Friends of Merri Creek have been conducting oral history interviews with residents who have lived on the Creek before 1970. The interviews form the Merri Creek Oral History Project.
This is an interview with Bill Berry who lived in Lewis Street Thornbury as a boy. The interviewer is Des Shiel. The date is 5 February 2013. The interview takes place in Bill’s home in Narre Warren.
DS: Bill, if I could start by getting some of your background. When and where were you born?
BB: In Lewis Street in Melbourne, that’s where I was born in 1936 on 24th of January. I know that makes me old, 77.
DS: Where you lived in Lewis Street, where was that in relation to the Creek?
BB: Oh, it was probably about a km. and a half away. You go down the bottom of Lewis Street ,and you just turn left where you go down Normanby Avenue , and you would be down half a km. or probably closer. And there was the Creek. It ran right along there and of course you had Mayer Park which ran onto the Creek. I mean that was all bush then. I believe now it is the Golf Course. And it was just all thick bush, it was a wonderland.
DS: Approximately what are the years we are going to be talking about when you spent your time around the Creek?
BB: I would have been about nine or ten, after the war. I can’t remember the exact years . I used to nick off and often miss the Sunday roast lunch, always in trouble because I would be down the Creek. Or down the drain or down ” the darkie” as they called it. It was a big storm water drain that is now all covered in , but it used to be an open drain that used to run under Mayer Park. There was a big tunnel and once you got to the end of that you could walk through the bush, and it was all bush, and you could go right down to the Merri Creek and walk along there.
DS: So this would have been the late 1940s we are talking about?
BB: Oh yeah. Because in 1950 I took on an apprenticeship. Yes, mid to late forties.
DS : We will come back to the bush and the Creek later. Let’s get a little bit more about your own background. You went to school locally?
BB: Yes, I went to Thornbury Primary School.
DS: What about your family? Did you have brothers and sisters?
BB: I had two sisters and one brother. I’m the eldest. Both sisters are dead now. And my brother who is six years younger than me, he is living up at Wandong on his little property. Friends of Merri Creek people have been up there.
DS: When you left school what did you work at?
BB: I took on a plumber’s apprenticeship. But I used to do a lot of work with my old man because he delivered ice around Greensborough, Montmorency and Whittlesea and that. I used to go with him on weekends and school holidays. It was pretty hard work, but I enjoyed it except when I had to go.
DS: I would like to get some idea of the social conditions of those times. For example, your street, that was made?
BB: Yes.
DS: What about the other streets like Strettle and Newman?
BB: Yes they were all made, all bitumenised. And down the bottom of Lewis Street, that street was bitumenised, but I don’t remember Normanby Avenue being bitumenised to where it is now, down the Creek and over the bridge. I don’t think it was, I think it was gravel from what I can recall.
DS: Was there vacant land around that area that you can recall?
BB: Oh, lots. Not so much in Lewis Street, but when you got to the bottom and going down towards the Creek, up the top end, if you can put it like that, there was all vacant land there, and that didn’t get built on till sometime in the 50’s. They put an estate in there, which was when they dumped a lot of rubbish. They really made a cesspool of it. And I don’ t know what they did down next to Normanby Avenue, but there was a big canal built for some reason, a huge canal. I’ m talking about big, probably 40 feet deep and 50 or 60 feet wide. There was a lot of rubbish put in and the Merri Creek started to go downhill. There was stuff came down and it just started to build up. Look, the free running water and all the nice big pools just became polluted.
DS: So this was the early 1950’s?
BB: No, it was earlier, prior to that. After I got my apprenticeship, I never went down there much, so I’m looking at the years when I was about nine to fourteen, primarily those years. ‘Cause I wagged it from school a bit, I spent a lot of time down there (laughs).
DS: So your father had the ice and wood round, where was the round?
BB: In Greensborough and Montmorency. A huge round. You know he was a hard worker the old bugger.
DS: So was he home much, did you see much of him?
BB: Well, all school holidays and weekends, I used to go with him on the ice round. You’d be up at half past three.
DS: Where did you get the ice?
