A Little House

[Dad-1]

Dunny Can ??
Far too Colonial.
Rural England, well the edge of the New Forest 1967 - Note the date !!
My wife and myself rented a small 2 up, 2 down terraced cottage when we were
first married and we had a chemical tin bucket toilet in a small brick 'shed' halfway
down our garden. Not a delightful place during the winters of '67 to '69.
Believe me unless you had a small fortune getting somewhere to live was as difficult
then as it is now

The contents of ours had to emptied & dug into our rather long garden. By year 2
the garden was very productive !!

Details, straight sided with a gentle taper out towards the wooden seat. A hinged heavy
steel band handle to carry by, with a small fixed handle 3/4 of the way down the back
to get more accurate emptying. No it doesn't give me nightmares, but you did have to
grow up !!

Geoff T.

[ChrisGreaves]

Dunny Can ?? Far too Colonial.

Well, speaking of colonial ...
(1) I agree with posts that indicate a variety of cans. Whatever worked for you as an individual settler, or worked for the local shire council on a limited budget, WORKED!
(2) I think that house-lots in SX were 160 feet deep; I am probably wrong. Dunnys (Dunnies?) were, naturally, aligned on the back fence.
(3) The walk from our back door to the dunny passed through an arbor of six grape vines, on two trellises, three vines each side. There were six varieties including Currant as in "Corinth"), Ladies Fingers (which twenty years later i learned made an excellent dry white), and Muscat. My mother's favorite was Muscat. I have memories of mum sauntering through the arbor, grabbing a bunch of Muscats, and in mid-summer sitting in the dunny absentmindedly munching grapes of the bunch while she sat in the dim shade of the dunny.

I am not sure how you would go about modelling bunches of Muscats, but.

Mum pretty quickly moved for a septic tank right outside the back door, probably using the argument of the number of visitors the rectory entertained daily, but more likely for sanitary reasons. The tanks arrived with the piping, and a truck from the Great Western Consolidated (GWC) mining company at Bullfinch arrived with quarts gravel.
My dad made much scatological humour from the fact that every item was identified as "Greaves W.C.", and that our bodily waste was filtered through high-gold-bearing ore.

Cheers, Chris

[Bigmet]

... the old toy maker slipped quietly away to his favourite armchair with a glass of scotch...

I look forward to the next installment. Granddaughter - and quite possibly sibs and cousins? - now know...

[Phred]

Dad-1 wrote:
getting somewhere to live was as difficult then as it is now

Absolutely agree with that. When my then fiancee and I were researching rental flats in the seventies, we quickly realised that, even with both of us working, we couldn't afford to pay rent and save up for a house deposit at the same time. Luckily, my parents' house was on tall enough stumps to allow me to enclose a couple of rooms underneath for us to live in. Still had to go upstairs to use the bathroom and toilet though. My parents charged us $25 a week for the space plus half the utilities. No free rides!
We managed to save a deposit for a block of land, paid that off, then used the land as a deposit for a loan to build a house. Took us nearly five years in the end.

Bigmet wrote:
I look forward to the next installment. Granddaughter - and quite possibly sibs and cousins? - now know...

It's already started! A Barbie wardrobe has been requested by her sister. Maybe she'll forget...

[Bigmet]

Dad-1 wrote:
getting somewhere to live was as difficult then as it is now

Absolutely agree with that. When my then fiancee and I were researching rental flats in the seventies, we quickly realised that, even with both of us working, we couldn't afford to pay rent and save up for a house deposit at the same time. Luckily, my parents' house was on tall enough stumps to allow me to enclose a couple of rooms underneath for us to live in. Still had to go upstairs to use the bathroom and toilet though. My parents charged us $25 a week for the space plus half the utilities. No free rides!
We managed to save a deposit for a block of land, paid that off, then used the land as a deposit for a loan to build a house. Took us nearly five years in the end...

Most of my contemporaries went through a similar programme: buy a wreck 20+ miles North, make it habitable while existing in it, sell, and repeat until you had a deposit to sufficient to buy where you wanted to live, this typically took five years. Despite having worked up to a 40% deposit, I still had to take on a 'monster' mortgage of £21,000 at 16% interest. Needed eighteen months of living on baked beans on toast to get that beast beaten down...

[Phred]

Bigmet wrote:
Most of my contemporaries went through a similar programme: buy a wreck 20+ miles North...

Yes, life for 'baby boomers' wasn't quite as easy as some would suggest.
"But in your day things were cheap, everyone had a job for life and a house to live in..." Not as I remember it.
Which is not to say that we were unhappy. I still remember the excitement of moving into our two rooms under the house after our wedding. Our own space at last!

[Bigmet]

... life for 'baby boomers' wasn't quite as easy as some would suggest.
"But in your day things were cheap, everyone had a job for life and a house to live in..." Not as I remember it...

Well indeed prices were smaller, but wages were yet more so - no minimum wage back then in the UK and the young typically started with very low earnings; you first had to 'prove yourself' to win more pay. The 'job for life' was our parent's generation, it disappeared as they retired, and as for a home, it was hard graft and sacrifice to get on the housing ladder for most of us. That last in particular feels much the same today amongst the offspring of family and friends - it isn't any easier or harder.

...Which is not to say that we were unhappy....

I should say not: boomers were born late enough not to have to undertake National Service (I know I fully appreciated that) and we were 'happening' in all sorts of ways, better education, new career opportunities, global travel becoming possible; and we were not yet 'tethered' to the phobile moan and internet which was then the stuff of sci-fi*. BONUS! The all time best period of popular music to enjoy. Yes, it surely was fun to be alive.

* We had a good laugh at the accused in court found guilty, who got out his 'Sinclair scientific' calculator which had a hinged flip up cover, and used it like the original Star Trek 'communicator' saying "Beam me up Scotty'. Of course he got done for contempt as well, previous generations having been schooled in the 'no sense of humour should be evident' system...

[Phred]

Aah - National Service. That was still a thing in Australia until 1972. I well remember the profound sense of relief when I was not selected in the 'Birthday Ballot'. I was convinced that I would end up in Vietnam where my father (a career soldier) was already serving.