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Karly and her 1970s Childhood

© Allyso

Today we're talking to Karly, who was born in 1974 in Devonport. Karly is a friend of Shari, who told us about her 1960s childhood a couple of weeks ago, and once again, we're holding this conversation by telephone.

Karly says;

"One of my earliest memories is going to kindergarten at Devonport Central. I can't remember a lot about it, but I do recall someting that happened before I started Kinder. That's when I was going to the North Street Creche, and I remember the animals there. They were guineapigs. I remember that. When we started Kindergarten, we had the normal finger painting, and taking your little packed lunch in your back pack and sitting on the mat as usual.

I remember having the little Strawberry Shortcake doll, and the Baby Alive dolls. They used to do everything, ones and twos, and you could change their nappies. And of course the normal pram. Being a guirl, you always have a pram!

At that age we had a dog as well, a puppy, a labrador. It was very cute. I used to put it in my pram and take it around.

We had yoyos as well, and in primary school we used to still play with marbles; we traded those, and we also had swap cards.

I remember when I was in early high school that track pants were all the go. I had only the one pair, so I had to keep them washed and clean so I could wear them all the time. We had a nan who used to knit a lot, so we always had knitted jumpers. I had stone washed jeans in high school. There were bubblegum ones as well, but I didn’t like those as much.

We weren't supposed to wear Converse socks with uniform, but it was all the rage in high school. One particular type of sneakers was very big too. The Adidas Rome sneakers… we all had to have a pair of those.

We used to go camping a lot in the school holidays, go to Bakers Beach, a heap of families and pitch tents. For the low income families, most of the holidays was packing up what you had and camping. We used to go to the Great Lakes, and make snowmen and have snow fights. I remember going up there at Easter, and we were amazed that Easter Bunny knew we were at the Great Lakes, and left us eggs.

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