BB: Preston ice works. I don’t know if it is still there. You would load up, and then we would start delivering at Mont Park, that was our first stop. Then you would go on, and initially you would go on down to Whittlesea. Then he stopped that, and he used to run down Grimshaw Street into Greensborough, then he used to go right up to the border of Eltham. A huge round. We had a round Monday, Wednesday and Friday, then Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. And if it was hot weather you’d go and get a truckload and take it out on Sunday. The people from Thursday were running out.
DS: This was the Mont Park Institution that you referred to?
BB: Yes, yes, we used to go in there and deliver ice, not a lot. Then going along Grimshaw Street, where there are houses now, it was all farms. And they were a long way from the gate, so we used to drop a lot of ice at the gates and they used to come up and get their own ice. But you know, I used to enjoy it when I was young. But then as I got older, 14or 15, I didn’t enjoy it because I had to go. Because, you know, the old man was a hard worker. He was only a little bloke, but he certainly worked hard. You are talking about….we would stop for lunch at half past twelve but you would be going from when you started delivering at six o’clock till half past twelve, you’d be running. And there were three of us, there was me, the old man, and the young guy he employed to help him. You are carrying a hundred weight of ice at a time a lot of the time. He was a little bloke, but he had been at it for years, wood and ice. Strong.
DS: Do you remember anything about the occupations of people who lived in the area?
BB: Not really, no. In those days, unless you were really close neighbors, like the neighbors would call my mother Mrs. Berry, and she would be Mrs. Pratt. Yet, you know, they would be quite chummy. Mrs Vandersluys was next door, but it was still Mrs. Berry. There was no sort of like Ivy or Jack or John and that sort of thing, and the people across the road, they were nice people, but we had quite a big Catholic population, and my old man was a Mason as well.
DS: I was going to ask you about that when you mentioned it before. It was a common issue at that time. Can you talk a bit about that? You said there were certain streets that were Protestant.
BB: Yes, our street was predominantly a mixture of Protestant and Catholic. But Newman Street just around the corner was a Catholic street, it was full of Catholics. And yet the family down the end of Lewis Street, the Morans, there were 13 of them in the family, and they were Catholic and we were good friends. I mean, as kids, you didn’t discriminate about whether they were Catholic or Protestant, they were just other kids.
DS: What about the adults?
BB: Oh well the adults, that was a bit of a sore thing (laughs). They did, they did, yeah. I mean, my old man was a great guy, he was a gentle man, but he was……Now the Moran brothers, Joey and Bernie, at one stage there, their cousin came to stay and then to live in Thornbury. And at that stage I was going up to St. Mary’s Catholic church to the dances with them. They had to get permission for me to go to the Young Men’s Christian Society, the club, you know, the gym and they had to go and ask the old Father, I don’t remember his name, he used to go and drink at the Croxton Park Hotel. They had to go and ask him for permission , I was the only Protestant in the club. So we went to this dance, Bernie Moran said to me, “Look, there’s this trip to the snow next week, why don’t you go and ask Barbara ( their cousin )” It’s funny, when you would go and ask someone for a dance, “Oh, no thank you” they wouldn’t dance with you because you were a Protestant. That’s true! ( laughs ). Anyway, he said go and ask Barbara if she would like to go to the snow trip. No, I said, I’m not going to do that Bernie, forget it. So he went and asked her. She said yes, and I had to go to this six o’clock Mass before we went on the bus for the trip. And of course, there I am in the church, and all the bells going and things going, bobbing up and down, I didn’t know which way was up or down. I didn’t really care!
And then my old man, well he really….the Mason in him really came out. Why couldn’t you go out with a nice Protestant girl, he said. The inference being, because she was Catholic, she wasn’t nice, which was rubbish. Of course, that was when we had a big barney over that. He said, I had high hopes of you joining the Masonic Lodge. I said, I’m not going to join your bigoted bloody Lodge. And all this (laughs) . But he was not really like that.
Old man Moran, the old bloke, don’t forget he had 13 kids and a hard life. Every Friday night he would stagger down the street , he had had his booze, with a big bundle of fish and chips, a huge bundle, because of the big family, he was drunk again , and my old lady would say there he goes again, you know. That was the pattern then. And the people across the road, they were Catholics, that was the Turners, Joey and John. John joined the Franciscan monks and went away, for I don’t know so many years, and then he was home and he had this little sports car and he was touring around with girls in the sports car and that. And I thought he’s come out of that (monastery). They were never allowed to play with me , those kids, never allowed to play.
