COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL LIFE

Although the 1930s was a time of considerable hardship for some, many interviewees remembered this period as one where family and community played a significant role in their experiences and memories. Even in isolated areas where entertainment was primarily with brothers and sisters, there were always other people whose lives were interwoven with our narrators.  Local groups or clubs also emerged with the expansion of the region.

Everyone had some relationship with the water.  Pat Romeril lived at Narrabeen at this time. For her swimming was very much a family affair:

Living here we lived in the water. My parents started the Narrabeen Swimming Club and Dad was a great one to have us taught swimming. Dad taught us all to swim … he built the platform for the diving board and we used to swim across the lake and they had to register with the NSW Swimming Association. When the Narrabeen rock pool was finished we moved over there. Mum was always the secretary or the treasurer and dad was always a starter.

In Manly, The Corso was the main touch point for social activity. Max Christensen talks about dancing and the courting that went with it:

If you walked The Corso you would always run into someone and you’d walk with them and you often went down The Corso to the wharf and it was one of those things where the young boys picked up the girls and the girls went down looking for the young boys and it was a terrific social era. We also had dance halls in Manly. The Coconut Grove was down on the Steyne opposite the Manly Surf Club where the Dungowan is today. Run by a bloke called Tiny Douglas and it was decked up with coconut trees and it was a good venue for balls and all that sort of thing. Not too many people even had a radio. Weekends we’d go dancing of a Wednesday night.  We’d pick up the girls or meet them at the dance and go off there, only cost 1 shilling or 1/6 and there was the Dispensary Hall in Eustace Street; you could also go out to Dee Why, to the Glendowie if there was a dance organised.

While the churches were not central to everyone’s lives there were many who found not just spiritual succour but also friendship and a social life from at their church and church groups.

Pat May recalls the Anglican Fellowship with fondness:

It was a different world altogether then … we went to the Anglican church, St Marks, but when we went it was a little weatherboard church.  We also had a little church, St James at Curl Curl, also St Phillips.  We used to have a Fellowship tea every Sunday night at one of the churches. There were four churches so I was never home for Sunday tea. Through the fellowships we did a lot of hiking. We played Tarzan and Jane with the monkey vines and things.  We went to the dam to have a barbeque and go swimming in the evening…Your church was the focus of young people’s activities and we didn’t look outside it.