I remember when with Milton Rendell

Do you remember when most homes had a sleep-out and when I tell my kids I used to sleep on the back verandah of our house they say no way. Yes, it was pretty common for homes built in the forties, fifties and sixties to have a sleep-out. A lot of homes were only two bedroom and when the family got larger it was easier to build a wall and separate a room suitable to sleep out on the back veranadah. It wasn’t uncommon to have an outside toilet either.  Sometimes it was right out the back of your property and at one stage the local dunny man would collect your waste coming up the alley behind your house. There are still some of those lane ways in around Woodbridge near Second Avenue.  Many houses in that era would have a lounge room and then go down the passage, the main bedroom was opposite the lounge at the front of the house. When you went down the passage it would lead to an open central area and a second bedroom quite often ran off it. Or, if you had an in-house bathroom that wasn’t on the back verandah you had a passage that led to that bedroom and bathroom also sometimes a laundry. In the centre of the house was usually the dining area and kitchen with a wood stove combined with a door that led out to a verandah. Not all laundries were inside some were referred to as wash houses like we had in our house in Bertie Street Guildford and our bathroom was on the back verandah. The wash house was free standing and had what they called a copper in it which you could boil the water for washing or boil water to bring inside for a bath. I still see a few of these old places in my world as a real estate agent and boy it brings back some memories when I see them. Imagine asking the current generation to live in these places with a drafty sleep-out with louvre windows, the toilet and wash house outside and the cloths line that was a bit of wire tied to the fence back to the house. Those were the days.