Patricia Ann Rae Dale

Interviewed by Susan Kelly on 14 October 2002
Subject: Shops & Shopping, Taronga Zoo

Susan Kelly. You mentioned delivery of goods by horse and cart.

Patricia Dale. Oh yes I remember that vividly. The bread and of course milk came with a horse and cart as did the ice, and we as children used to follow the iceman round and get him to pick bits off and give them to us to suck.

On a few occasions I remember quite clearly horses bolting and carts going everywhere, which brings me to the subject of horses. At the bottom of Whiting Beach Road, if you go down Whiting Beach Road and round the corner there was a gate in there to the Zoo and inside that gate was the Zoo knackery. At night you’d hear the clump of old horses coming up Prince Albert Street and going down to the knackery to be slaughtered for the lions.

That was a very common thing, and while I’m on the subject of the Zoo, quite frequently monkeys would escape and there would be the great chase by the keepers and everybody else, and they come through and they’d go between the houses fronting Prince Albert Street and Bradley’s Head Road. They’d eventually get caught, and the other thing about the Zoo – you could always tell when a southerly was going to come up on a hot summer’s day because half an hour before the southerly would hit Sydney the peacocks would start squalling and the gibbons also.