DS: Because of religious differences?
BB: No, I think they thought I was just a roughneck. I really think that was more it , but probably a little bit to do with that too. Mrs. Turner was a funny lady, she would scuttle down the street, she’d turn her head to the side, you’d say, afternoon Mrs.Turner ,she would turn aside, she didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that you existed. Anyway John came out of the Franciscan monks , he couldn’t hack it, and there he was and he really cut loose!. And then Noel got into trouble with the cops and they moved. Yeah, that was the Catholics and the Masons. But my old man was not really deep down like that. He was quite good. If any of the families had been in trouble, he would have been the first one to help.
People on the ice round, a lot of them didn’t pay. I mean he had bills that were mounting up and he just would not stop delivering ice. He would take the ice in . You just can’t have people without food when they’ve got children and that. So he just would not stop, and I bet a lot of them were Catholics and it did not make any difference to him. Except for one house where you would go in to one of those old dark houses. You’d go in and you knew someone was there, you used to around the back and say” icey”. You would walk in with your block of ice, and you could feel the presence of someone there. He’d say try and get the money from them this time , see if they would like to have an arrangement. This was one of the early customers, like half past six in the morning. Anyway, you’d go in there , but you could never find anybody.
This day , the old man said he’d had enough. He said ” That’s it, I’m going in . You and Reg just move on if you have to , but I’m going to stand there till I find somebody”. And he did, and he came out and we were miles down in Rattray Road . He came storming out down the street and he’s muttering to himself. I looked at Reg and said ” What’s up with the old man? What’s gone wrong?”. I don’t want to talk about it, he said. The dirty bitch, she offered her daughter to work out the bill!!.( laughs) . Like her daughter was old, she wasn’t a kid. The old man, he was absolutely ropeable. Fit to be tied!! Like a cut cat.
And ever after that , of course, Reg said ” Let me go in ” (laughs). And every time after that, the old man never let Reg or me go into that house.
DS: I was wondering if we could now get back to the Creek itself. I ‘ll take you back to those days. If you stood on the Normanby Avenue bridge and looked north up the Creek, what would the Creek be like?
BB: Thick bush in those days. Although they did some work on the bridge , whether rebuilt it or upgraded it I’m not sure, but there was a lot of work done , and it was pretty denuded then just round the bridge itself . But when you stood on the bridge and looked up north, it was bush. Thick bush.
DS: Could you get along the banks?
BB: Oh yes, there were tracks. If you knew the way there were tracks all along there, where you could just get in there and weave in and out. It wasn’t like a path, there were just little foot tracks.
DS: When you say it was sort of jungly, what was the bush, was it aniseed?
BB: Aniseed was one of the main things, willows were really the predominant feature, big old willows, and the other was the box thorn. When you were riding your bike through some of those, we used to ride the bikes in amongst the hills, do like some BMX stuff on fixed pedal bikes. And if you came off into the bushes, it was really dynamite.
DS: Were there gums there?
BB: No, not a lot of gums, not a lot of big gums like what you would call river gums that you see today. No.
DS: There were open areas along the creek where you could swim?
BB: Yes, but more so to the south of the bridge. There were probably areas north, but we never really , other than going on adventures and walks, went along there because they built the factories along that side. And the factories cut a lot of the original bush down, and their backyards came down nearly to the Creek. There was still bush right on the Creek, but they had taken out all the bush higher up.
The south side was a different story.
DS: So looking south of the bridge on the Northcote side what would you see?
BB: Same thing, bush, but more of it. They hadn’t built the Golf Course, they hadn’t done work there to the left, and when you looked right across from Mayer Park, it was all bush. No industry, no houses, nothing in there. Bush and some open land, because the area that was a lot further down on the Northcote side, there was a dairy in there, and the dairy used to have their horses in the paddocks there. That was open land, it was open and then there was the bush, just all raw bush.
DS: Was it the same on the Coburg side of the Creek?
BB: Sort of, not as much. But it was probably denser. As you crossed over the bridge, not far over the bridge, on the left, there was a track, a dirt track. That’s where the Padens, Les Paden, that’s where their house was. I don’t know why they built a house there.
DS: What was the house like?
