The photos here of The Young Street Mob were not easy to select because there are just so many, covering over 10 years of trips with The Boys, and then many individual trips with other people. I made a slide show on a DVD of The Mob and although it wasn't all the photos I had on my computer, there were over 800 pictures.
What I hoped to depict on these pages was the mateship that developed largely through the association of The North Unley Boy's Club and a group of lads who came together during and just after World War 2, and how we learned to exist, tolerate, and even live, together. When more than 13 boys and young men can join, enjoy each other's company, and be together harmoniously right through their childhood, teen years and 20s, and still remain mates right up to this present moment, something or somebody did something right.
I guess shooting trips turned into any drive away from Adelaide being named a trip or a trippy. It got that way that at times the urge to leave the big smoke was a tangible thing.
From our little, short trips into the Adelaide Hills, we progressed to trips all over South Australia and Victoria and into New South Wales and Queensland, to Brisbane and beyond. Shooting trips as far north to Broken Hill were not uncommon. One of The Boys worked for the railways and his hut at Coburn, just south of Broken Hill, made a good base. We weren't after big game, pigs, goats or crocodiles, just roos and rabbits. The trips were about being with your mates, having a beer and a bit of a shoot.
Usually there were only four to six lads doing a trip in one car, but there were times when there were two or three car loads.
The Boys on the Port Noarlunga bridge.
If it wasn't for Keith and his old Box Brownie, we wouldn't have half these photos. RIP old buddy. You are missed by all who knew you.
1955
Would you believe it? The first weekend of leave from the army camp at Woodside in the Adelaide Hills, in my opinion the coldest place in Australia, I go back to the hills to shoot rabbits with a few of my mates.
By now, the group of friends who had decided to stick together and do things together (drifted together would be a better description - and I use the word 'together' often deliberately) had firmly established themselves as The Young Street Mob. Not that the name held such importance other than it gave a title and a logo that some groups may call their colours to a group of friends I call mates that have stuck together, in some cases, for more than 70 years. If you can keep a friend for 70 years, you must have something going for you. So must he.
My rifle was a BSA, tube-loading, bolt-action repeater. Bernard's looks like a single shot while Kevin's is a pump action, Brno, I think. All .22s.
Me, Bernard and Kevin.
The car is Keith's Singer Soft Top.
Would you walk down a dark street with any of them?
Ron, Kevin, Bernard, Me and Alby. Bernard was to get the nickname Skin because his rather well proportioned brother, Bob, had the nickname, Fatguts. We didn't mean to be cruel.
The fox (Davey Crockett) hat that Bob is wearing was to become our mob hat to wear on our bikes (before crash helmets became compulsory) but just as most of us had collected enough fox stoles to make the hats, complete with the fox head in front, the Davey Crockett movie came out and the shops were selling cheap versions of the hats and nearly every one had one.
Defending the Alamo? No, just Kevin, Alby, Ron and Bernard clowning around.
Seven miles past Nairne in the Adelaide Hills, was a dirt road turnoff that led to a run down, roofless farm house. Behind the old house was a kitchen, still with a roof and a working wood stove. The cobblestone floor didn't make for a comfortable night's sleep but we were resilient.
There were dry, sandy creek beds near there where, at time, rabbits were found in abundance. At night we could come up, blind them with a spot light and drop a bag over them. it wouldn't be uncommon to come home with a dozen live bunnies.
We must have made our mums so proud.
Here we are, naturally in front of a pub, a few of us showing off our YSM colours.
Alby (far left) was our signwriter.
I'm second from the right. On the end is Sammy. Back then, before age shrinkage set in, I was just under six feet tall with my shoes on. Note how short Sammy is because later I'll include a photo of our Ju Jitsu instructor, Lennie, who was even smaller than Sam.
1956
Me and my 1937 Chevy Roadster. She got me there, and with the hood off I thought I was pretty cool. I took out what could have been a back seat and put a double bed mattress in the boot and, on a trip to Corny Point on Yorke Peninsula, Alby and I slept in the boot. Sleeping together actually meant sleeping together in those days.
Alby and I did a trip to Melbourne. We had to replace the frond wheel king pin bushes on the way but she got us there.
Sammy, Bob and I also did a trip to Melbourne. Bob wanted to shoot (anything), Sammy wanted to pick up girls. I just wanted to keep the peace. Doing both.
I later traded her in for a 1949 Standard Vanguard
In front of the railway worker's huts at Coburn, south of Broken Hill. At last a photo that included Keith, second from left. That's probably Keith's Standard Vanguard that Alby has his foot on.
Another trip somewhere. Obviously through Murray Town. We made friends with everyone. We're standing here with the pub owner and his wife. I think I had my first drink in that pub, a whiskey, lime and soda, courtesy of Brian, leaning against the car, far left.
Bob, Alby, Kevin and Trevor. All still around. Still mates.
Keith, at his best, reading the bones.
If it moves, shoot it. If you can.
What a fine,handsome body of men.
Trevor and me. If you'd only seen us an hour ago.
Keith and Trevor. Out of the scrub and all prettied up. In Port Pirie, I think.
I'm wearing the ring that my father gave me for my twenty first birthday. Fifty years later my daughter replace the worn and broken band, and the ruby stone, and give it back to me for Christmas. It's promised to my grand son, Reece ( with the same faded initial, RW) when I fall of my perch.
