Welcome to the Lost Manly Shop
Welcome to our collection of local and family history for Lost Manly and the Northern Beaches collated from history sites and personal family albums from myself and our facebook group members making it unique in every way. Lost Manly and the Northern Beaches, began in July 2013, as a place to share my family history research with family and friends and invite others to share theirs also; to gather local history and precious memories before they are lost.
I've always had a passion for history, beginning in mum's kitchen, seeing the old dripping tin and jaffle iron from mum's own childhood home, not far from our house in North Manly. I excelled in high school history too, coming first for the whole of Year 9 history at Manly Girls High School. I think those seeds were planted in my childhood, in mum's kitchen.
Mum was born in 1939, six months before the start of WW2. With that came stories of mum's childhood during and after the war, when butter was scarce, and rations allowed them to survive, and spreading dripping, instead of butter, on their bread was common. Mum's cooking was basic, as she worked full time as a Legal Secretary so by the time she got home, she usually made just meat and three veg and saved the fancy cooking for the weekends, which I loved, helping her and bonding over food. Mum´s Shepherd pie conjures up vivid childhood memories, baked in our old post-WW2 avocado, and beige enamel gas oven with the old pilot light that was lit with a match and was scary smelling the gas seep out before the flame caught it in a little explosion of fire.
Mum's childhood home was 1.2 km westward from our house, up the hill just off Allambie Road. We could see the tops of the four Oak trees in their backyard, from our front yard. Mum´s grandparents lived 1.2km eastward, towards Freshwater Beach. We walked past their old house in Soldiers Avenue on the way to the beach. I first started researching my family history in the mid 80s. There was no internet back then and all history tracings had to be done at the Archives at the Rocks, using the old microfilm machines, which was fine because I'd learnt how to use them when I worked at the Bank after leaving school. That too has changed, from the Bank of New South Wales, to Westpac...nothing stays the same, except our history!
