I was volunteering at the Gerringong museum the other day and a lady came in. She was telling me a story about how, as a child, about 50 years ago, give or take a few, she used to come down with her family to Easts Beach Caravan Park every year and spend the Christmas holidays there.

She spent every day at the beach, made some great friends who also came down every year.

She said the group, all well and truly grown up, planned to go back and spend a weekend at the park to relive the excitement of their youth.

It got me thinking about those times. I actually had two childhoods, a bit like her. During the non-holiday time I spent my youth the same as any other child around Gerringong, going to school, cricket, scouts, church and so on.

During holiday time I was fully employed at my parents' caravan park at Gerroa.

Even though Easter was a big time and there were some reasonably busy times on special weekends, I wanted to just focus on the biggest time of them all - the Xmas holidays.

The school bell rang for the last time in a year back in the days when we had three terms. Therefore you had a full six weeks of Xmas holidays.

Christmas in the park in the 1970s.

You had a week of holidays between school breaking up and Xmas. We did get a few people to come into the caravan park but most people waited until Xmas Day was all but over.

From late Xmas Day and Boxing Day, locals did not go out onto the roads if they could help it because they were packed with holiday-makers descending onto the coast. It was a very busy day.

The holiday-makers could be divided into three groups.

First were those who took up accommodation that was already there, like onsite caravans.

Second were those who brought their own accommodation such as caravans or tents and were occasional visitors.

The third group were those who had bought a caravan and left it at the park more or less permanently and came down to the same place every year, sometimes for decades.

On the day, it was interesting to watch some "green" holiday-makers trying to back a caravan into an allocated spot. Some had never towed a caravan before.

Staying in a tent sounds like a lot of fun and I’m sure it was, when it didn’t rain. Some Xmas holidays it started to rain and just kept it up for weeks.

We had a shop and we would have these poor drowned rats come up to the shop just to get out of the rain for a couple of minutes. Everything they owned was wet through.

By the time Boxing Day was over most of the parks around the Kiama LGA were full, including ours.

And so started a different life for myself and the holiday-makers. The tourists' days went on a repeating cycle. The family wakes up and has breakfast. Pack up the beach stuff and off to the beach for a few hours. Sunscreen was usually a Coppertone variant, designed to give you a "safe" tan or a thick gooey cream that sat in streaks on your face called Zinc Cream.

You would sit on the beach under an umbrella if you had one, or went out in the water with a blow-up surf mat (Surfoplane) with handles or a hard plastic kickboard to catch waves. Occasionally "real" surfboards were used by young people with varying degrees of success. A block of surf wax was essential.

Christmas in the park in the 1970s.

Back home for a sandwich lunch and back out to explore the landscape, canoeing, walking on the rocks, etc.

You usually did not go back to the beach as by that time a stiff nor'easterly was blowing, flattening the waves and blowing sand so hard it actually cut into your legs as you walked.

Dinner was often a barbie set up in front of the van. Maybe you were lucky enough to go to the movies at the Gerringong Town Hall.

This routine was repeated for up to five weeks. Many people I saw never wore anything else apart from a swimming costume and thongs.

After the first week, some dads (and it was usually dads) returned home alone to go to work and came back on weekends.

Great friendships were forged. As the same people came down every year to the same sites, you got to know your neighbours and little communities sprang up.

At our park I got to know some other young people and had a close relationship with this group for the Xmas period but never saw them again until the following year. My brother even married a girl from the park.

Speaking of my brother, he was involved in one of the highlights of the day for the kids.

In those days you had cylindrical garbage bins with lids. It was his job to drive around the park picking them up, ready to take to the dump. Hordes of kids would descend and hang off all parts of the truck as he drove around.

Many businesses would come to the park to sell their goods. I can remember daily deliveries of meat and apple pies. The smell was wonderful.

In those days vans had ice boxes rather than electric fridges and an ice man would come around. Tourists would come out in droves carrying any plastic object they could find to get a block of ice to keep food cool.

Come the end of January the parks would empty out and people would go back to their other lives.

Walking around Avonlea Caravan Park in February you could hear the silence!

Many holiday-makers ended up buying properties in the district.