Things you did at the start of the millennium you don't now

[scott]

With the 20th anniversary of the start of the 21st century upon us, it would be interesting to examine what we did then that we don't do now.

- Watched movies on VHS tapes on a VCR, I got some VHS videos for Christmas in 1999.
- Drove(or parents drove) cars, that had no ABS, airbags,traction control or Bluetooth.
-Entertained ourselves on long drives with cassettes we stuck into the AM/FM radio with buttons and not touch screens
-Used dumb mobile phones that only made phone calls.
-Used cameras that used film and had to take it to a chemist or Rabbit Photo for processing.
-Shopped at Dick Smith and Clive Peeters.
-Knew who Clive Palmer was.
-You had to physically go to get takeaway and not have Uber Eats deliver it.
- Ride on a bus without security screens.
-Travel on a Leyland Tiger or an Elwood.
-Watch TV on a CRT TV with access only to about 5-6 stations depending on where you lived, with decent programming.
-See a game of cricket on TV with Richie Benaud or Tony Greig calling the action.
-Used a computer with Windows 95 or 98 with a CRT screen.
-Accessed the internet with a dial up connection.
- Checked out your groceries with a human, rather than a machine.
-Conversed with actual humans, rather than social media.

[ScaniaGrenda]

- Shopped at Bi-lo Supermarkets (Before they were either rebranded as coles or shutdown completely)
- Travel on the 620/720 Cars (Trains)
- Use the older Cityrail ticket machines with a 101 buttons on it
- Travel using paper tickets (I'm now 100% an opal card user)
- Used Windows ME as my primary OS until Windows XP
- Use Windows XP
- Visit the local Video Ezy / Civic Video / Blockbuster. All have since long shutdown in my area. Blockbuster was the last around here until early - mid 2017
- Used Dial-up internet (Now am on the NBN)
- Travel on the older Volvo B10M's with the Custom Coaches "Euro" bodywork.
- Ride Buses with the old blind destinations
- Travel all the way to the old Newcastle Train Terminus (Where Custom's House now is)
- Travel on Cityrail branded trains
- Watched a lot more television then what I do now

[scott]

Just thought of these

- Stored our files on floppy disks (and Zip disks).
- Did our school work in exercise books and not on tablets(was in Year 12 in 2000).
- Used the Yellow pages phone book or CD Rom.
- Paid for mail order purchases with cheques or money orders.

[Campbelltown busboy]

Here are some things
Being able to buy a second hand automatic or manual 6 seat car Ute or van from the 70s 80s or early 90s with a column shifter
Traveling on brand new high floor step entry route buses
Catching second hand ex ACTION Canberra Mercedes O305s in some areas of Sydney
Watching a 34 cm tv with a rabbit ears telescopic aerial
Listening to music on a stereo with a CD player and cassette player that you could power with D batteries if there weren't any power points available

[MotorOmnibus8562]

No one born after the year 2000 were legally allowed to drive cars in Australia until 2016

There were more bus operators than there were today

(for those who don't watch Thomas the tank engine) the series used models until 2008 where they started transitioning to CGI.

Before the Waratahs, The S sets were the biggest in the fleet with over 500 carriages (including the tulloch cars that were previously used on red rattlers)

The Explorers that went to pluto left Earth in 2006 and arrived on pluto in 2015

[BanksfielderIdiot823]

In Melbourne:
- Riding on Connex and M>Train. Hitachis all around
- Watching the footy from a local ground, not the 'G (Docklands Stadium didn't even exist yet either)
- Going to the old Dandenong Myer
- Groceries were either from the milk bar or from Coles and Safeway
- Trying to dodge the Monty without the gantries and all that crap.

In Sydney:
- Growing up with Westbus routes 826 and 827. (The region back then was all about Fairfield. We weren't mercilessly forced into Liverpool.)
- Strolling around the old bus stops at Bankstown and Fairfield.
- S Sets with Tullochs, G Sets out to Springwood, V Sets to Wollongong
- Riding a much better rail network than the one that exists nowadays
- Going to watch a movie at the Bass Hill Drive-in

In general:
- Always waiting eagerly for any of the Ford Falcon adverts.
- Speaking of adverts: LUBE MOBILE We'll come to you! 13 30 32!
- Watching V8 Supercars (back when it was actually worth it)
- Car rivalries; my family had Fords and my relatives had Holdens.
- Windows 98 on my cousin's Packard Bell to play many Star Wars games (Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2, Pit Droids, DroidWorks, etc)
- Windows 95 on the IBM at home for everything else.
- Lego (and trying to avoid stepping on them)
- Going down the street to the butcher, fruit shop, post office, milk bar and newsagency, maybe even a kebab, chicken or burger joint, the way town centres were well before the cafe and health-food brigade stormed in and ripped it all apart.
- Does anyone else remember the 5 1⁄4" and 8" floppy disks?

[MotorOmnibus8562]

Film cameras still existed and after 2004 everyone had a digital camera...

[scott]

DVD players did not really start to take off until 2003/04. I got my first DVD player just before Christmas 2003, it supplemented my VCR as I still had quite a lot of VHS tapes and could not record on to the DVD player as it did not have a hard drive in it. Updated to a DVD recorder/player in 2007, and got rid of the VCR and all the tapes in 2011 on the council hard rubbish collection. By about 2007 VHS was extinct in most video rental stores, rented my last VHS tape in 2004.

[MotorOmnibus8562]

We only had General waste and recycling until they invented the organics in 2009 but you were only allowed to put garden waste in it.

