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 Arthur (Mick) Graham who is a long term resident near the Merri Creek in Clifton Hill. The interviewer is Des Shiel and the date is 16 April 2012. The interview takes place in Mick’s home.
DS: Well Mick could I just start by getting a bit of information about yourself?
Where were you born and what was the year of your birth?
MG: I was born in Mordiallic on the 22nd of the eighth 1928.
DS: And when did your parents move to Clifton Hill ?
MG: In 1930
DS : So where was the location of the family home?
MG: 10 Clifton Street, Clifton Hill.
DS: And where was that in relation to the Creek?
MG: One street from the Creek.
DS: So You grew up in Clifton Hill during the thirties, during the 1930s Depression These were pretty tough times. Can you give us some idea of the typical occupations of your neighbours in the 30s and 40s?
MG: A couple of them worked in the post office and one worked in the bank and Dad was a pastry look. He worked at McAllisters in Carlton, I think it’s gone now.
DS: So was it a working class area around here?
MG: Oh yeah, yeah very poor class then, no-one was rich around here.
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DS: Was there much local employment?
MG: Yeah the council workers, the quarry you know. They worked in the quarry that was about the only thing, there were factories all along up the station, an industrial area up there, a stainless steel factory, Stagg Gloves up there, they made gloves and leathers and stuff like that. And down further was Cherry’s Shoes,that was down near Roseneath Street at the bottom. And there was a dye works down further. They used to do all the skins off the animals, process all those. And Zigzag,the cigarette paper people.
DS : And where was Zigzag?
MG: It was down in Ramsden Street. And there was also up the station, there was first of all a skating ring, then Miller paper mills took it over and it was demolished. They built those flats there in Grant Street.
DS: Tell us a bit about your own school days. Where you went to school?
MG: Spensley Street State School.
DS : What was Spensley Street State School like then?
MG: An old bluestone school that was burnt down in the 70s. Some idiot came round and burnt quite a few schools then. And they rebuilt the school, it wasn’t as good as the old bluestone school. Still going.
DS: Was it a one storey bluestone school?
MG: Two storeys
DS : So were there many kids there in the 30s and 40s?
MG: All the local kids
DS: What were the size of the classes, can you remember?
MG: Yeah, pretty good, pretty big. We used to go down and chop the wood, we had big fireplaces, every classroom had a fireplace. Mrs. Walker, she was the caretaker then, then we used to give her a hand to chop the wood and stuff in the morning, and light the fire. And away she went.
DS: So there would have been a lot of kids in the district? Big families?
MG: Oh they went from the bottom up. You know start from the bottom and go up. I was the last out of the pot. Seven in the family, all deceased now. I’m the last one left now.
DS: So when the school was on in the 30s, you mentioned to me once that you were away from school quite a lot.
MG: Yeah. That was because of the infantile paralysis or polio. And then we had a diphtheria epidemic, and whooping cough, you name it we had it. Measles , we had everything. They closed the schools down because everyone was catching from one another. They were closed from eighteen months to two years, we used to do our school work by correspondence, other than living down at the Creek, catching yabbies.
DS: So you mainly wandered around the Creek for two years?
MG: Yeah. Went out with Dad at the weekend catching rabbits.
DS: So can we move now to the Creek. I expect you were pretty young when you started to play around there? How old would you have been?
MG: Just after I started school, we weren’t allowed much. Mother would keep her eye on you.
DS: So we are talking about the mid 1930’s
MG.: Yes I started school about 1934.
DS: Which parts of the Creek did you inhabit?
MG: Just about the lot, right around to the quarry.
DS: Did you go north of Heidelberg Road?
MG: No mainly Heidelberg Road to Dights Falls. Sometimes further up towards the railway line. Used to be the market garden around there then.
DS: What were the Creek and its surrounds like then? Say if we go to the Heidelberg Road bridge, it’s a magnificent bridge,built in 1936. Can you remember it being built?
MG: No I. can’t remember, but the convicts used to do it, from jail, they would take them down there, I was told that , but whether it was true or not I don’t know. And then they built that tool shed on top of the Creek, and the wall around the top. This was a wall before they started doing the fill on Hall Reserve, they pushed the fill down and down and pushed parts of the wall over. Before that, Hall Reserve used to be covered with aniseed, no shrubs. You had to push your way to get down to the Creek. There were no trees on Hall Reserve, an odd gum tree here and there, that’s all. Apart from the aniseed , there were green parts where they used to bring their horses from the stables which were around the back in Clifton Street. These horses were for jinkers that were used for transport in the 30s. There was no work at the weekends so they put the horses down there. Just like turn them out in the paddock, you know. Then Sunday night you would go down and bring them back to the stables and they were ready for next morning.
