‘That was close’: My brother’s near miss with a Sydney tram in the ’60s

In the 1960s, I called Sydney in New South Wales home. In those days, Sydney had the biggest tram system in the southern hemisphere, the first line (a horse-drawn tram) installed in the 1860s. They were immensely popular. One of the tram tram routes used to run down Anzac Parade, Kensington. My brother Mike and I used to take it to high school.

The tram lines were closed in 1961, when the route was replaced by buses, by you can still see some of the wide median used by the former trams at the southern section of Anzac Parade. Coincidentally, Sydney is headlong into rebuilding the tram systems with many of the tracks being placed on the exact roads where the original fleet travelled.

Perhaps it was a mistake to remove the network in the first place … Back in the ’60s though my brother was an 18-year-old owner of a shiny, black FJ Holden. It was his pride and joy.

One morning, Mike crawled into bed at about 4am after a big night out with his football mates, but he was soon woken by our dad and loud clanging noises. “Where are the keys? Where are the keys?” Dad was in a panic, trying to wake his hungover son.

Through bleary eyes, Mike was horrified to see Dad in his dressing gown running out to the middle of Anzac Parade in the dark while waving the keys. He was even more horrified to learn that, in his drunken state, he’d parked his Holden right in the middle of the tram tracks!

The tram bell was making a frantic racket! Our poor dad could be heard over the clatter saying, “Sorry mate, sorry mate,” to the tram driver. He jumped into the car and moved it to the kerb.

Had he not reacted in time, it could have been quite a disaster. There were no consequences for Mike, although he did get quite a few lectures from Dad about the foolishness of driving while drunk.

Could you imagine how that scenario would play out today with digital media, viral videos and 24-hour television news cycles, not to mention the drink driving laws my brother would clearly have been in violation of? I’ll leave it to you to come up with a modern-day version of this true story from the ’60s.

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