Grandparents' world trip photos - 1970s
Collected here is a compilation of photos taken by my paternal grandparents on their two world trips in 1970-1 and 1976-7. These are just a fraction of the total in existence, but unlike most I don't believe in just dumping hundreds of pics on people for them to ignore. All of these have been carefully chosen because they either A) say something about the time period they were taken in, or B) are technically excellent. Left out are almost all of the "touristy" shots they took, because if you want to know what Buckingham Palace looks like then just Google it, and places like Paris haven't really changed that much in 40 years. A final word on the quality presented here, all these were originally slides that were scanned by my mother without the aid of professional equipment and in certain instances some colour correction has been done in order to try and replicate the original appearance. Please keep in mind that any time you transfer analogue media to digital some losses are bound to occur.
The Shota Rustavelli. Travelling by air was an option of course, but there is something to be said for the different experience that taking the boat could give, and The Soviet Union, perhaps seeking to improve its international image, provided this service. One interesting observation was that my grandmother was amazed that the ship's doctor was a woman. This never would have been the case in Australia in that era, women were only ever nurses, but in the USSR it was quite common for doctors outside big cities to be female.
Leaving Sydney docks.
The Sydney Opera House under construction.
The Panama Canal.
New York with another iconic building, the World Trade Center, also under construction.
Grandma and some relatives in Times Square.
A visit to the UN building with a replica (?) of Sputnik.
Leaving New York, back when it used to have scummy docks. I bet this is all swanky apartments or parkland now.
The camping ground at Abbey Wood, where they stayed while in London.
Abbey Wood railway station. Bit of history now as it was replaced with a fuck-ugly modern building in the 1980s which is in turn being torn down to make way for Crossrail.
Piccadilly Circus before the invention of LEDs.
A Chelsea Pensioner.
This brutalist monstrosity used to be in Hyde Park but is no longer, and I can't seem to find any information about it.
Petticoat Lane market with added religious fruitcake.
Petticoat Lane trader enjoying a laugh thanks to his novelty merchandise.
A picture that could never be taken these days. Before the IRA tried to kill Mrs Thatcher by lobbing a mortar at her, ordinary plebs were permitted to walk down the opposite side of Downing St as far as Number 10. Now thanks to terrorism both Irish and Islamic, the whole street is barred to the public. Still, now the bored coppers only get abused by a former Chief Whip rather than having to stand about all day.
Carnaby St had been at the heart of 1960s "swinging London" and was on the way out by the 1970s, but still a reasonably happening place from all reports.
Great character shot taken at the British Museum. Note the guy on the right looks to be copping a feel of his woman's nice arse, the Indian kid on the left imitating a dinosaur (or walking like an Egyptian, it's hard to tell) and the nerdy squirt in centre frame is probably the museum curator by now.
Pearly Kings and Queens.
Scottish football crowds in Trafalgar Square after their side scored a rare victory over England.
You probably don't get snow like this in London these days. Grandma always made sure she was carrying something red or would wait for red London bus to appear in order to brighten up even the dullest of photos.
Stourhead. They filmed one of the versions of "Pride and Prejudice" here.
Gold's Hill, Shaftsbury, more of a climb than a walk. Also the site of a famous ad for bread made by the future director of Alien and Blade Runner along with many other fine films, Ridley Scott.
Rare shot of grandpa looking chuffed next to a sign with his name on it.
Double yellow lines in the UK means "no parking" but you have to wonder why the council bothered.
Beautiful tableau of fishing life in the Cornish town of Polperro. I imagine there is no longer any fishing industry there so a relic of history this.
Some residents of St Michael's Mount.
In which it is proven that Asian tourists have been doing that weird photographer's squat thing for far longer than you think. Also, a crazy house.
The scarcely-describable crappiness of a regional parade to commemorate Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee.
The ford at Eynesford.
Over the English Channel via hovercraft. The opening of the Chunnel in the 1990s killed off this particular service.
The Atomoium in Brussels, constructed as part of the 1958 World's Fair.
Salzburg, Austria. Grandma was great at bailing people up and asking if she could take their photo when most of us would be too embarrassed to ask. Therefore only she could get great character studies like this.
And like this, taken in Innsbruck. This is almost like something from an old master's painting the composition is so good.
The Berlin Wall.
The Reichstag in West Berlin. Unfortunately this was taken from a bus so the quality isn't brilliant, but you can still see it was practically left as a semi-ruin after the Second World War as the capital of West Germany was moved to Bonn.
What a thing to have in the middle of your city, in Berlin alone there were 12,000 border troops guarding East Germany against itself. If anyone wants to know more about the character of the border, then I highly recommend this short film.
