“How did we get into the movies if had no money? There were two methods we employed as little kids on the camp. On Coomaditchie, the trees used to be on the top and right down to the water. It was grassland but the trees were at the top of the hill. They weren’t big tall gum trees, but we used to go and get the red gum tips. We’d go on Saturday morning a lot of us kids, my sisters would come too and we’d pick up these big bunches and we’d come home and do them up into penny and threepenny bunches. We’d tread all over these hills here, Donaldson Street, Bland Street, everywhere, Robertson Road, Cowper Street, everywhere, knocking on doors to sell bunches of gumtips so we’d have enough money to go to the pictures, the ‘pikchas’.”

– Aunty Barbara Nicholson, 12^th March 2016

Photo from the collections of the Wollongong City Libraries and the Illawarra Historical Society.