Today's Golden age portrait is of beautiful Noleen.
Noleen had so many amazing photos from over the years. She said she enjoyed posing for photos back in the day, & today she asked to wear the wings for some of her pics as she thought they looked beautiful in the photos she had seen.
Noleen has a wristwatch collection of 120 pieces! she said she wasn't sure which one to wear today..
In one of the images I took from her album, she has a piece of singer Johnny Ray's suit. Apparently teen girls tore it from him when he arrived in Sydney.. & Noleen sent away her sixpence to get a piece of it.
This is her story..
I am turning 90 on 15th September.
I was born in 1933 and I grew up on a dairy farm in Salt Ash, Newcastle.
I was the eldest in the family and I have 2 brothers and 1 sister.
I attended primary school at Salt Ash public school, then when I turned 12 I attended Wickham Home Science School. I left school when I was 15 to help my father on the dairy farm until my brother who was seven years younger than me left school to take over. By this time I was 22 years old and between some of that time I worked at the local shop at Salt Ash.
After I turned 22, I got a job at the Williamtown RAAF base where I was to meet my husband to be and I was married at 23 on 9th March 1957 at the Methodist church at Williamtown.
At 24 years old I had my first baby and went on to have seven children, 4 sons and 3 daughters.
I also have 20 grandchildren and 15 great grandchildren.
It was good growing up in the 1950’s. On a Saturday night, all the local young ones used to go to the movies at the Savoy Theatre at Stockton.
Before we went to the movies we used to hang out at Seagulls Cafe which was down near the ferry wharf at Stockton. The boys would all turn up on their motorbikes and hang out. It was very different back then as you weren’t allowed to drink until you turned 21 and very few young people smoked.
They had a jukebox at the cafe and I remember playing Johnny Ray singing “Cry” and Frankie Lane also.
At interval time at the movies, we would buy something from the milk bar next to the theatre.
You could buy a small packet of salted peanuts for sixpence, which is 5 cents these days and a Cadbury’s chocolate for 4 shillings, which is 40 cents today.
You used to be able to buy a packet of potato chips with no added salt and when you opened the packet there was a small bag of salt in there and you had to sprinkle the salt on yourself, I think they cost about 1 shilling, which was 10 cents.
I also remember when World War 2 ended. I was in 6th class and I was 12 years old.
I remember how things were rationed, like clothing and food etc.
We were very fortunate as we lived off the land as we could grow our own food and my mother sewed our clothes.
When we had droughts we had to go easy on the tank water. We all had a bath once a week, which was a Saturday night before you went out somewhere. There was no showers back then.
On weekdays we had a wash in a dish of water.
Today, people think we had hard times back then, but we didn’t think so at the time, everyone was happy, the days seemed longer and there was plenty of time.
Today, we hardly have time to do what we want, time is going so fast and I cannot believe that I am turning 90 very soon. I just don’t know where the time has gone.
I think most people who are around my age today would think back to the past and call them, “The Good Old Days”
