Film - 'Reminiscences of Cable Trams in Melbourne', Kadisha Enterprises, Museum Victoria, Public Record Office Victoria, Heritage Victoria

TRANSCRIPT

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAPHNE ROOMS (VOICEOVER): In the beginning, we had no idea how they worked. And then the grippy was in the middle. There was side seats on each side of the tram on the outside. They had a dummy each end, closed in car at each end.

And on the outside, it was parallel with the length of the tram on either side. And they were the support posts. And that's where they used to yell out, "Look, hang on! While you go around the corner."

And the grippy was in between those two lots of seats. They were long pews and the grippy was in between. And he'd have these levers like the railway trains. And we were so interested in that. We thought it was wonderful.

And 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 to get all those cables everywhere!

I had this recollection. My mother would take us to the beach-- South 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 will always remember that.

And then to think, after I was married with the children, I went on the same line on the electric tram. 'Cause I lived by the beach then. And that was the wonderful thing to me.

[LAUGHS] Just to recognize that I had been there on the other trams, you know?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Film - 'Recollections and Images of the Preston Tram Workshop', Kadisha Enterprises and Way Back When Consulting Historians, Public Record Office Victoria

BRUCE MACKENZIE (VOICEOVER): When I started 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. The truck shop, there'd be 30. The blacksmith's shop, there'd be 30. The sheet metal shop, there'd be 20. The trimmers, there'd be 20. What have I forgotten? And then the wood shop in the mill, they used to call it. There was-- where they used to make all the timber for the windows and doors and all that, there'd be another 10. There was about 800 people worked there.

Then you had the store, over the store where they had all the stock for the store. They had a big long store, they wanted electrical as one counter, mechanical another part, timber another section, it was like Bunnings. It was really good.

The morale was tremendous. It was absolutely tremendous, the morale. And at Christmas time we used to organize the Christmas break up, which was fantastic. They used to have Ron Blasket and Gerry Gee come there, and have an artist.

And we had a cricket club. We used to play Saturday mornings, 9 o'clock till 12. 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 trained at South Melbourne Depot, Essendon Depot, Brunswick Depot, all the depots, you know.

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Film - Joel Checkley, 'The Modern Experience of Trams in Melbourne', 2012, Joel Checkley, Kadisha Enterprises and Way Back When Consulting Historians

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MAN 1 (VOICEOVER): What tram do I catch? Normally the 96 on Nicholson. Or I would get the 19 for the city down Swanston.

WOMAN 1 (VOICEOVER): I catch the 112. And also the 96 and the 86.

WOMAN 2 (VOICEOVER): I get the 55 from West Coburg twice a day usually.

WOMAN 3 (VOICEOVER): Sometimes I get the tram 109. I go to this one, because the tram helped me a lot.

ROBERTO D'ANDREA: We're the only true surviving tram system in the English-speaking world when you think in that historic side of things. So tramway destruction through Canada, the US, England, New Zealand, and the rest of Australia was pretty well complete by the mid '60s. So on that world stage, we were pretty special by the time we got into the '80s and into the '90s. And then I think, you know, you'd start to get that parallel that it appears on postcards and starts to be something like the Harbor Bridge in Sydney that becomes symbolic of Melbourne.

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- I like I don't have to think about how I'm getting there since I get on the tram.

- I think it's a nice convenient way of moving around town.

- I like the people. The people are always interesting.

- They're very cheap for the fuel.

- They're quite peaceful. It's just nice. Sort of, they're slow-moving.

- Very friendly.

- The thing I like about them the most is the convenience.

- It's just completely normal. We don't have trams in Auckland, so I mean it's just a total buzz.

- I think here it's like a microcosm of Melbourne.

- And it's just a generally uplifting experience.

ROBERTO D'ANDREA: We ended up making a very classy decision in those days for environmental reasons, for mass transportation reasons. It's one of those places where virtually the whole of society can come together in the one cabin, and more diverse than, I think, any other place.

- Yeah, there's a lot of diversity on the tram, which is good.

- Most of the time it's just work people, professional people.

- In the afternoon it's just packed full of kids.

- Homeless people, business people.

- You can't be too judgemental on the tram, because you've got a bit of everything.

ROBERTO D'ANDREA: You know, you can take a seat down towards the back of the tram, so you've got all the doorways in front of you. And, you know, just watch the flow and the movement of life coming in and out of the tram.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- What things do I do? Just the normal things. Nothing illegal.

- I like to look at people and make up stories as to what they're doing and where they're going.

- I just like to daydream out the windows really. I'm a bit of a boring commuter.

- Sometimes, maybe just once a week I look out the window, just to take it easy. Yeah.

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