There is a very old show ground here in Albury and it reminds me of the old show ground in Sydney years ago.
Yesterday I was so fed up with the lock down I took my daughter there.
No lock gates ,I drove straight In and once inside you are surrounded by old sheds and barns and parvilions. There where stables and sheds full of horses and chickens.
I said to a guy who was fixing a tractor, hey mate all right if I look around with my daughter.
Yeah mate!
So I wondered through all the stables and barns looking all the horses and animals with my daughter, so much freedom here to wonder about ,no locked gates ,no one telling you clear off !
The people are so laid back here,it's great.
Far less restrictions and rules . Coming from Sydney I find that Attitude great. It's like how things were when I was a kid.

Pete

Back in the days before the Sydney Football Stadium was built, the big Rugby matches, including the sevens tournaments were held at Concord Oval, near where I lived as a kid. I remember going down there after the big matches to collect cans. It wasn't an issue with the groundsman, who said, go right ahead, take as many as you could carry. He probably didn't know at the time that I'd brought some wool bale bags down with me and that my old man would be down later with a box trailer to cart them home. Back in those days, no awkward questions about risk assessments, insurance, etc. Things were simpler then but at the same time there were fewer gold diggers too - far fewer people prepared to sue a land owner if they slipped and grazed their left toe.

I always tended to think big with jobs like that. There were plenty of cans left by the crowd and I took plenty. The old man took a small commission too but that was fair since he provided the transport. In those days Comalco was paying around 85c/kg for cans. I used to crush them to make sure as many as possible would fit into the bags and they had to be rolled onto the trailer. 2 bags at a time would fit. Everyone else would show up at the cash in centre with one or two bins full. They must have thought "where the hell did all those cans come from?". I'd just walk away counting the readies.

Brad you just reminded me.

Think of the vat of molten aluminium where they melted down those cans.
Consider what would happen if a full can was tipped in, mixed with a load of empties, and it made it to the bottom, instantly becoming superheated steam.

A lecturer I had at tech worked for Comalco. He described the explosion that killed several people, I won't try to describe how....

A risk you wouldn't consider, it seems no-one did...

Back in the day, some kids at school would collect cans around the neighbourhood for pocket money. They would put a quantity of sand in each can before crushing it with a crusher someone's father had constructed. I guess by the time they handed them over for cash they had probably added about half a kg of sand to their bagful.

Hahah I remember that GTC , I also remember the Match Box Draw with a string on it shoved up the change door of the Public Phones , The kids would put them up there and then come back and pull a string to get the money that was collected ,,,hahah

I don't recall that trick, bit I do recall being able to call home free from a PT by yelling into the receiver rather than rolling four pennies into the slot. You could buy a good bag of lollies for four pence.

https://www.telephonecollecting.org/Bobs%20phones/images/AustPostOffice/AutoPayphone1930s.jpg

It's interesting to read the story of the development of armoured public phones in Oz. The PMG had a section whose sole task it was to come up with ways of defeating every new trick that the public used to either steal the money or avoid inserting any.

You guys must be older than me. I don't remember 4-penny phones at all. The oldest I recall was 5 cents, although some phones could take 1 and 2 cent coins (the red phones). In fact the only thing I remember about pre-decimal currency is when we got rid of it. Although I do remember what the coins looked like I have no recollection of the notes at all - maybe we were just too poor.

https://www.telephonecollecting.org/Bobs%20phones/Pages/AustPostOffice/Payphones.htm

Nup , This was coins not pennies , I'm 50 .... I geuss perhaps I was hanging around the wrong crowd as young boy .... And an Adult ! I was the youngest of all the boys by a long way ,Often many years

Interesting bunch of phones in that link. I remember the A-B phone, the red phone, the grey Long Tom, and the various bluish metal ones at the bottom of the page.

Ian, just like throwing ice cubes into a vat of boiling oil only a bit more potent.

Getting cheap or free long distance calls in those days was possible if you knew the tricks or had a connection....

In the late 60s my sister rang us at home for Christmas from the UK. We were all surprised and worried about the cost but my sister said "Don't worry!"

The connection was an unusual vox simplex one. You had to wait for the other end to stop talking.

Well after about an hour, a VERY angry operator came across the line. "Who connected you?! Who connected you?!!" Click.

Well Ian my dad worked at telecom and did something fun on numerous occasions and that was to ring up different company’s and connect the lines together and he just listened on a speaker

“Hello how can I help you?”
“Who is this? You rang me!”

Sounded like a lot of fun

and connect the lines together

The phone system often did that for you anyway. Back in the days of step-by-step exchange equipment it wasn't uncommon to pick up your phone to make a call only to find that you're now part of a 3-way conversation, as if you were on a party line in a country town. Receiving calls for another number wasn't uncommon either.

That problem mostly went away when the old gear was replaced by crossbar technology.

However, I once worked for a mob whose in-house phone system was still step-by-step (housed in its own large walk in type cupboard and you could hear the selectors clunking away from outside the door) so we would have those sorts of issues on internal calls.

And speaking of telephone related pranks ... at a Telecom Exchange which shall remain nameless, the staff on early morning and late night shifts would play all sorts of games to keep themselves interested. One was to use the Test Bench's continuous ring function to call a mate's house at 5am. Instead of the traditional ring-ring, the phone would ring its bells off like a fire alarm.

Another prank: the exchange's lunch room overlooked the street, and across the road at an intersection stood the traditional red phone box, very close to a bus stop. At busy times there would be a queue of people waiting for a bus. All phone boxes have unlisted numbers but those are available to exchange staff, and back in those days (if not today), public phones contained bells, so the guys would ring the phone box to see what happened. Usually people in the bus queue just looked quizzically at the box and did nothing, however occasionally someone would go in and answer the phone, whereupon the prankster would say "Hello, when is the next bus coming?"

Actually all the public phone boxes had their numbers written inside them. You just had to know where to look and decipher the number.