Nancy Phelan

Interviewed by [talk at Mosman Library] on 28 June 1990
Subject: The Spit, Parriwi Road

That was one of the frightening things in my childhood, but of course Parriwi Road itself was a rather perilous place because every time it rained we used to have a landslide and if the road used to fall down there were some beaches down below, I imagine you all know the part I’m talking about, between Cyprian Street and the Spit there were all these little beaches, which were very hard to get to and if you got onto them and didn’t get off in time the tide often used to come up and you couldn’t get away.

I remember there was a girl who used to take us out on afternoons when we were kids and she took us down to one of these beaches once, of course my mother would have had a fit because the tide came up and the only way we could get out was to climb up Parriwi Road and there’s this total landslide going on, boulders were falling down. Anyway, it finally got so bad that they had to make another road, which is what we called Upper Spit Road, which of course is now called the Spit Road, and that was made as an alternative traffic route going down to the Spit.

The Spit was just exactly that, a spit, it was nothing, it was just a long spit of sand. The tramline went along to the end and there was a beach on each side. The tram went to the end, and there were little boatsheds, and there were dicky wooden buildings – I think there was a boarding house there.