On Sunday 10 February 1985, I took off in my (gifted) yellow GM Holden ‘79 Torana from home, packed to the hilt, for a drive up the then treacherous Pacific Highway to Old Bar, just south of Taree. I left with a cut lunch and map, literally. Today the drive takes about three hours from Sydney. Back then it took five and it was a goat track. Approaching semi trailers through the Buladelah Mountains caused your life to flash before your eyes.
The following day, just over 40 years ago I started my first job in radio. I was just one month shy of my 19th birthday. But I of course needed somewhere to live and knew no one in town.
Leaving home for the first time presents so many challenges, particularly before the internet, mobile phones and cheap phones calls. I went to the local Post Office which had copies of every phone book in Australia. I got the one for “065”, looked up hotels, went to phone box with a bag of 20 cent pieces and started calling. One was a motel at “Old Bar”. It was about 15 km from work and close to the sea (which was my home environment). They agreed to a room for I think AUD50 (USD30) a week. In today’s dollars, that’s probably about AUD250 (USD175).
So I arrived about lunchtime the same day and moved into the motel for about a month. The TV had two stations… ABC and ECN8/NEN9. I think SBS came along that year, as did the arrival of EFTPOS. Radio was much the same, 2RE where I would work and a few flavors of the ABC were crackling through.
To be honest, I don’t remember much of Old Bar and have driven past the turn off hundreds of times over the last four decades. Today for the first time since 1985, I put the blinker on and went in.
The memories didn’t come flooding back. But it was interesting nonetheless. The town remains a ‘sleepy seaside village’ albeit now with a (Coles) supermarket and several blocks of “McMansions”. The predominant hair colour is white (I am grey).
I found the place I lived. It’s gone from being a motel to a ‘block of units “. Still, it’s there. And it looks like a new generation of first time home leavers love there. Good luck to them, it worked for me.
