Life in Australia: Sydney - YouTube Documentary

[Transport Buff]

Found this rather interesting short documentary on YouTube called Life in Australia: Sydney. It forms part of a documentary series based on various cities and regional centres promoting and encouraging immigration in Australia. It is filmed in the 1960s.

Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUdeLgfWgUM

Hope this of interest to fellow readers & viewers.

Cheers,
Transport Buff

[angelfox]

The video is really interesting, but now everything has changed and in Sydney everything is not as shown in the video.

[eddy]

My wife thinks every generation has advantages and disadvantages but we sure have lost a lot of freedom now in the nanny state of NSW.

Check out all the PPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAgVUCtyhPs

[tonyp]

Somebody needs to tell Mrs Doonan that she didn't shut the garage door properly.

[tonyp]

Found this rather interesting short documentary on YouTube called Life in Australia: Sydney. It forms part of a documentary series based on various cities and regional centres promoting and encouraging immigration in Australia. It is filmed in the 1960s.

Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUdeLgfWgUM

Hope this of interest to fellow readers & viewers.

Cheers,
Transport Buff

I certainly enjoyed watching this thank you and I'm sure people here from other cities will enjoy looking at their city in the series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMdPliY ... 7F696C34B9

There is much of transport interest in the Sydney film, coming in a decade when public transport seriously waned, particularly as a result of the closure of the tram network a few years earlier and virtual cessation of investment in the train network. I remember the period well, as people responded to the tram closures by driving to the inner city and central industrial area and parking out the streets. They didn't provide enough capacity in the buses that replaced the trams, so it was an unpleasant experience using them and buses often went past full. If you didn't live on a train line, it was a big incentive to get a car and drive.

Although the film was a tourist promotion, I can see that they couldn't hide the terrible pall of pollution that hung over the city in those days as a result of all those extra cars and buses - and it stunk something awful too. That was gradually improved over following decades with increased emission standards. One thing you noticed if you lived in the inner city, after the trams went and the buses took over, if you lived on a bus route this terrible layer of grit would settle all over your windowsills, paths and railings. Those old Leylands and AECs shown in the film were shockers, noisy and rough too. On the positive side, I love seeing the ferries, particularly the Manly ferries, in their beautiful old colour schemes before the insipid blue came along!

The film starts with the other major change of that period - the spread of new suburban housing far and wide over countryside that in the 1950s was still either rural or Crown land. There were even cows grazing along Tarban Creek in Hunters Hill and you were awoken in the morning by the noise of roosters crowing everywhere! Where we were, there was no sewerage and we had the dunny man and our milk and bread were delivered by horse and cart. But soon afterwards, old rural landscapes like Ryde, Dundas Valley, Bankstown and even Botany disappeared under a sea of housing. There were some great private bus operations, with beautiful buses, serving these areas, but even they couldn't hold out against the trend to driving. The 60s were really the major start of the era when we became overwhelmed by cars and it's taken 50 years for us to start reclaiming the lost ground again. This film is a great reference point.