[Campbelltown busboy]

Here are some more things I can remember
Catching a Busways Custom Coaches bodied semi automatic Volvo B58-56/B58-61 on route 883 or catching a Interline Mercedes pie cart ex ACTON Ansair O305 or Volgren CR221L bodied midi on a Raby to UWS Macarthur via Campbelltown and Leumeah station bound 874 from Minto
Watching Video Hits or Rage on Saturday and Sunday mornings
Wondering why Busways was giving all their new south western Mercedes O405 deliveries 479-483 to Camden depot then seeing brand new Campbelltown depot resident 484 a few days later at Campbelltown station

[MotorOmnibus8562]

Who remembers the Franklin's supermarkets?

[Fleet Lists]

Some were still in Sydney until 2015 so not that long ago.

[Campbelltown busboy]

Not seeing a Woolworths or Coles logo on every second Caltex or Shell service station shop
Filling up at a Mobil service station
Being a student in the NSW education system that pushed their spring holidays forward by about 2 weeks due to Sydney 2000 Olympics

[scott]

I was in the Victorian education system back then (Year 12) and our spring holidays were brought forward by a week, the day we broke up was the day of the opening ceremony. I remember our teachers telling us to study rather than sit all day watching the Olympics.

I did study, but had to manage being ill with a bad cold, and also my grandmother's cancer treatment(she passed away in April 2001).

[MotorOmnibus8562]

More people bought physical movies (CDs) instead of online content

[Campbelltown busboy]

Widescreen TVs were very expensive and normal tvs were smaller and more boxy looking

[MotorOmnibus8562]

The attention span from children whwn it came to watching the television significantly reduced, in thecolden days each program lasted for like half an hour and ir significantly reduced to just 5 minutes.

[MotorOmnibus8562]

Ice cream trucks, They used to come around to my neighbourhood like every few weeks or so when I lived in Sydney, I haven't seen one like at least 6 years ago now.... They seem to have become extinct.

[JRBUS123]

They are a bit more rare to find, but not extinct. I saw one last year during the summer break near the beach

The most obvious ice cream trucks I know are at the viewing point located at the northern end of the runway at Melbourne Airport (and they are there all the time)

[MotorOmnibus8562]

They are a bit more rare to find, but not extinct. I saw one last year during the summer break near the beach

The most obvious ice cream trucks I know are at the viewing point located at the northern end of the runway at Melbourne Airport (and they are there all the time)

There used to be neighborhood ice cream trucks, they don't really exist anymore, I assume its because of the childhood obesity rates.....

[MotorOmnibus8562]

When I grew up in Sydney:

Your typical school bus in the blue mountains, especially in Springwood/Valley hieghts area was a PMC bodied Volvo B10M

Going to school in the blue mountains and not really having to deal with bushfires.

Your typical train in Penrith was silver sets (excluding c sets) Tangaras and V sets with a few oscars. Now the silver sets on the western line have been replaced by waratahs.

In Wodonga:
Your typical bus that operated all day was a Volgren CR228L untill the end of 2013 and The Ex mylon dyson CR228s operated on the all day buses.

Your typical casual (peak) bus was a Volgren CR221L untill the end of 2013 as well.

Not seeing a volgren optimus untill november 2014 in person.

[MotorOmnibus8562]

Oh yes i know.

The Train Shed (Thomas theme park) in Sydney, Who remembers the Tulloch car there and The Day they Introduced Gordon......

[Heihachi_73]

Rode Ventura's Leyland Tigers on the 737 (and later, 742), the last clutchless manual/semi-automatic full size route buses in Melbourne (Mercedes-Benz LO412 aka Pie Carts were also manual but were minibuses, likewise Invicta's Hino TeleBuses of the day)

Rode Invicta's first batch of LoRiders (Dennis Darts 101-114), the first(?) low floor buses in Melbourne, which also predated the CR221L body (introduced with Invicta 115), having the traditional 80s/90s Volgren shape instead - back when the 664 didn't run on Sundays, instead it was the 691 from Lilydale/Chirnside Park all the way to Waverley Gardens

Caught the 4D train once in a blue moon before it was put to bed permanently (a true rarity in the Connex era, unlike the PTC/Hillside Trains era)

Uploaded malicious-but-harmless HTML (which you couldn't access unless you deliberately typed the URL in) to my website which referenced a file located at C:\con\con, crashing any Win9x box that dared visit the hidden page

Racked up a $1900 Bigpond cable bill after I downloaded 2GB on a 200MB plan when I thought I was on a 2GB plan (Telstra charged $1 for every megabyte over the limit!)

Got "banned by Metallica" on Napster, most likely due to Napster finding a leaked demo song that no-one had heard before as of early 2000 (I mainly collected live concerts as I preferred them to the studio recordings, but had a few pre-release demos as well), the song would later be known as "I Disappear" and part of the Mission: Impossible 2 soundtrack, featuring in the end credits of the movie and not on any actual Metallica album whatsoever, aside from a CD single (nothing lost since Napster was crap anyway as everyone used to disconnect you if you didn't know them, and Napster themselves had removed the ability to resume failed downloads; WinMX was the go-to music sharing app back then).

[Big Engine Mechanic]

They are a bit more rare to find, but not extinct. I saw one last year during the summer break near the beach

The most obvious ice cream trucks I know are at the viewing point located at the northern end of the runway at Melbourne Airport (and they are there all the time)

I took my car out for a Sunday drive a few months ago all the way down to Semaphore beach in Adelaide where alot of car enthusiasts meet up, I saw a bikie looking guy with tatts, huge muscles like a side of beef, shaved head and wearing tight black clothing, the Ice cream van had the tune, pink and white with the front doors missing on both sides, Also that day I saw a nun speeding in a white hotted up EL Falcon and a cop drove past me eating a doughnut like in the movies. It was a funny day.