BB: As a kid it was a magic place. It was one of those where they had lounge chairs and stuff out on the porch, it was unkempt, there was nothing, it was a house plonked in the middle of the bush. They didn’t worry too much, but we thought it was a great place. Les lived with his family there, he couldn’t read nor write. And it was strange, but he used to trade stuff, horse gear, saddles, bridles and horses, he was a trader. Anything he traded, he was making a quid on it. He never traded anything he didn’t make money on. That’s how good he was, but he couldn’t read or write.
DS: He was about the same age as you was he?
BB: I think so, but I can’t really remember. We used to knock around together on the horses.
DS: Did he go to school?
BB: Not to my knowledge.
DS: Did you ever meet his parents?
BB: No, I never saw them, you didn’t sort of intrude in those days. We used to cut around the side of his house and go down and behind his property to the back of his yard, and you were in the Creek area. That particular area, which wasn’t far from the bridge, was where the banks were all hidden. Unless you knew it was there, you wouldn’t know, but there were grassy banks, big, huge willow trees. We had ropes and you could swim in the water and we made our own tin canoes out of corrugated iron.
DS: So the water wasn’t polluted?
BB: No, no the water was good. You could swim in it, you could even drink it if you wanted to. I can’t remember, but we probably did drink it at some stage or another. No, it was a magic place, cubby houses in the willow trees. ‘Cause if you wagged school, you had plenty of time to build this stuff! ( laughs )
DS: So you spoke about changes in the Creek when they were building the Normanby Avenue bridge, can you remember when that was? 1950 or so?
BB: It could have been, I can’t remember when they built that huge big canal.
I don’t know why they built the bloody thing. It was at the end of Mayer Park going down towards Normanby Avenue bridge, that area there, an open canal. I think they were doing by-pass work, they were going to by-pass the Creek, re-route it and so on, they really mucked it up, they did a terrible job. And there was a lot of stuff dumped in the Creek, what you wouldn’t find before, there were tin cans, tyres and junk and that. All in that area at the back of Mayer Park, down towards the Creek, there were a lot of pools. That big drain I was talking about, it was a big storm water drain that was what that was for, all the street drains came into that. It is now closed in, but then it was open and it ran straight through. I’d leave home, I’d jump straight into the drain, straight through ” the darkie”, the tunnel that ran under Mayer Park, and out the other side and you are in the frogging area. There were lots of pools that had frogs and frog spawn and that. I had things at home with all the frog spawn in them, my mother hated it, the little tadpoles, all this white stuff floating around and growing into taddies (laughs).
DS: Mayer Park. So this ran under Mayer Park down to the Creek.
BB: Yes, under Mayer Park, it was about four doors down from where I lived in Lewis Street. It ran open right up through to Preston, then it ran to the start of Mayer Park then it was a tunnel. Later on, they built a second tunnel beside it to take the overflow, because when it really rained, it used to build up, right up, and not get away.
DS: This was the tunnel you used to ride your bike in?
BB: Yes. I was always frightened of the dark as a kid, I didn’t like the dark, and I thought, this is ridiculous. Initially you would go into the tunnel, a little dark area, you’d sit there for a while, making sure you were near the light end, and after a while you would get a bit more adventurous, in the finish I didn’t mind the dark. I used to go and sit right in the middle, sit in the dark and I don’t mind the dark now. So it just got you used to the dark. It was a good thing with kids, you know. “I dare you to go and sit in the darkie” they’d say.
DS: Mayer Park itself, was that a sports ground then?
BB: I don’t know about now, but it was one then. I played footy on that, footy and cricket. And you would ride horses on it, which you weren’t supposed to do.
DS: Where were the Chinese market gardens?
BB: They were north of the Normanby Avenue bridge.
DS: Right to Normanby Avenue?
BB: No, there were houses that backed on. If you went down Lewis Street, and you turned left, you went to Normanby Avenue. If you turned right you would go down Newman Street which then turned into a road that went down to the Creek. It wasn’t bitumenised then, it was just dirt then. Going back from Normanby Avenue along the dirt road ( Anderson Road ) back to the houses, that was where the Chinese market gardens started. There was a huge big paddock there on the corner of Normanby Avenue and Anderson Road , there was a horse in there called Three Bells, an ex- race horse that everyone used to try and ride. It was a big horse and a bit crazy, it used to kick us all off ( laughs ).
