Thread: Money for Nothing - making cash as a kid

Peeling spuds at the local servo and sweeping/cleaning a workshop a couple of times a week and stump picking, roustabout and tractor driving on the weekends and school holidays kept me buisy most of the time

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

Car detailers here were usually toothsome young women in brief bikinis. Did you look good in that uniform?

You might be thinking about a car wash or new car predelivery prep. You would not dress like that for car detailing even if you had the body for it

Originally Posted by 3toes

You might be thinking about a car wash or new car predelivery prep. You would not dress like that for car detailing even if you had the body for it

Used car yards here competed to have the best looking young bikini birds as detailers. You looked up and down "The Strip" or "The Magic Mile" and saw all the young chickies out cleaning and polishing cars in the yards. It was a matter of prestige amongst one's peers in the business to have the best looking birds out the front of your yard. Yorkshire climate might be more amenable to woolen neck to knee swimmers. Probably needed Claude Jeremiah Greengrass' greatcoat.

Trapping and Ferreting rabbits and selling them as fresh meat to households "door to door" around the area, with the surplus sold to a local Chiller/Rabbit Buyer up the end of town. The skins from the ones that were sold as fresh meat door to door were kept and turned inside out and salted, then dried on wire hoops, then sold. As we lived in an irrigation area there were plenty of dirt and concrete channels about which meant a good supply of yabbies and asparagus, the small yabs sold to local fishermen, the big ones eaten at home, the asparagus bunched and sold door to door for 1/- and later 10 cents. Longnecks were the common container for beer back then, stubbies and "tin" cans hadn't hit the scene, so we scrounged/collected the longnecks and any bonus soft drink bottles we could find then sell the beer bottles to the local "Bottle O" (as we called them) and soft drink bottles to corner stores, usually for a drink or an icecream.
When I eventually started an apprenticeship the pay pretty ordinary as a first year, $19 week, so i would spotlight a couple of nights a week and get 80c pair for rabbits. Fuel was cheap, 12-14c litre, .22 ammo $1.40 a packet, and 40-50 pair of rabbits would gross $30-40 for the night, plus any foxes shot were an absolute bonus of about $20-25, and some reaching as much as $40. A Fur/Skin Buyer from "Aladdin Furs" used to come to town once a month and prop at a local service station, to buy the skins. He always gave a bit better price than the local guys.
By the time i gave up shooting (for income top-up) in the late seventies rabbits (and hares) were bringing $2.60 a pair which was very good coin.
Eventually the fur trade for fox skins died out because of the stigma associated with wearing animal skins, but the fur hat still continues today, and rabbit numbers eventually took a dive due to control methods, myxo, and eventually the calicivirus being released.
The rabbit, regarded as one of Australia's biggest pests, but a huge source of income and tucker for a lot of Aussies over the years.

Cheers, Mick.