What makes your Nillumbik home town/area unique? Who are the characters who have made it so? What sites have significance and why? During 2005 Nillumbik Shire Council and the Literary Reference Group invited members of the community to respond to these questions, to show us the history and flavour of your place – then and now – in a 500 word anecdote. This story by Elaine Rank (nee Barnett) was originally titled : “A snap-shot of how I remember Eltham in the 1950’s.”
While I can’t lay claim to knowing a lot about Eltham back in the 1950’s, what I do recall holds many pleasant memories. In 1950, just before I turned ten years old, my family made the move from Thornbury to Briar Hill. What a contrast, from busy St. Georges Rd. with trams that rumbled back and forth all day as well as other traffic, to a quiet little town with dusty unmade roads and a loo out back with a smelly pan that was collected and replaced each week. There were pretty laneways that allowed a short cut from one road to another. Some of these still remain but have lost that country appearance.
Although Briar Hill was only a few kilometers from Eltham, Greensborough was closer so we went there to the pictures on a Saturday afternoon or for any other activities we were involved in. It wasn’t long though before Eltham did become a part of our lives.
Eltham High School
When we completed our sixth year at primary school most of us chose to attend Eltham High School to further our education. A group of us would walk to Montmorency station to catch the train to Eltham. There was a bus waiting at the station to take us the rest of the way to school. This cost us sixpence {six cents} a day there and back. On some occasions a few of us would decide to run all the way to school so that we could enjoy an icy pole at the end of the day. These were the first icy poles I had ever had, they were milky and the flavours I remember best were banana and chocolate. After school we didn’t have to run which enabled us to enjoy the tranquil surroundings. We would cross the footbridge over the river and follow a path that came out near Potter’s Cottage. How I loved that little house, it always had a ‘come visit me’ feeling about it. One of our Art teachers occupied it for a while if my memory serves me right. Sometimes during Winter the river would flood and cut access across the bridge which meant we had to go the long way around. One year I remember the water coming up over the railway bridge allowing us to have the day off school.
Local Bus
In Spring we loved to pick and suck the Honey Suckle that grew along the fences as we made our way to the train station. Sometimes the bus would pass us slowly and some of the kids would call out ‘you’ll miss the train’, but really at the speed of those old buses we could almost keep up with it. Another story about the bus was when we went from school to the swimming pool in Eltham, down on the other side of the Eltham station. When I say swimming pool this was a square concrete pit filled with water. I have no idea where the water came from but it wasn’t very clean. Outdoor change rooms weren’t that cosy either. The bus had to turn off the main road possibly somewhere near where the library stands today. This was a very steep incline, unmade with potholes, and the bus tended to lean to one side and bounced up and down as it was going down. All us kids would move to the other side of the bus to level it off screaming out as teenagers do ‘we’re going to turn over’, but we never did.
We never had a canteen or tuck shop at the school but there was man who ran a portable tuck shop. He had a high covered trailer attached to his car. He parked this outside of the school grounds at the end of the drive-way. He must have used a generator to run the oven because I do remember he sold pies and pasties as well as sandwiches and fruit. Most of us brought our own lunches to school back then and it would be a special treat for us to buy our lunch.
There was a lot of empty land around the school and on sports day we would climb through the wire fence into the ‘paddock’ as we called it, to play soft ball or rounders. The school itself had a pretty garden mostly shrubs at the front of it. We would sometimes sit there to eat our lunch. I loved my time at Eltham High School and always felt happy in and around it. Eltham has always had a feel of charm surrounding it. Could that be why so many artists chose this place to develop their talents. Was, and is this still, their Paradise?
by Elaine Rank – nee Barnett.
Photo: Main Road, Eltham ca 1950 Shire of Eltham Pioneers Photograph collection. Yarra Plenty Regional Library in partnership with Eltham District Historical Society
