Happy Days

Loads of kids heading off on a Sunday School picnic, Feb 1958. Our D30 (still got it) in the middle. Not sure who owned the other trucks, but all local Vermont (Vic) orchardists. Safety instruction consisted of "hang on!"

Steve

Great pictures arrr the good old days.

Now whats this about a new addition to the fleet come on spill the beans.

Trevor

Trev,
You are getting out and about way too much! Must be no grass with this dry weather. You're correct though, pics soon.

Happy Days I bet they were!!
Love seeing the loadstar on the left!! Thats what colour mine was originally now its green (light and dark), red, silver and white possibly some cream there also....
Good pic though! Thanks for sharing

Nice old pics ya got there, I imagine the kids are standing on something in the photo?? otherwise their legs are very long.

Nice old pics ya got there, I imagine the kids are standing on something in the photo?? otherwise their legs are very long.

Probably standing on the layer of kids underneath!!

My era was the furniture-van one: usually on portable benches brought out of the church hall, and probably carrying trestle tables too, from which buckets of Kia-ora cordial would be served at the conclusion of the novelty races.
Likewise, when heading to scout camps in the troop Ford truck (posted in a different thread), the folding benches which would be used in our eating shelters were our benches in the back of the truck.
A lot of furniture vans did have side windows, to allow for the Sunday doubling of duties.

Nanny state, nanny state
Oh nanny nanny nanny
Nanny state, nanny state
Oh nanny nanny nanny...


Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

The kids would have sat on kerosene cases. "Keros" were used by apple growers to pick their crop into, then taken to coolstores for storage, the fruit was then packed into other cases for market. Dad can remember collecting keros from case merchants who bought them from oil companies such as Vacuum, Plume and Texaco etc who used them to import two, four gallon tins of kerosene or other "motor spirit". Now it's all done in bulk, both fuel and apples! Steve.

I'd love a dollar for everyone of those I've picked up full of apples. My family comes from Swishy country when it was orchards as far as the eye could see.

That looks like the church hall on the cnr of Canterbury and Mitcham rds. I grew up about 1 mile from there, in that exact era, but we were more aligned with Mitcham. The State school was on the other corner, now a retirement village.

I don't recollect any trips in open trucks like that, but plenty in closed-in furniture vans. I seem to recall wooden bench type seats running lengthwise, probably taken from out of the scout hall or the church hall?

And yes, once you got away from the CBD of Mitcham (ie. the strip shops along Whitehorse rd, and the railway station, and of course White's Grain & Produce Store in Mitcham rd opposite the hotel) there was heaps of orchards about. I had mates with Anglias and Prefects and we used to charge around the orchards occasionally, that'd be late 60s.

Milk was delivered in Mitcham by horse and cart till early 60s at least - I used to deliver the morning papers on a pushy in about '62/63 and the milko was definitely still going then. Glass bottles though, very hygienic.

There was still a horse trough in Mitcham rd outside the pub till I think the early 70s?