'Heat, Storms and Rain'

- Crowded-- overcrowded. it's standing room only, "move down the car, please, standing room only", the companies would yell out. And you'd squash in, especially on a day-- there's awful hot days, and all of a sudden, you get a storm, and everybody gets on their hairs hanging in strings, because they've been out, caught in the rain, and they all talk. Everybody's very friendly.

Tomorrow, you'd see them, and they wouldn't even look at you, and it's just that the circumstances that bring people together. But it's only a temporary thing, and then there was-- I remember seeing a girl in a [INAUDIBLE] dress, so when you wash it, it shrinks, in and up.

I remember seeing this woman. One of these rainstorms, she was standing out in the corner. And she got caught in the rain, and her dress was getting tighter and tighter.

[LAUGHING]

Poor thing. We had blinds on our trams, even on the green ones, the kind you pull down and fastened up for the weather. And sometimes, it wouldn't fasten properly. And they'd shoot up, and you'd get a heck of a fright.

'Trams in War-time Melbourne'

And then the conductors would all-- they wore navy blue, I'd think. And the brown ones came in when the war started, and they had the women conductors. They came in brown suits, skirt, and top. And later on, they decide they wore trousers, the girls. But they were very good.

They were very motherly types, the women. And rough, and then they could hold their own with all the fellas that didn't want to obey the rules, more or less. And they're very kind and looked after kids. The they pleased the children by giving them the ticket stubs. If you got a ticket stub off the conductor, that was wonderful. That sort of thing-- they were very thoughtful people, because then we were at war. And then the women were taken into all sorts of industries then, and it was nothing. We relied on them all, and they'd help.

When I had the children in the little prams, they'd help you on and off the tram. They'd come in off the tram, sort of help you pick it up. And I had what they called a pramette, and the handles all followed back. And you could just lift it up, and they'd come down off the tram, bodily lift the whole thing with the baby and everything. And that was great.

So we mainly sat outside with the prams on the open seats, and there was two closed-in cars, one each end. And then this open lot of seats, where they smoked, and then we could sit there with the prams.

'Recollections of Some Well-travelled Routes'

Visiting-- I'd get the tram on Batman Avenue and see my sister in East Melbourne. And she lived in Powlett Street, and you get off at the brewery, the Carlton Brewery, and walk up that street. And then we'd go over to Moonee Ponds, on the tram there, and up to West Brunswick.

Then we'd go into Melbourne sometimes on the Nicholson Street Tram. But my love was the cable powerhouses, and look at all these great wheels. What a wonderful piece of engineering. They get all those cables everywhere.

When I married-- I lived with my mother-in-law. And then after that, we got our own place in Albert Park, so we'd have to go on the South Melbourne Beach tram right to the terminus, just by the Bleak House Hotel, if you know that. And the first time we did that, I had this recollection my mother would take us to the beach house, Melbourne Beach, on the cable tram.

And we'd be on that observation platform at the end. And you turned out of Montague Street into Victoria Parade. And the smell of the ocean-- I've always remembered that.

And the thing after, I was married with the children. I went on the same line, on the electric train, because I lived by the beach then.

And that was a wonderful thing to me, just to recognise that I had been there on the other trams.

'The Preston Tramways Workshop'

BRUCE MACKENZIE: I was always told that if you work for the government, you had a permanent job. And my dad, he knew a boss that worked at the Preston Workshops. And he mentioned it to him. And he said, look, he's finished school. Any chance he can get an apprenticeship?

So I went to the tramways and had an interview and started the apprenticeship as a bodymaker. A bodymaker is the bloke that does all the windows, all the doors, and all that. It's like a carpenter.

A tram used to come from the blacksmith's shop. They'd build the frame over there. It would come across to the wood shop and there, they would have all the timber necessary to put around the frame-- make the frame to put the roof on and the flooring and all that. And it would take six weeks before that tram moved out and went to the paint shop to be painted.

When the tram came there, we did everything-- we put the wooden arches up in it and put all the floorboards down, all the roof on, and the canvas and the windows, the doors, and seats, everything. It was all done by very good tradesmen. There was no such thing as electric drills or anything like that. You had to do it all by hand tools.

'A Hub of Activity: The work teams and social life of the Preston Workshop'

BRUCE MACKENZIE: When I started at the tramways, there was 115 in the paint shop, there was 200 in the body shop. I'd say the fitting shop, there'd be probably another 100. The electrical shop, there'd be 80, truck shop would be 30. The blacksmith's shop, there'd be 30. The sheet metal shop, there's be 20; the trimmers, there'd be 20.

What have I forgotten? And in the wood shop in the middle, they used to call it-- where they used to make all the windows and doors and all that, there'd be another 10. There's about 800 people worked there. Then you had the store, over the store, where they had all the stuff for the store. They had a big, long store.

And you wanted electrical, it was one counter. And mechanical, another part. Timber, another section. It was like Bunnings, you know. It was really good.

