Video transcript for Looking back

[Music]

[A cartoon tree grows from the bottom corner.]

['Looking back … Getting around']

[A photo shows an old-fashioned truck.]

Looking Back – Getting aroundl

[A young girl sits in a living room facing an old man. She asks questions and listens to his answers.]

Girl: How did you and your family go place to place when you were young?

Man: We had a car. Being my father, we had lots of cars one after another. We didn't keep them for very long but one I remember was we had a very very old car. I suppose it wasn't all that old then. It was a 1932 Ford and it was a very old-fashioned car with big headlights and a running board on the side which is like a step to get up into the car. It was a lovely old car so we had that for quite a while.

Girl: How did you travel when you went a long way, such as on holidays?

Man: We would drive in the family car if we went on holidays but when I was older, when my sister and I were a little bit older than you are now, our parents moved to another country. We were both put into a boarding school so once a year we would get on a plane and fly to visit our mum and dad. And we would stay there for the school holidays and then come back to Australia for another year.

Girl: What was your favourite way to get around back then?

Man: I used to stay with my grandparents a lot and one of my grandmothers in particular used to spend a lot of time taking me around in school holidays and I loved those trips with her. We would just go on the bus or the train or we used to go on trams in Sydney in those days, we still had trams. And I can remember very clearly having lots of trips with my grandmother on the tram in Sydney. That was a lot of fun.

Girl: In what ways has transport changed since you were young?

Man:It's a lot busier isn't it, on the roads now everywhere and just if we're looking at Sydney it's a very very busy city compared with the city I grew up in. So there's that and there's also, I think, it's a lot safer now if you're travelling in a car because we didn't have seat belts, cars were not as well designed in those days. My mother and father both smoked cigarettes and so the car would be full of smoke whenever we went anywhere too. Trains are safer and more comfortable. They weren't very comfortable when I was a boy. Buses as well, I think, are much much better designed and built these days.

Girl: Thank you.

[A long view shows the girl and the man sitting in the living room.]