DS: Did you go to the market gardens at all?
BB: Yep, yep.
DS: Did they pump from the Creek?
BB: I don’t know, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t know.
DS: How extensive were the gardens?
BB: Big, very big, to me. You would go down there on weekends, Sundays, and you could select your own lettuce. Mum would say ” Go down, here’s three pence, and get a lettuce. ” You would go round feeling the big hearts of the lettuce. But you know why they were so big? We’d been into the sheds, ’cause the Chinese never spoke to you, they always seemed to be so secretive and quiet, I suppose they weren’t unfriendly, but we never got friendly with them. But in their big shed, all around the side of this big shed were all these 44gallon drums. And you know what they had in them? Human waste, that’s what went on their veggies. That is what made them grow so well ( laughs ).
DS : What else did they grow?
BB: Tomatoes, no I don’t think they grew tomatoes, onions and all sorts of stuff. I just remember the lettuces.
DS: Did they go to the Vic. Market?
BB: Yes, on one of those big high carts. You know those big high carts they used to drive, with a little Chinaman sitting up on the high seat. I guess they would start off at whatever time it was and the horse would know the way there and the way home. ‘Cause there wasn’t as much traffic around then as there is now. Even in our street there weren’t many cars around, my old man had a car. In those early days he got one of the first Holdens that came out. Before that he had an old Market, with the retard thing on the steering wheel, big square thing with a big square window on the back. So there weren’t many cars. I remember even when the War ended there was a bit of traffic noise, a lot of horn honking because people didn’t have cars. We walked everywhere and we rode everywhere on push bikes. But the old man had a car.
DS: The locals would not have had anything much to do with the Chinese?
BB: No, other than going down there on a Sunday and buying vegetables. You ‘d go there on a Sunday , there were always a lot of people down there, walking through, you could choose your own. It was good, but the old Chinaman , we snuck into his sheds and had a look around. You wouldn’t let him catch you because there were all rumors about that the Chinamen would cut your throat or you’d be garotted!
DS: Can you remember any other market gardens further along the Creek?
BB: There were but I can’t remember them vividly. That dirt road ( Anderson Road ) that went off Normanby Avenue, and up further north, there were market gardens up there. But we didn’t frequent that very often, other than ride our horses through there. We used to ride our horses up as far as Keon Park and that. It was all good riding country, and a lot of the places were fenced off, we had places where we would cut the wire and then we would re-join it again. You could ride for miles, it was all open when you got out past East Preston.
DS: Were the market gardens still there when you left the district?
BB: As far as I can remember they were still there. But I never used to go there when I got older, when you are 15 or 16 you have different things to do and you go different places.
DS: Most people we have interviewed, especially further up the Creek, have had great snake stories.
BB: Nope, never struck a snake. And I used to go down and sleep with the horses in the paddock down the bottom, across the road from the market garden. At the end of that road, that was where there was a paddock where we used to keep our horses, and people didn’t mind if you put your horse in there as it kept the grass down.
DS: What about other wild life? People fishing in the Creek, eeling, yabbying?
BB: Yabbies, yes, I never did a lot of that.
DS: Do you remember anything about the birds?
BB: Not specifically. There were a lot of birds, but as a kid, you never paid much attention to what they were. It was just the Creek.
DS: So the frogs were mainly over around the Mayer Park pools, were they?
BB: They were all in that area as that was where it spilled out. They liked fresh water, like clean water, when the storm water drain drained out, the residue from that was a lot of pools, and that was where the frogs were. That was a fair way from the Creek, from the top end of Mayer Park and the Creek was another 700 to 800 meters away as you went to the end of Mayer Park and then down to the Creek.
DS: So you used to take the frog spawn home and breed up the taddies?
BB: Yeah, yeah (laughs) in one of those old double troughs, you know.
DS: Was there a variety of frogs, do you remember?
BB: They were all the same to me, green frogs. I just did it because it was fun to do. Then go down to the tip when the tip opened, I don’t remember when it opened.
DS: I want to get on to the tip later, but now I want to hear about your horses and your adventures. How many did you have at any one time, and where did you get them from?
BB: I had five at one stage, that was too many. We used to go to Newmarket, and you could buy them around the district cheap.
DS: What do you mean cheap?