A couple of young roos, out of their mothers pouch. They may not have survived unless one of them was the one brought home that I made a pet of for a number of years.
I never feel comfortable looking at this picture now but the lads would have thought nothing of playing with this kangaroo before they killed it. A lot of us either made, or had made, jackets out of tanned roo skins.
Find a bare. sandy piece of ground and there you make your bed. I'm still in bed, second from right, Garry standing.
Unless, that is like Alby and I, you have a car boot to sleep in.
It bothers me now to think that the only thing stopping that heavy boot lid falling on us was that piece of stick which either of us could have kicked away.
1959
I had already traded my 1937 Chevrolet for a 1949 Standard Vanguard, nicknamed Beetle Back. At one stage Keith, Kevin and I all had the same shaped car, either 1948 or 1949 Vanguards.
A trip to Port Lincoln. Me, Bob and Tony.
I couldn't explain exactly why, maybe it was watching too many western movies, but if you are doing a shooting trip, or a trip where you just might have a shot at something, or if we were just doing a day's ride on our bikes, some of us felt we should play the part of our western heroes. And if we couldn't carry .45s, we could, at least, wear a knife, slung low and tied down. I guess you have the three extremes here: Bob with nothing; me with my knife worn high on my bullet belt (a birthday present for my 12th birthday from my brother Jeff), and Tony showing off his Bowie knife. He's such a gawk. But back then you could drive or ride around with a knife on your belt or a rifle over your shoulder and no one raised an eye brow, as the expression goes.
Keith took the photo, probably with his old Box Brownie. Thanks, buddy.
That's my 1949 Standard Vanguard in the background.
Clowning around. Me, Tony and Bob again.
I borrowed my brother's army Lee Enfield .303 cut down to make a sporting rifle and Tony is fooling around with Keith's. Bob looks on with disdainful amusement.
Soon after this we split up to do some hunting with .22s and Tony came across an emu egg which, when he shot it (as you do) proved to be rotten, full of compressed gas, and it exploded all over him.
We did the whole trip with a broken rear spring and a fence post tied with fencing wire supporting the back axle. Those were the days.
I'd just had my Standard Vanguard resprayed. Six pounds for two tone ($12 in our money now), five pounds for one colour.
Dave, in a workshop behind Keswick Motors, knocking a bump out of the car. He got quite a bit of work out of me. No sign of Keswick Motors or the workshop now, and Dave has gone on to bigger things.
1960
Then I traded my Standard Vanguard for an almost new Triumph Herald Coupe and bush bashing trips were out.
Early in 1960, Neville (Tex) and I did a trip to Melbourne via the River Murray. We were broke so we obtained a bucket of peaches from a kindly fruit grower and we lived off those for a couple of days. In late 1960, Tony and I headed off to Queensland for a magnificent trip. We met a couple of girls in Brisbane and I corresponded with one right up until I got married.
New Year's Eve (my birthday) shark fishing off rocks at Byron Bay (didn't catch one. I wasn't disappointed). I love Queensland. I also love Warburton in Victoria, just 90 kilometres east of Melbourne at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges. Beautiful rain forests. I think green must be my favorite colour.
After I got married, and with a baby on the way, we bought a Vauxhall Cresta similar to the one pictured above. The family (wife Judith and two beautiful little daughters, Sandra and Veronica) towed a caravan to Melbourne.
1974-75
A family get together at Port Victoria on Yorke Peninsula, staying in some old fishermen's huts. That's probably our Vauxhall Cresta on the right. Judy and I at the back with her holding baby Raegan, my youngest daughter, almost out of sight.
Then we bought the most beautiful car I've ever owned, a GM HQ Holden Monaro LS. My wife and I did a trip to Brisbane and back through the Snowies, somewhere around 1974, but I think we cut it short because we missed the kids who were being babysat at home. My wife took it when we split up but later sold it back to me.
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1989 (approx)
I'd just had the motor reconditioned and a two-tone spray job in this photo.
I'd just got it back from the engine re-conditioner here and my neighbour and I did a trip down the Yorke Peninsula and back up to Moonta. The motor blew the main bearings because the mechanic had left something blocking the oil journals. Sort of dampened the day.
1994
I also had a motor bike, a 250cc twin Honda. I had it an hour, drove into a pothole in the road, and fell off it.
I'm being self-indulgent. This isn't about my cars - it's supposed to be about my mates and friends and our trips. But just one more? My little Ford Capri fun car that I bought in 1996 (traded in the Monaro) just before I retired. Above, in front of my home.
But then again, I am in part doing this in the hope of finding any other Wormwells in the wide world who may be related and may consider contacting me. So, in a way, this is my way of introducing myself so it's got to be a little about me.
1996 till now.
On retirement, I did a trip, alone, to Brisbane but as it rained every day, I wasn't long away from home. I spent a lot of money, though. I did another trip, shortly after, to Melbourne via The Alpine Way and then a drive with my little buddy, Dianah (she is a the greatest mate I could wish for so I guess this is still about mates) to the west coast of South Australia, nearly as far as Ceduna and then to Woomera before we came home. We later drove to Melbourne where she eventually moved, so I did a few trips there by myself to catch up with her and later with her and her partner, John.