Knitting, Sewing and Such - Part Three

                                                                   

I left Westleigh College when I completed grade 6. It seemed a good idea to start the high school levels from form 1.

My sister and I both left in 1960: by then she was already in the high school levels which possibly stopped at form 3, or maybe even 4.

Miss Clarice did not hide her displeasure when my mother informed her we would be leaving the school.

In fact, many of my original classmates had been leaving during my time there. The numbers were diminishing slowly as mentioned here.

This decision was also influenced by the fact that my family had moved from Preston to Hawthorn, and the commuting was not as easy as it had been when we lived closer to the school.

Fortunately there was another family who lived in Hawthorn and they were able to drive us to and from Westleigh most of the time.

One appreciates a good turn, but one doesn't often like to be beholden to anyone either.

Sometimes we went on public transport and that involved two trams and a bus. It seemed like an incredibly long trip!

I am quite sure Miss Clarice played a large role in organising this arrangement with the other family.

She really tried so hard to keep the school going and also to keep it relevant in such changing times. The '60's were fast approaching.

Possibly my biggest regret with regard to leaving was missing out on weaving, and not seeing my friends any more.

The school had several 4-shaft looms and this was something I was really looking forward to attempting.

I had seen the senior girls weave some very beautiful tartan scarves. This was not a very simple skill, but it was very rewarding as well as being an unusal craft in those days and it still is, although a lot of old crafts are enjoying a resurgence nowadays.

It also looked like a lot of fun to me!

I was very impressed with some of the efforts which were not unlike the one here.

My sister made a scarf on the loom. Her's was not exactly tartan but a plaid pattern of light blue and white. Many of the other girls also did a two-colour scarf, rather than a complicated tartan pattern.


Setting up the loom was time-consuming and very frustrating, especially if the yarn broke. I saw this happen several times. It makes one appreciate just how difficult, and expensive, a hand-woven item can be, and why it sometimes has knots in it.


Overall, in hindsight, I was lucky to have left when I did for quite a variety of reasons.

The video clip above shows a similar loom.

A Typical Day

Since I had an older sister I was at the school daily for two years before I actually became a pupil at Westleigh College.

My mother would take both of us and pick us up at the end of the day until she considered us old enough to go by ourselves.

In the very early fifties I recall there were still doubledecker buses that went along High Street from Preston, to Northcote and into the City of Melbourne.

They were green and yellow, as were the other buses and trams back then, and some still are!

I only recall one trip on a double-decker bus. I was quite disappointed when they took them out of service and replaced them with a single-decker bus, and then eventually with trams.

For a short time there were also "pram buses".These literally shadowed the other buses but not in the same ratio.

Since it was very much the era of the post-war baby boom it was necessary to have buses to accomodate all the young mothers with their prams.

Very few, if any young mothers drove cars back then so public transport was about the only option, and road traffic was light.

We would walk from our home near St George's Road in Preston to the bus stop in High Street. We passed through Croxton and Thornbury until we reached the closest stop to James Street, Northcote where the school was located.

Further historical information can be found here, and this link has an excellent map and additional information.

After a day of learning and social interaction with class mates we would go home with our mother.

Sometimes we would walk down to Separation Street, rather than catching the bus at the Northcote Townhall.

This was always a bit of a treat as we often went to the Junior Shop for additonal clothes and items of school uniform, or we were bought a cake or some sweets from the local cake shops or milk bars.

Cream horns and eclairs were very much a favourite from the Dutch bakery. Amazingly I am now friends with the daughter of the people who made these excellent treats!

The local newsagency was a great source of pens, pencils and other essential school stationery items. We often looked longlingly in the window at the box of 72 Derwent pencils until the day we were given them for our respective birthdays.

I recall there was a Woolworths shop on the corner of Separation Street and High Street, but it was nothing like any Woolworths store today. We still enjoyed going to it, and we also enjoyed going to the Coles shop in Preston which was located just where our bus stopped. Both shops sold just about everything from clothes to stationery and personal items like cosmetics.

There was no self-service, or check-outs back then. That was the main difference. Self-service supermarkets came into being in the later part of the 1950's.

Most of the cheaper items were made in Japan, not China like they are today.

Although we used the High Street buses for many years they were eventually replaced by trams that looked like this one.

When we arrived home we usually changed out of our uniform and went out to play with the other children in the street. No television as yet so we had to create our own entertainment.

Some of us had bikes, roller skates and scooters but generally we went to the park in St George's Road to use the swings, monkey bar and slide.

Needless to say very few of us were overweight from sitting too much!

This all began to change when the first neighbour got a television set in 1956, just in time for the Melbourne Olympic Games.

The temptation of a small black and white television set a few doors away was quite irresistible for both the neighbourhood kids and their parents.

I am quite sure the owners of the first television sets had a few regrets! No one ever wanted to go home.