BB: Oh you could go to the Newmarket sale yard, and pick up a half-broken brumby for five bob. Well it was half broken and you would still have to get it home, and we didn’t truck them, we rode them from Newmarket. The only thing they didn’t like was the trams. And we used to ride them, not with bridles. As you know in the early days, you didn’t have a lot of money and you didn’t have a lot of equipment. Window sash-cord was brilliant for riding horses, put it through its mouth. Window sash-cord of all things, didn’t hurt their mouth and it was effective if you didn’t have a bridle. If you lost your window sash- cord, you were in real trouble ( laughs ) . They didn’t know anything, they were just half broken brumbies. Good looking little ponies, but I had another one, a chestnut, and I sold him for ten pound and the night after that he got out of the paddock into Normanby Avenue and got hit, killed.
DS: How many were involved with the horses? Were your brothers and sisters involved?
BB: No, not my brother, but Bernice my sister, she used to come down as she liked the horses. She said her arm was never the same after I put her on that stupid bloody horse that bucked her off.(laughs). She did some damage to her arm , she said her arm was never the same since “Billy put me on that bloody horse.” Anyway, it was a horse that was nobody’s horse, it was a horse that was just floating around on the open range if you can put it like that. You would catch it and ride it, it was old and in terrible condition, its name was Lucy.
DS: You mentioned money was pretty tight, what did you do for riding gear, other than the window sash? Did you have bridles?
BB: Eventually , but I finished up I had an army saddle, one with two paddles on the side. It was one of the best saddles I ever owned. That was about the only one I ever had. Unless you had money in those days, you just didn’t own a lot of horse gear. In fact we used to shoe our own horses, we used to steal the horse shoes from the farriers up there in Northcote and come back with the nails and shoe your own horses. Get the shoes that were the right size, and pare them down, bang the nails in and shoe the horses. You just didn’t have the money. Myers in the city had this really absolutely exquisite Mexican saddle, and it was fifty pounds. I used to go into the city just to look at this saddle. You know the Mexican saddles with the ponchos, the big horn, the pommel on the back, it was absolutely magic. And I used to go to the city and think, how could I steal that! ( laughs ). Because I could never afford to buy it. It was in the window you know.
But there was this girl who did have money, she was living on a newer part of the estate that they had started to build towards the Creek, the real new estate. I can’t quite remember her name, and across the road from her, diagonally across, was a little bloke called Titchy Aarons. And he had horses and he had a stallion that he kept in the paddock next door to his house on a chain and the girl had a mare. Well she had all this fancy saddle, family had a float and all that, they had the money. And the mare was on heat. He went and let the stallion off. Well, you’ve got no idea! It’s the biggest mess you’ve ever seen ( laughs ). The stallion mounting the mare in the middle of the street. There was havoc, she’s screaming, she’s throwing herself on the ground and the mare is carrying on and the stallion is having the time of his life ( laughs ). We were all standing around cheering.
DS: You said you had a jinker, didn’t you?
BB: I had a jinker, then I had a break, like a horse break for breaking them into harness as well. But it was all swap stuff and when you got stuff like that you did a lot of work on it yourself. Like regreasing the axles hubs and that. You were doing a lot of the work yourself, you couldn’t afford to have them refurbished. But that was it. Yes, I had the jinker, the big high jinker. It was great sitting up in that, I used to put the chestnut in that.
DS: Where did you take it to?
BB: Just around the streets, just trotted around the streets.
DS: So you agisted them down the paddock, you just plonked them in the paddock?
BB: No one worried about it, if someone had a paddock and they wanted it chewed down, you just asked them if you could put your horse in. Yeah, you can put your horse in. And then I pulled out all the old man’s veggies and grew lucerne and lucerne hay. He didn’t appreciate that. He had it all under fruit trees, he had all this veggie garden and I ripped it up. And planted bloody lucerne. He was most unhappy.
DS: So you said you rode the horses to Bell Street and other places?
BB: Yes, actually me and a mate of mine used to ride them up to the Rose, Shamrock and Thistle hotel and we’d go in there and have a few whiskey lime and sodas ( laughs ), then we would ride the horses back. They used to serve you too. Riding back on the horses, Molly the Monk, was a real circus. It was good fun, we were all open and free. We rode bareback mostly till we got the army saddle. It was like the old World War 1 army saddle, with the two paddles, all it was was a frame, two paddles that sat on the horse, and then the skin stretched over the frame. It was good for the horse because it allowed it to breathe underneath. And you made your own bridles, we picked up old leather and that which had been thrown out or wasn’t going to be used, even leather straps. We would rivet them together, you made your own bridles. They were not like they look today, but they worked.
