Getting started

I grew up in Penrith in the 1940s, 50s and 60s when it was just a quiet country town, just 50 kilometres or so from Sydney.  My purpose in writing this blog is to share some memories of the town that I loved and to let younger readers know how happy and simple Penrith was before it developed into the huge, traffic-heavy and the complex city it now is.

Penrith had some characters then who would probably not even be noticed now that it is so big and busy. People like Old Tom, Count O’Meagher and his 1912 Renault, the legendary police detectives Killen and McKenzie, the guy who had lost a hand either in the war or an accident but had interchangeable replacements (a leather hand or a hook), the chain-smoking doctor, the bookie in the hat, and old Mrs Sandy, Essie Price, Roley Price the barber, and Mick Griffin, the dentist, all of whom I will write about in future posts.

My happiest childhood days were spent at school and I shall recollect some memories of the Infants School, the Primary School and, most of all, Penrith High.

And every kid knew every other kid, and even though we did not necessarily get on with some of those kids, or they with us, we all recognised each other as fellow members of a close community and I reckon if one of us was in trouble, even a sworn enemy would have helped us out.

Stinking hot days without the benefit of air-conditioning in homes or cars and frosty winters never seemed to spoil our fun, which was almost always outside, unlike today.

I have called this blog ‘Standing under the Weir’ because that is what we often did on a hot Penrith day. Ride down to the river to cool off and stand under the water cascading from the weir. Sometimes one of us would sit on the weir and scissor our legs to make the water flow wax and wane on those underneath. Childish fun.

I left Penrith in 1965 to live in the lower Blue Mountains and eventually moved to the Wollongong area in 1983 but my family retained the family home and other places well into the 21st century.

I sometimes return to Penrith but it is not the town of my childhood. Streets that I once knew so well have been widened or diverted or have just disappeared. The old home is now a vacant lot and I walk down High Street seeing only strangers. There was once a time when every face I saw was known to me.

Yet Penrith remains, and will always remain, in my memory and in my heart.

I started these pages for several reasons. I wanted to record somewhere my memories of Penrith as it once was before my generation faded away. And I wrote it partly for my children who, although they were all born in Penrith, never enjoyed the kind of childhood there that I did and who wonder why, when I talk about it, I do so with such affection. And I am writing this blog for myself so that I can, in a way, experience again the joys of my childhood.

These pages are my memories and, like all memories, may not always be totally accurate. Readers are invited to draw my attention to any factual errors that I have made. Discussion and contributions are always welcome.

Anyhow, I hope that future blogs will bring back memories to those who lived in Penrith in these years and let the rest know how great it was to grow up in Penrith in those days.

Contributions

If anyone wants to add their memories of Penrith to mine (from whatever era), I would be happy to include them in this blog. So too with photographs. If you have any photographs that you would like to share, please feel free to send them to me by email.

All contributions will be acknowledged unless the contributor prefers otherwise.

Other interesting websites about Penrith

Max Cowan shares some of his memories of Penrith on his website 365 Short Memories.

Penrith Library has a website called Penrith City Local History.

A more contemporary blog is Living next door to Sydney at http://www.livingnextdoortosydney.com.au/tag/www-livingnextdoortosydney-penrith-blog/

Facebook groups

There are some interesting Facebook groups too.

Penrith High School when it was truly selective is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/120103878002450/

Memories of Penrith and surrounding suburbs is at https://www.facebook.com/memoriesofpenrith/

High Street

I lived on High Street until I was 12 in an apartment above my father’s shop at number 391. It was home for me and I have fond memories of the street and the way it changed over my childhood years.

On this site, you will find various memories of High Street as I knew it in the 1040s and 1950s, but I am not the first to wander down memory lane. Clyde Mitchell has written a wonderful memoir of the main street of Penrith, its commercial and for many years community hub, as he remembered it in the 1920s. You can find it online by going to Penrith Council records at https://penrithcity.spydus.com/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/SET/OPAC/ARCENQ/15000239/3100260?NREC=50. Search out item 55 – High Street Penrith in the 1920s as I knew it – and click on the icon shown as PDF. This will take you to it.