Dennis Francis' Memories of Mosman

Dennis on his way to Malvern school

My earliest memories of Mosman was when I attended Malvern Kindergarten; it was a lovely old house in Raglan Street. I remember rolling down the grassy slope at the front of the house with the other children. At the end of the day all the mothers would be waiting for us, talking to each other on the footpath. I still have a photo of our class and many of theses children went through the same school system as I did – Mosman Infants, Mosman Primary and Mosman High.

It was at Malvern that I met Bruce Trayes and became lifelong friends. I grew up living at 81 Shadforth Street from 1942 in my grandparent’s home. In those days our street was full of kids round about my age. We played cricket across the street with no fear of traffic, very few of our neighbours owned cars. Mosman Prep School was our playground; they had a cricket pitch and a tennis court.

At the end of our street lived Mr and Mrs Hatherly. In the 1950s they ran a children’s program over the wireless and were known as Bobby and Betty Bluegum. They would read out birthday announcements for the children and I remember on one of my birthdays Bobby Bluegum told me over the wireless to follow the length of string leading from the kitchen up the back path and into the shed. When I opened the shed door, tied to the string was my first puppy, a black and white foxie called Nipper. All this of course had been previously planned over the phone by my mother. Also I listened to serials over the wireless, my favourites being, The Search for the Golden Boomerang and Biggles.

Malvern Kindergarden Christmas Party July 1947

Malvern Kindergarden July 1947

I remember on Christmas mornings very early you would hear the bells ringing as the kids travelled down the footpath on their new Cyclops cars (always red), dinkies and scooters. Many of the householders would rake up the leaves from the footpath and burn them off in the gutter.

I remember Mum taking my sister and myself up to the Kinema Cinema of a Saturday morning for the kids birthday party; we would all line up on the stage and get a slice of birthday cake each, then sing happy birthday to the child – the Mosman RS Club now stands on this site.

Every year we celebrated the Highland Gathering at Rawson Oval. The Scottish Pipe and Drum Bands would march down Military Road to the oval and the footpaths were always crowded.

My grandfather, Robert (Bob) Milburn, his stepbrother Jack Chidzey and myself would catch the Mosman Bay ferry to the Quay and make our way to the Sydney Produce Markets where we would buy live chooks, put them in Hessian bags with their heads sticking out of the slits and catch the ferry home. My grandfather and I used to collect prune tins full of blackberries, picked from beneath the footbridge which runs above Reid Park. I would often cross the old wooden footbridge at the back of Mosman Bay and fish off the pontoon of Mr Mulgannon’s Boatshed, now the site of the Mosman Bay Marina.

My grandparents on my father’s side, Lou and Gertie Francis, had fish shops on Military Road, Mosman. My father would take orders and deliver the fresh seafood on foot. Spit Junction and Mosman had a night watchman and I would often see him doing his rounds as I walked home from night tennis. He would check all locks of the shops – I sometimes spotted billposters.

Where the Country Road store is now used to be the Mosman RSL Club and before that it used to be a Cinema, where I am told my Grandparents and Mother watched ‘The Jazz Singer’, an early talking movie. I was told Grandma asked Mum when does the picture (movie) start as she did not realise the picture had already begun as the actors were actually talking.

Trams were the mode of travel in Mosman. They went to The Spit, Balmoral, Mosman Bay and the Zoo. I remember the conductor had to change the points at Spit Junction. My family never owned a car and a big day out for my sister and me on a weekend was for us all to walk up to Spit Junction and hop on a double-decker bus, rush up to the top deck and rush to the front seat for a bus ride to Manly. On Manly Wharf visitors would throw coins into the water and watch the local boys dive and retrieve the coins. Also the Wharf supported a Fun Pier where we would have rides on the Octopus and the Ghost Train – both of these rides went over the water. There was also an Aquarium or you could go for a speedboat ride or a donkey ride along Manly Beach. A bigger day out was a bus ride to Palm Beach where Mum would buy us a double ice cream cone.

Houseboat at Fisher Bay, The Spit

We lived on a houseboat for a while at Fisher Bay, The Spit. I was seven then and Mum cooked on Primus’s and we generated our own electricity; Dad was a commercial fisherman at the time. Sometimes we walked around the bush track to catch the tram to school but ticks were a worry so mostly we rowed across to Mrs Ferguson’s boatshed and then left our dingy there till after school. I remember carrying big blocks of ice in our dingy for our ice chest.

We regularly beached the houseboat and repainted the hull. I remember a Guy Fawkes Night we had on the beach, my sister and I would often watch hundreds of dolphins playing from our bedroom window. I learnt to swim at Sam Herfords Baths and I remember watching Murray Rose train there; Sam was his coach. Dad would clean the mussels off the wooden pylons for Sam. We cooked and ate these as we did from off the pylons of the old Spit Bridge.