DS: When you weren’t on horses, you were sailing down the Creek in canoes. Tell us a bit about your canoe adventures, it all sounds very intriguing.
BB: What you’d do, was get a big sheet of corrugated iron, fold it up at the front and get just a piece of board, it would be three by, or half inch or whatever it was, squash it up, get some tar off the road, and put the tar in between and just nail it together. And do the same for the back, you cut a piece of wood that was the shape to fold the sides up, do the same thing with that and nail it around it and you have got a canoe. And if you really got into trouble and it looked a bit floppy, just put a couple of pieces across and nail them straight across. They were lovely canoes.
DS: When you got the tar off the road, did you heat it up?
BB: See, a lot of the tar in those days, when you got a stinking hot day like we’ve been having recently, you could go along and just scoop the tar off the road. You would heat it up when you got the tar. You could scoop it up, in fact we used to chew it, chew the tar ( laughs ) . Like the old chewing tobacco!
DS: How far could you get along the Creek in your canoe?
BB: Oh we never ventured too far, really.
DS: Did you use paddles?
BB: Yeah, you made your own paddles. We also made pontoons out of 44 gallon drums, but if it was too hard, we gave it away, we couldn’t be bothered. You just wanted things to be nice and free and easy, and have a good time. That’s what we had. But I remember it as a sort of magic place.
DS: Others we have interviewed have spoken about making cubbies. You spoke of cubbies before.
BB: Yes, up in the willow trees, it was a good place. We used to go where they were building houses and get wood, oh yeah, get the proper material! Let’s not stint on it! Proper stuff, a few nails, the old man lost a few nails. We would build it into the tree, it was great. You had your own little cubbie. They were huge trees, they had been there since time immemorial and I don’t know why they have to wreck things like that, I don’t know why they have to pull them about. I don’t know what they are like now. It’s probably altogether different, it’s all civilized, too civilized.
DS: Billycarting was another of your activities? You said Newman Street was a wild track.
BB: Oh yeah, at the end of Newman Street. Actually that street that ran down past the Chinamen’s ( Anderson Road ), opposite that was the big paddock that had this huge wooden fence around it. The path there was very steep, it went up and it curved around where it joined the other street. And it was steep! And it was curved, you’d be coming down, you’ d sort of go boom, boom , boom and then right at the bottom, that was bitumenised. And down the bottom you would shoot off into nothing, just the road down the bottom. That was great, you know. And we had ones with pram wheels, roller ball bearings, we tried every sort of cart. Big ones you know, some with cabins on them, monstrous damn things ( laughs ). For simple ones, just sitting on and steering with your feet, to the big ones that would carry two people. You couldn’t do the road, because the road ended sooner than the path ended. The path was a really good track. If you missed the corner, you either hit the fence, which was disastrous, or you went off the edge into the nature strip, and that was disastrous too because that was too soft. But it was good.
DS: You have mentioned the tip a number of times, it seems to have been a rich source of material for you, where exactly was it?
BB: It was at the bottom end of Mayer Park, where you have your golf course now. And it was quite big, I used to get bits and pieces from there. My old lady used to go crook, when I came back I would be smelly too, rooting around in stuff. But you would wait for the trucks to come in and when they dumped their load, you would just start rooting through the load. She used to hate me going to the tip, ” Down at the bloody tip, what would people think” you know. Who gives a rat’s what they think, it doesn’t matter. Sunday lunch, it was always ” Where’s Billy? Down the bloody tip” .
DS: So you were able just to wander in and out, were you?
BB: Yeah, yeah, you were. The tip people knew you, they didn’t bother. It wasn’t like what it became in later years when you had to pay money to have a scavenger’s license for the tip. I found this pair of marcasite earrings, that sold her, I was able to go down to the tip just about any time then. Beautiful marcasite earrings I found down at the tip, that made the tip legitimate, as long as I came home in time for lunch laughs). And as long as I didn’t miss tea as well, because sometimes I went from the tip to frogging, and all sorts of things. I was a bugger of a kid, really!
