Santa, we were pretty poor, my Dad used the scythe from 1950 until around 1955, then came home with one similar to this, not in as good of nick. When we finally got a Victa, around 1960, we kept the roller mower to do a final cut on the back nature strip. "Test cricket" there all summer.
We moved to suburbia in the early 69s, the old man was cashed up after joining AMI/Australs and a brand new Victa joined the family's new house. Before that, goats, lambs and calves mowed the yard. A scythe was a farm tool brought out to clear ditch and creek banks.
Just stumbled on this post and it brought back many memories of life in the fifties. We had one of those push mowers that my old dad would use until finally he purchased a Victa.
I remember the Victa had a cord that you had to wrap around the top and yank really hard. Sometimes there would be a recoil that would just about rip your arm out of the socket. The most entertaining part would be when dad mowed the footpath as there was always heaps of rocks from the dirt road going past.
The Victa did not have a chute and everything just flew out either side or the back. We would see dad doing a step that would make Fred Astaire proud when he hit a few rocks and they came out the back into his legs. The funniest part was when he hit a few stray dog turds and sent them flying. They looked like a Tiger Wood's tee shot when he launched one of them either across the road or into the next door neighbours yard.
At our primary school a couple of grade 6 kids would latch onto a naive grade 4 and say, hey mate hold this lead on ( spark plug) while we get it to start.
No one got caught twice.
We use a hand Flymo around our block of Units. We actually have 4 of them now, some found on council rubbish collections, barely used. You can't buy this model anymore so we have these for spare parts.
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Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!
50L custom fuel rack 6x20W 100/20mppt 4x26Ah gel 28L super insulated fridge TPMS 3 ARB compressors heatsink fan cooled 4L tank aftercooler Air/water OCD cleaning 4 stage car acoustic insulation.
The hand on the spark plug lead reminds me of something else from that era Craig. We had an old putt putt boat with the 3.5hp Blaxland Rae engine. When you wanted to stop the engine you put your hand inside the engine box and flicked the metal onto the top of the spark plug and it stopped. If you were a bit distracted you put your hand in without looking and accidentally touched the top of the plug.
During 58/59 I was in 1st/2nd year at Wollongong High School (before moving to Sydney) - I was hopeless at sports, so on sports afternoons, the Deputy Head would 'coerce' the non-sports students to mow the schools lawns. In 58 we had about 5-6 original Victas, but in 59 the school bought 4 new Alex Graham 21" Automowers (plus the original 6 Victas) - as the school had literally acres of lawns and sports fields to mow, the wider 21" cut of the Alex Grahams was a significant benefit. I always turned up a bit early to make sure I nabbed one of the recoil-start Alex Grahams - what a great mower that was.
At home, our front lawn was only small (about 15' square) so Dad only bought a hand mower - our back yard sloped downward and was far too steep to have a lawn, so only built veggie gardens down there !
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Wondering about ShortNorth ? - Short North is the railwayman's nickname for the NSWGR main line between Sydney and Newcastle
