmas.

Pete:
I think going to Wilson's prom.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Wilsons Promontory, the national park in in Victoria was probably one of the favourite.

Ian:
It's my favourite place in the world.

Pete:
We used to do that all the time. We need to do that again.

Ian:
We do.

Pete:
All right. Well, finishing up with the questions for the listeners, what's one tiny thing from childhood you guys still miss today? And what's one memory that instantly transports you back there? Again, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message and let me know. Besides that, thanks for joining us and I guess we'll see you next time.

Ian:
Bye!

Pete:
Tooroo!