But the morale was tremendous. It was absolutely tremendous. And at Christmas time, we used to organize the Christmas break-up, which was fantastic.

They used to have Ron Blaskett and Gerry Gee come there and have an artist. And used to put in so much. It was about, oh, 10 pounds or something then. And they'd buy all the grog and all that.

We used to have a cabaret. And all the blokes and their wives used to go to a cabaret. Regina Hall up in Reservoir and Austral Hall down in Northcote. Those places are still going now.

And we had a cricket club. We used to play Saturday mornings, 9 o'clock until 12:00. And we used to play Henderson Springs, Yorkshire Brewery, Havelock Tobacco Company. the footy side came later on.

About 1970 or something like that, the footy side. The competition was tram staff, Melbourne depot, Essendon depot, Brunswick depot, all the depots, you know.

'Personalities to Remember'

LENNY BATES: Talking about calling the streets. I had a blind boy. I don't see him around very much these days. He knew where he was. And he said to me, can I call the streets when it gets to the city? Yeah. He knew Exhibition Street and Russell Street. He put them in the right order too. He enjoyed doing that. I think he had a violin with him.

He's used to travel with me in Collins Street, so-- so I had no microphone then, so I just let him call out with his voice. When he was there I let him go, but he enjoyed it. So when he got off I took over. S'pose I shouldn't have... but I dunno.

Nobody said anything about it, so I just let him call the streets out down Collins Street. In those days, we didn't go into Port Melbourne where he would have... So he called Collins Street and Spencer Street.

'Waves of Migration in the Trammie Workforce'

LOU GREGORIO: Look. Essendon Depot those days, I've got to be honest. New Australians was not well-looked after, and you had to cop wog words every second minute of the day. It took me six months before some of the old-time Australians, some of the old-time to even talk to me. They wouldn't talk to you.

You go past every morning, you say good morning. But I'll always say, good morning. They hardly answer back to you, because in those days, they were real "us and them" sort of thing. But the good thing of that is that those same people that wouldn't talk to me, took six months to talk to me, they become my support and become very close friends.

Those days there was a lot of Italians in the tramway. And there, you will be lucky to find the one or two left. And if they are, they are Australian born.

But those days, there was a lot of Italians and Greeks on a job. So it was easy to get on with the people. There were a lot of Australians. But there was no other nationality. There was no Indians, and no Pakistan, and no Chinese, no Vietnamese, and that.

Then after, in the '70s, when the Vietnamese arrived and came, South American, Turkish, and them, it was completely different. The people, I think, got used to it. After the war, it wasn't easy for being a migrant.

So I got with all different nationalities. My life story in the tramway is that I never, ever had any argument with anybody of other nationalities, or religion or anything like than that.

'A Journey from Connie to Driver then Trainer'

LOU GREGORIO: So I was a conductor for six months, and then I didn't even apply for it. They asked me. They said, would you like to go driving?

I said, yeah. I'll give it a go. So then I became a driver, and I think it was mid '66. And then it didn't take me long after that. I think two years after that, I became a trainer. I used to train other students.

And when I became a trainer, I copped all the new Australians. Some of them couldn't even read one word in English. I had the book in those days.

To become a tram driver, you had to learn a question. The five most important ones, you had to learn the five of them. You had to have an idea about the others, because when you got back to school for the exam, they could ask you any one of those questions.

But the five most important ones, I used to teach new Australians without reading the book, to memorise everything, and I knew exactly. I used to get them to repeat to me continually. And so when they went to school, went back for the test, they asked the question straightaway.

But they couldn't read them. They memorised all the questions, but they couldn't read the questions.

[LAUGHS]

But the school, they were good enough to say, no. You know the question. You know the answer. That's it.

And I got them all through. No one failed. And some of them, as I said, could hardly speak English. But none of them failed. I got them through. One way or another, I made a driver out of them.

'A Meeting on the Number 70 Tram'

ROBERTO D'ANDREA: My mum and dad met on a tram. They used to be on the Wattle Park line. They lived in Surrey Hills, at that stage, pre-marriage, and they'd roll up.

They'd be at the same tram stop. They'd be checking each other out in a way, comically known as a bit of a tram baby. And then there's a story where my dad's sisters said, oh, we've been invited around to a place.

They'd been checking each other out, heading in and out of town, and dad got invited to chaperone his sisters to a place in Surrey Hills. lo and behold, there's the woman that he's been checking out on the tram and in the tram stop. So they got together from there.

But the first time they cast eyes on each other was on the number 70 Wattle Park line.

'It All Started in New Orleans'

ROBERTO D'ANDREA: I was drifting through at the end of three years being away overseas, and was on the home straight coming through down into New Orleans. There was this huge attraction from the locals to the Charles Street line, which had old trams, and I think may've had a W Class in those days, I'm not too sure. But that was 1988.