DS: How many horses would be roaming around?
MG: About five or six I used to get three pence from Nelson’s to clean the stable out. And I used to take all the manure ,straw and stuff home, we used to have the garden at the back of our lace, we used to grow the vegetables with manure and stuff. Beautiful vegetables. All for three pence, if you got a penny you thought you were rich then.
DS: So aniseed and tracks around Hall Reserve?
MG: Yeah, just had the old wire fence with pickets, there were no rails or anything like that. They were put in later on. All the trees were put in later on .That stone shed, built in 1937, it was a council shed, they used to put their tools and every thing in it, they would lock it up at night time.
DS: What other wildlife was on Hall Reserve?
MG: Oh, a few rabbits and foxes, plenty of ducks on the Creek, heaps of ducks, heaps of yabbies and blackfish.
DS: Cows you told me once were there.
MG: Yeah, old Higginbothams had a cow they used to leave the cow on there and milk the old cow. They lived in The Esplanade ,and milked the cow each morning. We used to go down there and watch the old woman milking the cow with a bucket. They were a large family, like a rabbit warren down there.
DS: If you were standing on the Heidelberg Road bridge in the 30’s and 40’s and looking down the Creek what was the Fairfield side of the Creek like?
MG: That was part quarry, then they filled it in, and made all that parkland. The part where the canyon comes in, that’s where they started quarrying, I’m not sure when quarrying finished. The rest of the area was covered in aniseed and bush. The Heidelberg Road bridge, that was a single lane first, a two laner then a four laner. The north side of the bridge was built first.
DS: What about the Creek itself, any different now from then?
MG: No, cleaner then, more polluted now, had a lot of willow trees down there then, don’t know where they came from, over the years they started to get more cluggy, the roots were going into the water, wasn’t getting a good flow so they poisoned them all, took them all out.
DS: If we now go upstream from the bridge, you go up the main path below Knott Reserve, and you kept going up to the present little footbridge, what was that area like in the 30s and 40s?
MG: All tracks and aniseed again. But around near the bridge, it was all Chinese market garden. It was pretty big. It went up to the Oldis Gardens. It started near where the Government houses are now near the foot bridge. It went back nearly up to the railway line I suppose. I know they grew some very nice watermelons there. We used to go down there and knock them off.
DS: I suppose it would have been a big temptation in the Depression?
MG: Yeah. He had it well guarded the old bloke. We used to wait till he went into the market. Then we would go down there. He would come back from the market about nine o’clock, we’d get down there earlier.
DS: What market did he take his produce to ?
MG: He took his vegetables to the Victorian Market to sell them. I can’t quite remember when the market garden stopped. It must have been in the 60s or 70s I think . Then they put the Commission houses there.
DS: You mentioned before that you went yabbying on the Creek. What sorts of yabbies did you get?
MG: Just the normal ones, some pretty big you know. Plenty down there, heaps. We used to take a kerosene tin down there. I used to knock the meat off from the coolgardie safe, no refrigeration in those days, and then down we’d go. We’d get a stocking and put it around a bit of wire, drop the meat in, put the stocking underneath, pull it up and down, and when the yabby took it, put the stocking with the net under him and pull him out. We ate them, tail was the main part, beautiful. We brought them home and cooked them. We used to move from one yabbying hole to the other, mainly the back part of the lagoon where there was plenty of water. And when you came to running water, you’d get down there with the yabby net.
DS: What were these blackfish you mentioned earlier?
MG: Oh, they were just blackfish, not very big. But we didn’t eat them, didn’t fancy them. Just let them go. They also had terrapins down there, they were beneath the bridge. They were about half the size of a saucer. There were a lot of them around.
DS: The Creek must have been not too bad then?
MG: Oh no. It was good. Fell in a couple of times, plenty of leeches down there. You’d come home covered in leeches, get the salt to put on them and get them off. We never swam there, not deep enough. Didn’t fancy swimming in there because of the leeches and that.
DS: Did you go swimming further down?
