Kerry Wright - 1953

Kerry Wright

1953

Even though it was so long ago, I can still remember this photograph being taken of me, Kerry Wright, by a Sydney street photographer. I was with my mother, Emily Flora Wright (known as Flora) nee Glover, on one of her shopping expeditions to Sydney. 

I remember we were walking through one of the city's shopping arcades, most likely either the Strand Arcade or the Imperial Arcade, when it was taken. The arcades were beautifully ornate shopping precincts from another era. They were like dazzlingly opulent, gilded microcosms of Victorian London, plonked down in the middle of drab, 1950s, antipodean Sydney. They contained  a rich quantity of highly polished brass in abundance, and lots of beautiful, stylishly decorated shop windows. I loved the double-doored, caged antique elevators that carried shoppers between the different terraced levels. It was an era prior to the advent of  the modern escalator. They were lively places, filled with the noisy hustle and bustle of people hurriedly going about their business, all dressed in their finest and perfumed with their best cologne, as people did in those days when visiting the city. Mum and I would have traveled into Sydney on the 190 double-deck Wynyard bus, from our home at Narrabeen on Sydney's Northern Beaches. It was a one-hour bus trip. Mum visited all the major, glitzy department stores on such shopping expeditions - David Jones, Anthony Hordern and Mark Foys, using  the arcades as short-cuts between streets. 

But I digress. To get back to this photo, I remember Mum and I had just entered the arcade. Mum was walking briskly ahead of me, when I noticed a window display that attracted my attention. I remember it was a women's boutique with dressed mannequins displayed in the window. A £6 price-tag can be seen in the background. The street photographer who took this photograph has captured me in the process of pointing at the window display and calling to my mother to come back and have a look. The selectivity of memory never ceases to amaze me. It's incredible that I still remember so much detail, after so many years. Alas, what's even more amazing, in a worrisome way, is how much I've undoubtedly forgotten of far more important events that have transpired during the intervening years.

Kerry Wright - 1953

Kerry Wright

1953

Here I am on my tricycle in the garden of the family home at 10 Mactier Street, Narrabeen, on Sydney's Northern Beaches.

Dorothy Shiels & Kerry Wright - ca.1955

Dorothy Shiels & Kerry Wright

ca.1955

This is the earliest photo I can find of me with my cousin, Dorothy Shiels, who is also my Godmother. Dorothy is the only child of my Aunty Glad (my mother's older sister) and Uncle Eric, Gladys & Eric Murrell. 

In this photo, we are at South Narrabeen beach in Sydney, not far from where we lived, in nearby Mactier Street. Mactier Street terminates in the Pacific Ocean at its eastern end. I lived at the eastern end of the street, only a short walk across Pittwater Road from the beach. Dorothy lived a little further away, at the western end of the street, near Narrabeen Lake. Because of its close proximity, I seem to remember spending most of my summers, and a good deal of the rest of the year, on South Narrabeen beach. It was my equivalent of a park or playground. I loved the beach, as a child. 

In this photo, Dorothy and I are sitting near the waterline, going by the wet sand we're sitting on - and a tiny wavelet can be seen at left. I'm looking out to sea. I have a glob of white, zinc cream on my nose, to protect it from sunburn. The view is looking southward along the beach with South Narrabeen Surf Club in the background, where my brothers were life savers (lifeguards) and beyond that can be seen the escarpment of Collaroy Plateau.