Looking across no man's land. That lump is actually the site of Hitler's Bunker. After failing to destroy it after 1945 the Soviet troops just buried it. Later, in the early 1980s the ground would be levelled and an apartment block built next to it, today the site is a car park.
Grandpa leaning against the Wall which would claim 136 lives in Berlin alone.
The stadium for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This is very close to how it looked in the Nazi era, recently it's been throughly modernised.
NATO tanks in Hardenbergplatz, West Berlin.
Checkpoint Charlie, the only way between East and West Berlin.
The new and shiny side of life in East Germany.
The not so shiny side, bomb-damanged buildings from World War 2 still not demolished over a quarter of a century later.
War memorial in Leningrad (St Petersburg).
Something that communism did have over capitalism is that the communists never really "developed" - i.e. knocked down everything old and put up shitty modern buildings - their cities, instead they just surrounded them with suburbs and exurbs of factories and ugly apartment blocks. Thus you have beautiful Leningrad, looking slightly run down here, but essentially untouched since Tsarist times. If this had been a Western city it probably would have been trashed by the 20th Century.
Red Square and the Kremlin, a pretty good view from a hotel room. This building actually still is a hotel, last I checked their website it was the sort of place without prices, if you have to ask you can't afford it. This is the new Russia, but in the Soviet Union it was just another place to stay, even if it had million rouble views.
Red Square in the daylight. Apparently a lot of ignorant people, mostly Americans, think that St Basil's Cathedral is actually the Kremlin, because for years TV news reporters stood in front of it while discussing the latest moves by the Soviet leadership.
Even in Soviet Russia Grandma couldn't resist stopping strangers to take their picture.
Eternal flame being guarded by Komsomol inside the old walled city of Smolensk.
Nice to see that even in the USSR traditional practices could still be enjoyed. This is in Minsk, today in Belarus.
Glencoe, Scotland with added twats.
The grim and bleak Hermitage Castle.
Looking toward Aisla Craig.
Grandma giving shit to an American hoping to spot the Loch Ness monster. As you can see he's both well prepared should the mythical beast appear, and not enjoying having the piss taken out of him.
The scenic delights of Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
It's even uglier up close, note the fortifications for of course this was the heyday of the IRA.
A more idyllic rural scene somewhere in Ireland.
Ballintoy, nowadays better known as Pyke in Game of Thrones
Now we're in Belfast and it's the same old bullshit.
Thankfully Dublin looks a lot more pleasant.
Looking out the cabin porthole at Port Said.
Back home via the Suez Canal this time.
There's also quite a few taken by my parents in a similar era and of similar subjects, maybe if the interest is there I could post some of these. Anyway, hopefully this was edifying.
The Shota Rustavelli. Travelling by air was an option of course, but there is something to be said for the different experience that taking the boat could give, and The Soviet Union, perhaps seeking to improve its international image, provided this service. One interesting observation was that my grandmother was amazed that the ship's doctor was a woman. This never would have been the case in Australia in that era, women were only ever nurses, but in the USSR it was quite common for doctors outside big cities to be female.
Leaving Sydney docks.
The Sydney Opera House under construction.
The Panama Canal.
New York with another iconic building, the World Trade Center, also under construction.
Grandma and some relatives in Times Square.
A visit to the UN building with a replica (?) of Sputnik.
Leaving New York, back when it used to have scummy docks. I bet this is all swanky apartments or parkland now.
The camping ground at Abbey Wood, where they stayed while in London.
Abbey Wood railway station. Bit of history now as it was replaced with a fuck-ugly modern building in the 1980s which is in turn being torn down to make way for Crossrail.
Piccadilly Circus before the invention of LEDs.
A Chelsea Pensioner.
This brutalist monstrosity used to be in Hyde Park but is no longer, and I can't seem to find any information about it.
Petticoat Lane market with added religious fruitcake.
Petticoat Lane trader enjoying a laugh thanks to his novelty merchandise.
A picture that could never be taken these days. Before the IRA tried to kill Mrs Thatcher by lobbing a mortar at her, ordinary plebs were permitted to walk down the opposite side of Downing St as far as Number 10. Now thanks to terrorism both Irish and Islamic, the whole street is barred to the public. Still, now the bored coppers only get abused by a former Chief Whip rather than having to stand about all day.
Carnaby St had been at the heart of 1960s "swinging London" and was on the way out by the 1970s, but still a reasonably happening place from all reports.
Great character shot taken at the British Museum. Note the guy on the right looks to be copping a feel of his woman's nice arse, the Indian kid on the left imitating a dinosaur (or walking like an Egyptian, it's hard to tell) and the nerdy squirt in centre frame is probably the museum curator by now.