MG: Yeah, we went down to Deep Rock on the Yarra. Yeah we lived down at Deep Rock. As we got older we loved it. You could walk down along the Creek, down Ramsden Street to the bridge and cross it, then go straight up the hill and down again, you’d be on the river then. You couldn’t get there now it’s all the freeway.
There used to be a lot of people at Deep Rock, especially in hot weather. They had good facilities down there. Dressing rooms for the boys and the girls, shed up further where they used to have meeting and stuff like that. And parts of Deep Rock was concreted in, a rail put right round, for young kids to go in so they wouldn’t go in the river.In the winter time, when no one swam there, sometimes we would go down with a broom and take all the mud out, to make it right for swimming again.
DS: Did your parents just allow you to wander around down the Creek in those days?
MG: Oh we were under pretty strict rules. We had to be home early, couldn’t come home after dark..And you weren’t allowed on the streets after dark anyhow. Police would tell you to go home ; “What are you doing here? Go home”
DS: Did you have any adventures along the Creek, with snakes?
MG: Plenty of snakes down there . Had a few falls, could fall over and cut your arm, a bit of skin off here and there, no breakages.
DS: How many kids used to get down there?
MG: Quite a few, you would meet with a few gangs. There were a few rival gangs, the Catholics and the Protestants. War along the Merri Creek
DS: So you would go down there after school?
MG: Some nights, not every night. All depends what was on, you had to do all your chores and that before you went down.
DS: What were your chores?
MG: Well the first thing, my brother would chop the wood one night, that went on for a week and I used to clean all the shoes, polish them all up for the next morning, then we would change over. The girls would have to do all the washing up. Sunday you had to get your suit on and off to Sunday School. The girls would do all the silverware and everything, all the table setting, the boys would do all the other work, get the fires set. We would have the wood ready in the morning for Dad to light the fire. Dad used to start early being a pastry cook
DS: Did adults ever go down the Creek much?
MG : No, they didn’t worry about it much.
DS: Do you remember anything much about major floods on the Creek?
MG: The Creek used to come right up, a lot of water used to come down from Coburg North, goes up a fair way the Merri Creek. Thirty-nine was a bad year, and we had the bush fires in thirty-nine too. One time the floods got so bad on the river at Fairfield , there used to be a bridge that goes right across there and the floods took the bridge down, and a house came floating down the river, hit the bridge and down she went. That was thirty-nine.
DS: If we go down from Roseneath Street to Dights Falls, were there industries there in the early days?
MG: Yes. Down at Dights Falls that’s where they built the turbines for the electricity for the big flour mill up further, used to get the electricity to run that and then they used to supply up further to the factories in the early days, until the SEC got all their wires through, then they ceased after that, it was no more. They had that big building just at the bottom of Roseneath Street. That was the sub-station for all the electricity. That’s all gone now, it’s all different.
DS: What about the old dye works there?
MG: All the cattle and stuff and all the skins, put the skins in the big vats there and tanned them all up, dried them out
DS: Was the flour mill at Dights Falls there in your time?
MG: No it had gone by my time. Part of it was still there, but it wasn’t in operation. It was all finished up. There was a big drain that went into the Merri Creek near the mouth at Dights Falls. It was called the Riley Street Drain. I don’t know why it was called that. But we never ventured up there, it was too dangerous, and slimy too. That went right up as far as the Cemetry, right up Alexandra Parade. Dunlop’s factory was there too, that street down the bottom near the Creek. That used to be supplied with electricity. It was a dirty industry Dunlop Rubber, all the stuff in there used to go in the river too. Like the paper mills.
DS: Could we now go to the Second World War days? Can you tell us about the American soldiers in the area then?
MG: Yeah, we had heaps of soldiers here then. They took over part of the Creek and the river then. Down there on the Yarra at Deep Rock they used to practice with all their guns into the wall. There was quite a few of them and their main camp was at Camp Pell, that was at Royal Park, where they had fences all around it and big sheds..They used to camp at the MCG too.
Then we had all the blackouts here too,it was blacked out, windows all blacked out, you couldn’t allow any light through your windows. All the street lights had like a jam tin around them, the light went straight to the ground. All the cars had a round disc put on the headlights, and they just had a narrow beam,a shade over it and just focusing on the ground, no light going up in the air in case they come over with bombs.
And we had zigzag air raid shelters on top of the Creek down here on Hall Reserve. And Alexander Parade down the bottom, they had all the zigzags there too. They were built in the form of a zigzag so if a bomb hit it couldn’t go round corners. They were about six foot deep. None fell in that I can remember. Some had them boarded and some didn’t.
