Originally Posted by
goingbush
Maybe - but horses and buggies were still pretty much in evidence in my childhood nearly thirty years after the Model T ceased production and nearly fifty years after the turn of the tweniteth century. By the time I was in highschool in the mid 1950s they were getting to the stage of "oh!, there's something unusual", but they were still around. When I started primary school almost nobody in our street owned a car (I think they slightly outnumbered horses though).
The last Cobb & Co coach ran between Surat and Wallumbillah in 1929, almost thirty years after the turn of the 20th century.
Although in some respects the change may well mirror the change from horses in the twentieth century. In farming for example, in this country, while tractors appeared early in the century, they had little impact on most farms until after WW2. As an example, one of my nieces is married to a man who, in his primary school days, often had to get up early, round up the horses and harvest them before breakfast, reversing the process after school. The farm my sister and her husband bought in 1970 had only acquired a motor vehicle in the 1950s, and had never owned a tractor.
Certainly in this country, the change to motor cars took far longer than twenty years. Not just replacing horses - remember that until the 1950s or even 1960s, the normal mode of long distance travel for most people was train.
Seems to me that a changeover of thirty years is more likely, although since the takeup of cars was strongly influenced by two world wars and the Great Depression, it all depends on other events!
John
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol
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