And my first thought was, wow, you know, we've got heaps of these back in Melbourne. So there's a bit of that sort of thinking as well as, wow, they've got beautifully decorated old tram cars, and there's this huge attraction to it that were all full, and it was quite enjoyable riding up and back. I must go see what's going on when we get back to Melbourne, or when I get back to Melbourne.

So on return, I was fairly free, single solo, sort of having another look at Melbourne again. And the trams were the thing that really bounced out, and the conductors were one of the things that really bounced out because there were a lot of characters. So in mainstream life, you had this scenario where you had all the diversity, looking after all the diversity-- we'd obviously been looking at it again, we had by that stage, had a lot of Vietnamese and some Cambodians, we had a lot of the Greeks, Italians, Macedonian trammies. And you had the old working-class trammies that had been here for yonks, because there was-- as you'll notice-- there's some that had done great amount of service, 30-plus years service-- devoted service to the tramways.

And I started catching-- purposely going to the end of the number five tramline while I was minding my grandmother's place, she was in Italy, and jumping on board the trams there to come to work in Victoria Parade and Collingwood. So I'd get the five from the terminus, look at Melbourne again, jump off in the city, and get the Collins Street tram down where I was working in sewing machines.

And meeting conductors and talking to them and thinking, we're bloody sane here. We're actually sane. After using lots of public transportation, and the difficulty of purchasing tickets-- you know, you've got someone different each time. And quite a quaint leather bag and a public sector uniform and you'd be looked after. And you could say, not every conductor was an angel, of course, but you would say there were plenty of really good ones. Lift up prams, assist people, a hand out for an elderly person. Wow, this is, this is fantastic. This is really quite advanced, even though it's an old system. And it worked well, I thought, in a contemporary, modern world.

So yeah, I sort of started to get gravitated and was asking the conductors, how do you join up? And in the intakes before the big tram blockade, there was recruitment right the way through 1989. So I was recruited in a batch that came in late June, early July, 1989.

'The Trammie Family'

ROBERTO D'ANDREA: The trammie family was true to the sentence. You really made a lot of friendships. The shift work took you out of mainstream life a little bit. For instance, I preferred doing middles and lates or broken shift. I wasn't very good on the body clock for early shift work.

So you gravitated.. you made a lot of friendships around you because you could swap the shifts internally in the depots. So you had a tribe that did late shift a bit more, that did middle shifts a little bit more. We ended up working on the weekends a little bit more.

Because we were short-staffed, we did lots of six-day weeks. That doesn't leave you a lot of time for your private life, so your tram life actually becomes, for me because it was post travelling and all my friends from Box Hill North, we still saw each other, but they'd gone on further out in the eastern suburbs, was a bit of a new opportunity for me.

So I made a lot of friendships in the tram lines and yeah, it does dent a little bit probably the life outside the trams, but there was a very rich life inside the trams. And so we'd go out together after a late shift down to Fitzroy Street St Kilda or to if Leo's was still open, we got together and did a lot together.

'Charismatic Connies'

ROBERTO D'ANDREA: Unfortunately, we've just lost another Roberto. He was a singing conductor. But he was an MC for the Italian clubs-- for weddings and things like that. Lovely, eccentric. And he used to sing up and down.

And he's still remembered by the old timers up on Sydney Road and Lygon Street, out of Brunswick Depot's lines. So a lovely eccentric that took it that step further and would sing moving up through plenty and perhaps do "O Solo Mios," or whatever, as he was flogging you a daily ticket, or something. This sub-species of tram conductor, where the uniform did truly turn to costume, that every depot had, an extremely skilled group of people.

And in all the times when they wanted to get rid of us and they'd go to the negatives about a lazy conductor or something like that, you had this highly skilled, humanistic group of people, like this other Roberto, like plenty of people-- Jeff at Preston Depot. There was a good number of them at each depot that were fantastic. So it's almost like this sub-species of conductor, if you'd use an environmental analogy.

I loved just more the yarning side of things. As a conductor in front of an orchestra, one of the great party tricks was to get strangers talking to strangers. And a few of us went out, really loving a great day out on the trams. So it was easy enough to do, especially on our lines.

For instance, if you're heading to St Kilda Beach and you had Mavis or one of the old timers that was on board the tram and you had backpackers roll up on board the tram and you'd had a busy, busy run. And you'd go, come over and sit next to Mavis here. Mavis, look after this crew, will you? They want Grey Street. Give them  a hand.

If I've forgotten, could you-- knowing that Mavis would go, where are you fellows from? Or where are you girls from? Or you'd come in and once you've got a crew of people-- like a footy train these days. That's about the closest I can think of, where you get on board a footy train and it's like [INAUDIBLE]. You hear people, the barriers are down, people are talking, healthy for the world.

And we could do that on the trams. And so I used to like getting people to chat with each other. But especially in the wooden bodied vehicles, you could create a talking tram. And like a conductor in front of an orchestra, bring in instruments. So I loved that side of life.