DS: There is a story about the Americans and a tunnel beside the Creek.
MG: Yes, that was over there next to the Chinese market garden. They built it into the wall there, it was storage for all their ammunition and stuff. Quite deep, it went in a fair way. That’s all boarded up now, you can’t get in.
DS: You mentioned the quarry that was on the Fairfield side, but the main quarry was not there. What are your recollections about the main quarry on the Creek? Could you give us an idea of its location as bound by the present day streets?
MG: Well actually it was bound by Ramsden Street, Yambla Street, Wright Street and then come in at the side of Walker Street, and then right down to the Creek again. And that went right down deep, went down one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet deep. They had railway tracks down the bottom, used to blast the walls,they used to put the stone into trucks on the railway line and take them down to the crusher. They had a big cable from the crusher that hooked onto the truck, they’d pull it up and tip it into the crusher, release it back down again, and pull the next one up. They were mainly making screenings for roads, they were transported by truck.
Then after the quarry closed, they used it as a tip.
DS: You had showed us the remains of an old water tower near the Creek. What was that about?
MG: Well that water was used to spray on a big curtain hanging down in front of the crusher to stop all the dust coming all the time. That water used to come down the tower and into the Creek.
After the quarry was closed and it was used as a tip, a fire hydrant used to come underground right down to the Creek and they used it to put out fires in the tip.
DS: It would have been a noisy neighborhood with the dynamite charges.
MG: Oh yeah, the windows used to rattle and all, blasting was about twice a day, they would get so much rock down, then they would drill in again. Put the charge in, sometimes early and sometimes later in the afternoon they would go off.Yeah, it was quite good.
There were a few accidents in the quarry, one girl got in through the fence and went down, got killed down there. Another time they were loading some rubbish off the back of a horse and a cart , it didn’t stop and down went the horse and the cart.
The quarry probably stopped sometime in the 50s, then it became a tip. Filled up with water first , it was just abandoned so they had to pump all the water out and use it as a tip then. All cars and stuff and anything available went down the tip.
DS: So what was it like having a tip close by?
MG: Terrible, terrible, very smelly. Before they used it as a tip all the mosquitoes used to get in the water and you had to shut all your windows and put fly wire over the chimneys otherwise when you opened the front door it was just like black, all the mosquitoes there. We’d spray them with a Mortein sprayer. We had an old pump one.
There were plenty of fires down the tip and plenty of rats too. Heaps of rats, they were nearly as big as cats they were, they were monsters. We used to go down with an air rifle and knock them off. They were mangy looking things too.There were plenty of tip scavengers around too. In the early days it was well fenced off but after that it seemed to deteriorate and no-one seemed to worry about it. Just open slather then. They used to break their way in , just pull a few palings off and make their way in.
DS: What happened to the site when the tip closed?
MG: They filled it right up and put plenty of landfill in, no more rubbish then, just landfill bricks and mortar and stuff like that, then they evened it all out. Then they put the soccer ground on there , they were going to put a second soccer ground , but apparently finance fell through. They made the rest into a park then, for children and that.
DS: So there would be some strange things buried under the soccer ground.
MG: Yes. When it had rained a lot, water used to lay there and I used to see bubbles coming up,methane gas coming up from the tip. I used to tell people about it and they ‘d reckon I was mad , but I found out later that’s what it was. It has sunk down a fair bit, I think it’s still sinking, they keep topping it up, especially the soccer ground.
DS: Finally Mick what are your thoughts about the area?
MG: There have been quite a lot of changes to the Creek, the wall they built back in 1937 has nearly all gone now, pushed over by all the fill and that and no-one seemed to worry about it, part of it is still there. And that top part at the bottom of Walker Street there used to be a drain that went right down through there , cut in down to the Creek, and they filled that in and put a tunnel in there so the water went underground and didn’t interfere with the ground. And that soccer ground there now was only a small ground and they pushed it right back. Filled it right up and made it bigger. Then they had the cricket nets there , then they shifted the cricket nets up further away from the ground .
DS: Thanks very much Mick. Thanks for taking part in the project
This is an edited version of the interview.
Update: August 2021. The interview is now available for listening at Chinese Market Gardens, a Google Earth Project by Terry Young. Look at the upper right hand side for the map image and scroll across to the video.
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