Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me; where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops - that's where you'll find me (Billy Thorpe version)

Air New Zealand's DC8 service to Sydney in the sixties

Wie geht's?

As you know from that previous post, I have just returned from Australia. Our family holiday in Oz was the first one in some while.

Outside of visiting Aussie airports in transit to elsewhere, the last time I had an actual family holiday there was in 1973 with mum, dad, and Ross.

I know it was 1973 because I bought a slew of albums back to NZ, like Led Zeppelin's Houses Of The Holy.

Prior to that '73 family holiday we had also gone to Sydney in the sixties - 1965 or 1966 (I was 8 or 9, Ross 6/7) and 1968 or 1969 (I was 11 or 12).

Ross and I are vague on the exact dates. In my head we were there 1966 and 1969 as well as 1973 but it could be a year earlier.

Each time we stayed in Kings Cross (sic). I'm not sure why. Maybe the central location or the rail links? Maybe Burroughs Wellcome had an office close by?

My randomly compiled memories of those three trips:

• Flying into Sydney and seeing red dirt and brown grass alongside the runway.
• Getting off that DC8 in 1965/66 and walking across the tarmac and seeing groups of American soldiers on R'n'R from Vietnam.
• Walking around Kings Cross - seeing that famous El Alamein Fountain, dad buying and enjoying Grissini Breadsticks (exotic)
• Visiting the David Jones department store and buying Dinky toys/Hot Wheels and vinyl (Sgt. Pepper's, Deep Purple's Made in Japan, Moody Blues' Seventh Sojourn, Houses of the Holy among them).

David Jones department store

• Catching underground trains (Underground Trains!!!), walking down the slope to the platform and seeing that donut making machine in the window and eating hot fresh cinnamon donuts from a bag. Whaaaat???
• Walking across the Harbour bridge
• A trip out to Bondi Beach
• Boat ride across Darling Harbour to Taronga Park Zoo.
• Visiting the Blue Mountains and the cable car ride, we visited a colleague of dad's at their house on that bit as well.
• Having a special fish lunch with dad in a large restaurant that (I think) was part of a large department store. Mum took Ross (he's allergic fish) off somewhere else.
• Ross enjoying a visit to the cockpit of the plane (pretty sure that happened - to get a stamp or a signature from the pilots I think - different times in the sixties)
• Broken bottles cemented in around the top of a wall acting as an effective deterrent but come on - broken bottles!!
• A bad flight back from that 1973 visit - put me off flying for a long time!
• Wanting to watch The Beatles Yellow Submarine on the TV but mum insisted we were going out for a walk! I was not happy! The Beatles on TV! The agony.
• Eating exotic cereals like Fruit Loops and Cocoa Puffs.
• Watching different channels on TV. Watching cartoons on TV. Whaaaat? (Australia was like Disneyland for us - so many things we didn't have at home in Royal Oak).

Why did all of those distinct (hopefully accurate) memories pop into my head? Apart from the family holiday, I managed to pick up copies of Billy Thorpe's two books. The first of which is called Sex and Thugs and Rock'n'Roll: A Year in Kings Cross 1963 - 1964.

Given we were on a family holiday in Kings Cross at roughly the same time as Billy Thorpe was getting his career started there, albeit in a totally different Kings Cross to that one we were experiencing, it evokes many memories - all good (apart from that flight back in 1973).

Weird really - our totally innocent, NZ, super straight, conservative, nuclear family must have looked incredibly alien to the usual inhabitants of the Cross. I sensed this at the time. There were those soldiers from Vietnam for a start. They weren't there to shop at David Jones and visit Taronga Park Zoo. No sir! I was also aware of adult entertainment happening in the area - hard not to be when The Pink Pussycat and Les Girls are adding to the scenery.

But, we were so young and innocent. The sixties were happening around our family bubble - we weren't immersed in it at all. Seeing men and women cuddling and kissing in public wasn't something we ever witnessed in Auckland.

Although we were at an impressionable age, Ross and I were just kids, enjoying the new-ness of flying overseas in giant planes and experiencing the huge city that we found ourselves in. 

I mean: multiple television channels!! Wowsers!

Love and peace - Wozza