Pearly Kings and Queens.
Scottish football crowds in Trafalgar Square after their side scored a rare victory over England.
You probably don't get snow like this in London these days. Grandma always made sure she was carrying something red or would wait for red London bus to appear in order to brighten up even the dullest of photos.
Stourhead. They filmed one of the versions of "Pride and Prejudice" here.
Gold's Hill, Shaftsbury, more of a climb than a walk. Also the site of a famous ad for bread made by the future director of Alien and Blade Runner along with many other fine films, Ridley Scott.
Rare shot of grandpa looking chuffed next to a sign with his name on it.
Double yellow lines in the UK means "no parking" but you have to wonder why the council bothered.
Beautiful tableau of fishing life in the Cornish town of Polperro. I imagine there is no longer any fishing industry there so a relic of history this.
Some residents of St Michael's Mount.
In which it is proven that Asian tourists have been doing that weird photographer's squat thing for far longer than you think. Also, a crazy house.
The scarcely-describable crappiness of a regional parade to commemorate Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee.
The ford at Eynesford.
Over the English Channel via hovercraft. The opening of the Chunnel in the 1990s killed off this particular service.
The Atomoium in Brussels, constructed as part of the 1958 World's Fair.
Salzburg, Austria. Grandma was great at bailing people up and asking if she could take their photo when most of us would be too embarrassed to ask. Therefore only she could get great character studies like this.
And like this, taken in Innsbruck. This is almost like something from an old master's painting the composition is so good.
The Berlin Wall.
The Reichstag in West Berlin. Unfortunately this was taken from a bus so the quality isn't brilliant, but you can still see it was practically left as a semi-ruin after the Second World War as the capital of West Germany was moved to Bonn.
What a thing to have in the middle of your city, in Berlin alone there were 12,000 border troops guarding East Germany against itself. If anyone wants to know more about the character of the border, then I highly recommend this short film.
Looking across no man's land. That lump is actually the site of Hitler's Bunker. After failing to destroy it after 1945 the Soviet troops just buried it. Later, in the early 1980s the ground would be levelled and an apartment block built next to it, today the site is a car park.
Grandpa leaning against the Wall which would claim 136 lives in Berlin alone.
The stadium for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This is very close to how it looked in the Nazi era, recently it's been throughly modernised.
NATO tanks in Hardenbergplatz, West Berlin.
Checkpoint Charlie, the only way between East and West Berlin.
The new and shiny side of life in East Germany.
The not so shiny side, bomb-damanged buildings from World War 2 still not demolished over a quarter of a century later.
War memorial in Leningrad (St Petersburg).
Something that communism did have over capitalism is that the communists never really "developed" - i.e. knocked down everything old and put up shitty modern buildings - their cities, instead they just surrounded them with suburbs and exurbs of factories and ugly apartment blocks. Thus you have beautiful Leningrad, looking slightly run down here, but essentially untouched since Tsarist times. If this had been a Western city it probably would have been trashed by the 20th Century.
Red Square and the Kremlin, a pretty good view from a hotel room. This building actually still is a hotel, last I checked their website it was the sort of place without prices, if you have to ask you can't afford it. This is the new Russia, but in the Soviet Union it was just another place to stay, even if it had million rouble views.
Red Square in the daylight. Apparently a lot of ignorant people, mostly Americans, think that St Basil's Cathedral is actually the Kremlin, because for years TV news reporters stood in front of it while discussing the latest moves by the Soviet leadership.
Even in Soviet Russia Grandma couldn't resist stopping strangers to take their picture.
Eternal flame being guarded by Komsomol inside the old walled city of Smolensk.
Nice to see that even in the USSR traditional practices could still be enjoyed. This is in Minsk, today in Belarus.
Glencoe, Scotland with added twats.
The grim and bleak Hermitage Castle.
Looking toward Aisla Craig.
Grandma giving shit to an American hoping to spot the Loch Ness monster. As you can see he's both well prepared should the mythical beast appear, and not enjoying having the piss taken out of him.
The scenic delights of Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
It's even uglier up close, note the fortifications for of course this was the heyday of the IRA.
A more idyllic rural scene somewhere in Ireland.
Ballintoy, nowadays better known as Pyke in Game of Thrones
Now we're in Belfast and it's the same old bullshit.
Thankfully Dublin looks a lot more pleasant.
Looking out the cabin porthole at Port Said.
Back home via the Suez Canal this time.
There's also quite a few taken by my parents in a similar era and of similar subjects, maybe if the interest is there I could post some of these. Anyway, hopefully this was edifying.