CONTRIBUTORS

72 people who were living in Manly Mosman, Pittwater and Warringah during the 1930s were interviewed between January 2000 and October 2001 In total 90 hours of interviews were recorded and provided the material for On a Shoestring.

The group was composed of 30 men and 42 women, including three couples and three sets of siblings. All of the interviewees were born between 1900 and 1929. Most were born after 1910 and were teenagers working or just finishing school during the 1930s, ten were adults. The majority were Australian, though several were first-generation children of English migrants.

People's sense of attachment to the suburb as their local place emerged strongly from this project. Most of the project's contributors were strongly attached to the area where they lived and still live there. There were many continuities between the past they remembered and their life as elderly people now. This is common with oral histories, where the past and present are often blurred, but was particularly  striking with this group who had  been to school, grown up, married, raised children and gone out to work across a lifetime from these places

The names and photos (where available) of all contributors are grouped alphabetically and can be accessed via the menu on the left.