John Dansie

Interviewed by Susan Kelly on 7 March 2002
Subject: Games, Sirius Cove

Susan Kelly. Can you tell me about some of your early childhood experiences, using this area as a playground and what you remember?

John Dansie. Yes this headland between Sirius Cove and Mosman Bay was our playground. If we weren’t fishing off Musgrave Street Wharf catching yellow tail and leather jackets – that’s the new Musgrave Street wharf – the original one was further south on the point by about 150-feet. The evidence of the old wharf is still there, the timber is still in the sandstone down opposite Clifford number one.

If we weren’t down there fishing we’d be tearing around the Curraghbeena Park over the road here on the western side of Sirius Cove. We used to play cops and robbers, and there was a set of swings there. We used to have huge bonfires when Empire Day came around on the 24th May each year; we dragged sticks and all the loose timber and stuff out of the bush and people would bring out old bed-heads and any old timber that they had, and we’d have a huge bonfire on Empire Day with plenty of crackers and things. That was 50 years ago.