Last Day of Bondi's Last Milk Bar - with busker.

[Walter Glover]

It was an overcast and drizzling Saturday afternoon and an era was closing. My first recollection of bates Milk Bar was when my father bought me the first ice cream cone from Mr Bates as I sat in my stroller looking up at the great big world. We were on our way back from the beach.
The Bates brothers owned all the real estate of the immediate block at the time and had decided to pull the plug. I asked why and got the reply, "We'll be renting to a shoe shop and we cannot see enough milk shakes in a week to generate $14,000."
How ubiquitous those Kasper drink sloshing washing machine thingies were. Where are they all now?

[Maris]

There's a lot of nostalgia riding on milk. And a lot of memories that betray age.
Milk used to come in a tin pail (with lid) that you left on the front step for the morning milko to fill from a churn.
Then it came in bottles and you had to specify how many milk and how many cream. Plus you had to get it off the front step early in the morning before the sun got to it or the magpies pecked holes in the foil caps.
Then it came in cartons and you had to choose homogenised, skim, full cream, and flavours. All the while contriving to stash the milk money where the milko would find it but the neighbourhood yobbo wouldn't.
Now milk is an entire section in the supermarket and the adventure is over. And those milk bars where I'd order a vanilla milkshake (with the lump of icecream at the bottom) are gone too. Thanks, Walter, for the memory jogger.

[Walter Glover]

Maris,

A conundrum for me is that you can purchase Coca-Cola in a glass bottle but you can no longer purchase milk in glass. I am no fan of petro-chemical vessels and nor am I a fan of cardboard lined with other petro-chemical non-degradable crap.

What about milk from the refrigerated tanks in a milk bar that was so cold that it gave you an 'ice-cream headache'?

[Barry Kirsten]

In between the tin pail and the bottles with foil caps were bottles with a thick rim which were sealed with a cardboard disk. (Just for the sake of historical accuracy.)

[Walter Glover]

Yes Barry,

That is how fresh cream was delivered when I was an ankle biter.

[Barry Kirsten]

I remember cream in half pint bottles of that type, but in Melbourne we also had milk in the 1 pt. version also. I found some on eBay from Model Dairy in Kew, but I think other dairies used that bottle also.

At least you've got a good print to talk about. My darkroom efforts over the last two days have been fruitless, so I reminisce about trivia instead . (Worked all afternoon yesterday trying to print a grossly overexposed 4x5 neg [petzval, lens cap exposure] and today an 8x10 contact of a subject which I now realise was not ideally focused). As in every pursuit we have good days and not so good days.