Rugby league in black and white

The Age

28-04-2025

After missing a sponsorship opportunity in the 1980s and electing to forgo the West Coast Coolers, Nicolas Harrison of Evans Head sees another football appellation for Western Australia: 'Praise be to our newest NRL team: All hail the Perth Pandas!'
'I was born in the latter stages of the war and grew up in a mining community where the only cars were owned by the doctor and the vet,' says Allen Dodd of Kirribilli. 'Most merchants undertook horse-and-cart deliveries (C8), the most memorable being the butcher. After days of heavy snow, his cart stopped outside our house, which was on a steep bank. The subsequent loss of friction between ice and steel hooves left cart and horse (in that order) sliding down the bank, ending up in the front garden of the bottom-most resident. Happily, the horse survived, which is more than can be said of the butcher's stock, which vanished rapidly!'
Ellen Kassel of Collaroy experienced the delivery caper further afield: 'I remember getting ice, milk and bread deliveries in upstate New York growing up, but the best of that world was the sharpener man and his truck. When we heard the bells on that old truck, my grandmother would run for her scissors, and my dad, the carving knife. All the neighbours out in the queue, chatting with their very sharp things in hand. Did this happen in Australia, too? Couldn't happen now, I 'fear'.'
Port Macquarie's favourite son, Don Bain (C8), is getting a lot of love presently: 'Thank you, Don, for that heart-lifting laugh,' says Caz Willis of Bowral. 'It's thought-provoking to know if the future will hold musk sticks or musk Lifesavers. Think I'll stay with Caramello Koalas.'
The man himself also has an interesting take on the humble night-soil slinger: 'Two reasons I'm glad I wasn't a dunny man (C8): number one; number two.'