John Suhan

Interviewed by Trish Levido on 27 July 1981
Subject: Games

Trish Levido. What did you do growing up in Mosman? What would you say were the highlights?

John Suhan. I was one of those people who had a crack at everything, not very successfully perhaps, but I can remember playing organised sport, we’d play cricket at places like Rawson Park and even Reid Park when we were very young because there wasn’t a full sized ground by any means. Things people don’t let their children do today, for probably good reasons – from the age of eight I can remember going over and playing against schools on the other side of the harbour, out at the eastern suburbs. The school would hire a boat, and we’d set off from Mosman Bay – go across to Rose Bay, walk up to the ground, play our cricket or rugby, come back on the boat and disband at Mosman Bay. Apparently, these days children don’t go anywhere without parents, but we, from the earliest of age – I did mention in my history that at one stage I went to school up at Killara in the 1930s. In the daylight, I admit, I’d come home from Killara to Mosman at the age of nine. Catch the train to Chatswood station, Balmoral Beach tram to Mosman Junction, and walk to Clanalpine Street. I know people with children of 15 and 16 are apprehensive of them traveling anywhere. Life has certainly changed.