DS: Well Bill, I want you to tell us the story of how you came to spend weeks down the Creek when you should have been elsewhere.
BB: ( Groans ) I wagged it from school, actually it wasn’t really very good. I wrote them a letter and signed it with the old man’s name that the family was moving to Tasmania and I wouldn’t be coming to school any longer. And I got away with it, I spent all this time down the tip. I had sets of clothes down there that I would change into, change my school clothes and would come home of a nighttime and this didn’t worry me, I was getting away with it. And I’d come home and they would say, how was school, and I’d say, ” OK mum, pretty good.”
And this day, I came home, and of course we were riding the dairy horses as well. The poor bloody dairy horses, they were working all night out pulling the cart and delivering milk, then they would put them out to pasture and we were riding those horses. Apparently someone came to the door, whether it was the dairy people or the cops I’m not sure, and said your son’s been riding the dairy horses.
” Oh no, not Billy, oh no, he’s been at school, I’ll show you a photo of him, ” said mum. Which she promptly went and got. ( laughs ) And whoever it was, said ” Yes,that’s him.” Well, I came home this night, I went in the back door, and she played me along beautifully. ” How are you, Bill, and how was school today son. ” ” Yeah, not bad”, I said. There was this pregnant pause, this silence, then she exploded. You lying little shit, she said and she went right off, you’ve been riding blah, blah. She’d rung the school, been in touch with the school. Oh, you know, it wasn’t funny. And bearing in mind this was third form I was at, this was Junior Tech Certificate. Anyway, it all exploded, someone else was seen down there as well. A few kids used to get down there, but I was the one who was there all the time at that stage.
Anyway, we had to go to the school and Mr Blackmore was the Vice-Principal, and we went to his office. He was a miserable soul. I actually passed the Junior Tech that year, surprisingly enough, and he swore black and blue that I’d cheated. Who helped me , and who did I cheat off ? And I didn’t cheat, I really didn’t cheat. It must have just so happened that I must either have been smart enough or been there to get the subjects or the questions so that I passed. I just passed, didn’t pass with honours or anything like that, just scraped through. He said if it was in his power he would not give me the Junior Tech as he was convinced I cheated. And I said to the old man, Dad, I never cheated. The old lady was going off like a two-bob watch.
Anyway, that is the story of how I spent a lot of time down at the Creek. That was weeks and weeks, probably three months or more. Good weather too, good frogging weather ( laughs ). And of course I had the horse then, the chestnut, and I could ride everywhere, I even rode it to school. And Ron Barassi, he was a form above me, he was captain of the cricket team and the footy team, he captained the athletics team, he was good. He was a nice bloke, and he was a prefect at the school, and when they were having their cricket match, that’s when I rode my horse right through the whole thing. At the back of the Preston Baths was a shed where I used to keep my horse. I didn’t like school, I couldn’t be bothered going. The only subject I liked was Technical Drawing, which was good.
DS: Just getting back to the Creek, did the adults have anything to do with the Creek at all?
BB: No, not a lot, to them, I suppose, it was just there.
DS: Finally Bill, you have described a childhood that almost no longer exists in suburban Australia. You made your own freedom, you were following your own path. I guess that was what the wagging was all about to some extent. Do you feel that that type of boyhood that you have described so well, has affected at all the way you turned out as an adult?
BB: Oh no, I don’t think so, I dunno. I think I’ve always been rebellious I suppose, not very good on authority. I reckon I would have loved to live in the bush I guess. That’s where I really belonged I think. I belong in a floppy hat and a pair of shorts. I would have been quite happy not to have done an apprenticeship, to have taken over the ice round from the old man, I was very fit in those days, I was extremely fit. But the old man said no, you are doing an apprenticeship, the ice is dying. Because refrigerators were coming in, he was right in that respect. I would have been just as happy to do the ice round till it died, then move on to something else and not have to worry about an apprenticeship, but I did it. But then I finished up chucking the apprenticeship in the third year.
DS: Well thanks Bill, we will end it there, and let your voice have a bit of a rest.
Thanks very much for taking part in the program.
BB: It was a pleasure, sometimes I wish I was back there again.
This is an edited version of the interview.
