Unsung icons: Billies, bikes & boughs DIY toys – and fun!
COMEDIAN DAVID SMIEDT TAKES AN IRREVERENT, BUT APPRECIATIVE, LOOK AT THE CLASSIC THINGS THAT DEFINE YOU-BEAUT AUSSIE LIFE
For a generation whose idea of calamity is the internet going down, forcing them to take a break from Fortnite, it can be hard to grasp the reality of the oft-repeated phrase: “When we were your age, we made our own fun.” For a start, our parents didn’t need us to be in view at all times. Just the opposite, in fact – we were told in no uncertain terms to go outside and not to come back until dinner. Our parents had grown up with a certain post-war austerity that necessitated a blend of frugal practicality and imagination: if you wanted a toy, chances were you’d pretty much have to craft it yourself from surplus material and enjoy the frequently dangerous fruits of your ingenuity. As long as it didn’t involve Dad having to pull out his wallet, you were free to literally and figuratively knock yourself out. Gravity – despite its skinned-kneed, gravel-rashed, palm-grazed consequences – was free after all.
One of the more commonly constructed toys was a swing. Not the fancy welded versions you would see down the park though – too many components. You needed only three items to make this variant work: a length of rope, a tyre and a tree limb sturdy enough to accommodate a missile the weight of a small human.
Before the advent of the term ‘upcycling’, we were fervently searching the garage for the first two essential items. In order to secure permission for construction, you had to prove a certain parsimonious resourcefulness where both the tyre was balder than your Uncle Barry and the rope too frayed to be used in securing/ towing anything of real value. In that case, kids, go ahead.
Once the threadbare twine had been tossed over the bough via a groaning slipknot and bound to the tyre, a parent would perform a cursory safety test by giving it a couple of hard yanks, declaring it good to go with the solemnity of the Queen launching a cruise liner. At which point, the first rider would not merely sit on the tyre but go full daredevil by taking a standing stance, grabbing the ropes in both hands and attempting to bring the whole shebang perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Ninety degrees was the goal.
If the tyre swing was too tame for you, there was another option: the billycart. Unless you were one of those rare flash kids whose vehicle was a store-bought kit, the same make-do attitude applied. Filch some wheels off an old pram, blag some leftover timber from the dog kennel project, bang in enough bolts to make a rudimentary front axle, add a string-based steering system and you were ready to roll. If you wanted to be the envy of the block, you might bung on an extra plank for your bottom and write something like ‘The Lightning Bolt’ on the side in Texta/mum’s nail polish. Helmets were an optional extra, one which called into question one’s courage.
As for safety, the braking system amounted to a well-placed Dunlop Volley – or thong in summer – that on contact with the bitumen provided crucial resistance when the bottom of the hill approached sooner than expected – which was pretty much always. Injuries were, naturally, common, but only considered serious if they cost your parents’ time, money or a trip to the emergency room.
While the homemade bike was never a thing, by two thirds of the way through the school holidays, merely cycling the streets could get a bit boring. No matter whether you were an Evel Knievel or from the X-Games generation, what was clearly required to shatter the summer ennui (and maybe fracture a wrist of two) was a ramp. Blame Nicole in BMX Bandits if you must, but jumps were the shizzle (to paraphrase ’90s hip-hop icon Snoop Dogg). Again these tended to be cobbled-together affairs from wooden offcuts and plasterboard scavenged from the toolshed or garage.
To prove just how little attention we actually paid in physics class, the ramp angles were often so acute that the cyclist in question was launched high but not long, which meant the front wheel landed first,
craft
“IF YOU WANTED A TOY, YOU’D HAVE TO IT YOURSELF FROM SURPLUS MATERIAL AND ENJOY THE dangerous FREQUENTLY FRUITS OF YOUR INGENUITY”
shortly followed by the rider’s chin. Either that or you could lollybribe an unwitting sibling/gullible neighbour who wanted to join the gang to lie beside the ramp as you attempted to clear their prone bodies, instead invariably winding them with your back tyre. Which was their fault anyway for flinching.
And the only signal we needed that playtime was over didn’t have 4 or 5G in front of it. Rather, it consisted of just two yelled words: “Dinner time!”