I had a great uncle Cecil Lewis (Uncle Goog) who lived in a tin shanty beside the track that led to Chinamans Beach. We would shoot the net at Clontarf, Griffins then Claires before Chinamans Beach, hang the cotton net out to dry then bbq the mullet over an open fire. Dad and his cousin Vic Saville used to tan the net on this site; evidence of that is still there today. When money was short we would wait till high tide then we would swim at the back of the baths to avoid the entrance fee.

Some Sundays I would take down to Pearl Bay a baked lunch for Herman, a gentleman who lived on a very small boat. Also Bruce and myself would feed a feral cat here, she had a litter and I asked Mum could I bring one home; the answer was ‘yes’ as long as it was a male. Bruce and myself selected a sturdy male, ‘Whiskey’ (black and white) – she had over seventy kittens and we found a home for every one.

I remember the Clifton Gardens baths and we drank at the Clifton Gardens Hotel. Once a week we had a fruit and vege merchant (Paddy) deliver to our street with fresh produce from the markets, by horse and cart. The horse knew which householder supported Paddy because he would make his own way to the next house – the wheel marks in the curb are still there today. My grandfather and our neighbour Mr Langley always had a bucket and spade handy to collect the manure. We bought ice from the ice man and fresh bread, honey and jam rolls (still hot) from the baker. I remember the rabbit man and the clothes prop seller. The garbos in those days would enter your property and empty your garbage tins and they were tin not plastic like today. You would hear him working his way down the street, but no one to my knowledge ever complained. The milkman used to deliver our milk, running up the side path and placing the bottles on the windowsill. You could buy bulk milk but it was said if it had a blue tinge it had been diluted too much. Often of a night you would hear geese and swans passing overhead and sometimes if you were lucky you would see them during the day flying in their V shape formation and a bird taking over the lead.

Bruce and I used to save scrap metal and sell it to the scrap metal merchant at North Sydney for pocket money; we got 9 pence per pound for lead and 3/6 per pound for copper – aluminium was not worth saving.

The Mosman Hotel of a late afternoon was always packed, standing room only with drinkers hanging out of the doors on Friday afternoon. The Salvation Army Band played on Spit Road; they also ran a chocolate wheel which was always popular. My father’s parents lived at 23A Spit Road which is now the Garrison Retirement Village. I believe my grandfather played football for the local team, The Trafalgars, but I have no evidence of this.

As a boy I worked for the Newsagent at Spit Junction. I started very early in the morning rolling newspapers with brown paper and glue, then after school I would do my paper run, delivering papers to regular customers and also visit the many large Convalescent Homes (Rest Homes) on my run.

Some of the shops I remember at Spit Junction were Amos the Removalists, now a block of units; a beautiful old home on the corner of Cowles and Military Road now the Crystal Car Wash; Kerslakes Chocolates; a Ham & Beef Shop; Mintys Drapers; Line & Co Drapers; a plant and seedling shop with the open window; Perry’s greengrocer; Mr Whybrow the Chemist; Miami Milk Bar; Mr Whittles Hardware; McIllwraiths Grocers with the sliding shop assistants and the drawers; Pop Foys Bicycle Repair Shop; Horsnels Shoes; the Wine Bar with the swinging louvered doors; The Pets Pantry and the Kings Cinema.

The shops at Mosman Junction I remember were Farquharsons French Polishers; Erics Greengrocer where we bought sugar cane by the foot; Mr & Mrs Lopez Greengrocer who displayed two large models of sailing boats in their shop; Derrins grocer shop where we sat on high Arnotts stools with no back support while Mum asked for a pound of Arnotts plain assorted biscuits please from the tins; Newsagents; Butcher shop with water running down the inside of the window (I sold old newspaper to the butcher here); Northern Suburbs Supply Store; Mallams chemist; Moran & Cato Grocers; Ham & Beef Shop; Wine Bar with swinging louvered doors and Pavlovics Fish & Chip Shop. Further down Avenue Road I remember watching black and white television with my grandfather and others of a night from the footpath, it was displayed from an Electrical Appliance store. Further down Avenue Road there were two butcher shops, a newsagent, two grocers, a greengrocer and a chemist (Ian Craig had this shop for a while). We had a coal and coke merchant whose property backed onto Memory Park – we had coke delivered to our house. I remember this man was always black with coal dust and always had a large sack over his shoulder to protect himself from the sharp coke bags which he carried and I remember he was well liked within the community.

Mosman life at the end of the forties and throughout the fifties was a lot slower than it is today. We knew nearly everybody in the street and we always had time to stop and talk. My grandson is the seventh generation to live in Mosman. My Mother’s Father started on the trams in 1900 and retired in 1952. His first job was a sand boy where he walked in front of the tram in wet weather sprinkling sand on the tracks for better traction. My Father’s Mother Gertie Lewis was the Australian Single Sculling Champion from 1906 till 1911. She defended this title successfully five times taking on any challenger. She rowed against a New Zealand Maori at the Spit and won. She retired undefeated and was also a handy swimmer and diver and was a rival to her friend the great Annette Kellerman.