THE STREETS OF YOUR TOWN
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Ice-creams like the Paddle Pop have been part of Australian summers for decades. But many may not realise the birth place for the Streets company was in fact Corrimal.
Once upon a time, fisherman off the Illawarra coast would often look to a giant polar bear licking an ice-cream to guide them back to shore.
It may sound fictitious, but the luminous bear with a waving arm was indeed a fixture in front of the escarpment for many years.
It shone "across the black rocks of Towradgi" for decades and would light the way home.
It was, of course, the famous sign attached to the Streets Ice-Cream factory which sat on the Princes Highway from the 1920's to the middle of the century.
Technically the bear's arm didn't move, but the lighting made it look like it did.
"The fisherman used to love it because they could hone in, and knew that if they could see the light from the bear they were on their way home," recalled Barbara Street.
That was a time when ice-cream was bought in "bricks" wrapped in cardboard, and eaten very quickly because there were no added preservatives.
The polar bear was a much loved icon in many people's childhood - especially that of Mrs Street, who married into the ice-cream family.
Her husband John was a great nephew of Ted Street who founded the sweets company with four others in the 1920s, according to the family.
"Every Christmas uncle Ted would send down to our house [in East Corrimal] a churn of ice cream - 2.5 gallons," John told the Mercury.
"This was packed in a canvas shipping container and with dry ice, and it would keep that ice-cream frozen for three or four days."
John Street still has many fond memories of visiting great uncle Ted at the factory when he was a child, and feeling aghast at just how ice-cream was actually made.
"I had a few trips in I can remember - into the actual work with my father - and I was totally confused to see these big tubes churning out white or pink stuff which was ice cream," he laughed.
The Corrimal production facility was certainly nothing like his boyish dreams of a Willy Wonka-style factory involving chocolate rivers and marshmallow mushrooms.
Marketed as "Cream of the Coast", Streets Ice-Cream was once one of the Illawarra's major exports, and would only use milk straight from dairy farms around the region.
This month Unilever - who bought the company in 1960 - are celebrating the ice-creams which have brought much joy to Australians throughout the decades.
Paddle Pops, Bubble-O Bills, Splice, Cornetto's, Golden Gaytimes and many more.
John admitted his own grandfather James (brother to Ted) decided to "have a go" at making and selling ice cream when he owned his own shop Corrimal in 1913, but left that for farm life.
The foundations of Streets Ice Cream weren't laid until the next decade when James' siblings Ted and brother Daniel began experimenting with styles of summery delight.
The Canberra Times reported in 1975 that Ted was the one to perfect a vanilla ice-cream recipe "in his backyard", with friends asking him to make more.
It was reported he then went into partnership with brother Daniel whom, whom the family said was the brains behind perfecting the machinery for production.
The pair opened their store Illawarra Delicacies in Corrimal in 1923, selling ice and ice-cream across the region, which quickly became a favourite amongst households.
Ted's wife Daisy, Daniel's wife Francis and another friend were all shareholders of the company, according to John Street.
He said Ted may have been the front of the business but Daisy was calling the shots out the back as foreman, right up until the 1950s.
In September of 1929, the Illawarra Mercury reported the demand for ice and ice-cream from the Street brothers' business was so great the previous summer, they were forced to expand.
"Management was compelled to practically work all day and night to fulfill the daily increasing orders," the paper said.
In 1934 the group changed its name to Streets Ice-Cream, of which the name remains today.
Sadly Daniel Street passed away a few years later. Though it was his son Ron who went on to invent the Paddle Pop, with chocolate as the initial flavour launched in 1953.
The engineer apparently turned down a job at NASA to work in the family business, according to a 2013 Daily Telegraph article.
"Ron told me before he passed on, they would only make the Paddle Pops if they could only get milk out of the Jamberoo Valley [because] very rich dairy country," John Street told the Mercury.
Before being taken over by Unilever, the Streets family bought out another top ice-creamery in Wollongong - that being Dawson's on Auburn Street; before opening another factory in Turella in Sydney.
Unilever Australia Ltd bought Streets in 1960 and Ted Street and his wife, Daisy, officially retired to Narooma, according to Mr Street's obituary in the Canberra Times in 1975.
"In its hey day, I think it had 65 people working there [compared to the average businesses at the time] which might have had two people or a family operated shop," John Street said, noting they also employed many women.
"Any family would be proud of a business that's still operating after all these years," Barbara added.
"You have to remember too that the generation that started this didn't have much schooling like the kids do today. It was just shear hard work and common sense."
STREETS ICE-CREAM FAST FACTS: (according to Unilever)
- Australians have the 3rd highest consumption of ice cream per capita in the world. (18L per person annually). #1 is the United States of America and #2 is New Zealand.
- The first ever Paddle Pop flavour was chocolate. Vanilla and caramel were next, and a fruit salad flavour was sold in the 1960s.
- The Paddle Pop was launched by an engineer in the family, Daniel's son Ron, who turned down a job at NASA to work for the family business. Ron created the delicious treat with chocolate the initial flavour.
- Paddle Pop can now be found in over 15 countries.
- The Golden Gaytime launched in 1970, and is today Streets' top selling ice-cream. Though the first Gaytime flavours were strawberry and vanilla.
- The chocolate top on the bottom of the Cornetto was a manufacturing mistake. Everyone's favourite part of the Cornetto was unintentional - consumers loved it though, so the chocolate tip stayed.