DO YOU remember dropping into the Coles Cafeteria on Bourke Street for a feast of rashers, sausages and mash with gravy from the bain marie?
Or perhaps catching a red rattler into the city? Eating a hot jam donut from the American Doughnut Kitchen van at the Queen Vic markets?
If so, you're more than likely a member of the Melbourne baby boomer generation, along with Bob Byrne.
Byrne, who runs the popular Facebook website Melbourne Remember When, has now penned a book of the same name - and it's sure to stir memories.
"Every photograph and memory reproduced here is a window to the Melbourne I remember. And to the Melbourne I forget," Steve Vizard writes in a foreword.
Byrne himself describes the book as "a commemoration of a much less sophisticated time, when we went to the footy at the local oval, got a second-hand bike from Father Christmas, when takeaway was fish and chips, the Holden 'Special' was the only prestige car to own, people smoked in restaurants and corporal punishment was widely accepted as the norm".
He says the book is "unashamedly nostalgic ... a pictorial reminder of a different generation".
From Foy's Department Store on the corner of Swanston and Bourke streets, to the tram "connies" who carried maps in their leather bags to ensure travellers were on the right track, and the St Moritz ice-skating rink on the St Kilda Esplanade, the book will have Melburnians, and those who visited the city in years gone by, taking a wonderful stroll down memory lane.
Remember slide nights where families would show off pictures from their holidays, sourcing materials from the local dump to make billy carts, "pokey" tours across the border into NSW, and when winding down the taxi window was the only available air conditioning?
If you remember any of this - or if you've forgotten much of it - you'll love reliving your younger years as you turn the pages.
Melbourne Remember When, by Bob Byrne (Newsouth) RRP $34.99
