Nipped in the bud: 

No one had much money to spend in the 50’s and early 60’s.  We were always looking out for inventive ways to make some pocket money.  Collecting ‘lemonade’ bottles was the usual reliable income but gathering old newspapers, while tedious and labour intensive, usually produced very satisfying remuneration.  It involved lots of door knocking and hauling pram loads of papers to the old dairy shed just down from our place.  Here there was adequate space to spread the papers out and roll them into neat cylinders.  String was wrapped around to secure the bundles and then we happily headed off with the pram loaded to the hilt to sell our cargo at the local fish&chip and butchers shops.  We eagerly waited as the papers were weighed and we received our recompense which was calculated at one penny per pound.  I don’t suppose anyone gave much thought to the fact that the paper surrounding their purchases might have been lying on a dairy floor as people unwrapped their sausages or hoed into their potatoes cakes.

As Kev and I became teenagers, we looked for more inventive ways to make a more substantial income.  Mum came up with a brilliant idea which seemed a winner.  “Why don’t you put an add in the paper as gardeners?”  “Hey – that’s great” we thought.  We could just see the money rolling in.  All we had to do was weeding and cleaning up with no capital outlay.  So Mum arranged for the advertisement to be placed in the local paper.  ‘Gardening – two willing teenagers – phone WU-7946’ and we didn’t have to wait too long before the bait had been taken.  We received a ring from a retired lady in Box Hill requiring some gardening to be done.  It was arranged that we would go down on the following Saturday morning.

We couldn’t wait - soon we’d be flush with money.  We rode our bicycles over a mile to the Ringwood Railway Station and left them at the usual place – ‘Smithy’s’ located next to the Clock tower bridge.  Fortunately, we had a ‘term ticket’ which we used for travelling to school, so the train journey didn’t cost anything.  We alighted at Box Hill Station and walked over two miles down Station Street with a spring in our step.  It was no trouble to find the house and a grateful lady set us to work.  We toiled through the rest of the morning and eventually lunch time came but we were too shy to accept this nice ladies hospitality to come inside and have a meal.  We continued to labour through the afternoon and the only thing that kept our minds focused was – “how much will we charge?”.  After much debate we came up with 30 shillings each (that’s 3 dollars in today’s currency.)  I don’t know how many hours we worked but it was most of the day.  The time had come for our reward.  We gingerly knocked on the door.  The kind lady appeared.  “Now boys what do I owe you”.  I piped up, and with more than a hint of embarrassment said – “would 30 shillings be OK”  “Is that all?” she replied.  As she turned back for the stash I turned to Kev and gave a satisfied smile.  After a few moments the lady returned.  “Thankyou, boys you’ve done a great job”.  She then handed us the money – ‘30 shillings’.  We both peered incredulously at the cash.  We didn’t have the heart to tell her, we meant 30 shillings each, so we sadly and wearily bid her goodbye and trudged off on the long journey back home complaining endlessly that we would never do gardening again.  It didn’t really cheer us up either when ‘the kind lady’ rang Mum and raved on about ‘what wonderful boys she had and how cheap we were’.  I think you could say our gardening business was ‘nipped in the bud’.