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 John Jordan, who has lived near the Merri Creek in Bakers Road North Coburg since boyhood. The interviewer is Des Shiel. The date is 27 July 2012. The interview takes place in John’s house in Bakers Road.
DS: I’d like to start with getting some of your personal background. Could you tell us when and where you were born?
JJ: I was born in Coburg, in Sydney Road in a house in the middle of what had been Parson’s timber yard.
DS: Where exactly was that?
JJ: In Sydney Road north of Gaffney Street or Murray Road. There were shops on the corner, then a vacant allotment, then there was our house and then Harry Parson’s joinery business.
DS: And when would you have moved to this present house you are now in?
JJ: In 1940.
DS: Could you describe the location of your house in relation to the Creek?
JJ: We are, from the bottom of Bakers Road, to where there used to be a swing bridge down the bottom, in those days we were the second house on the north side of Bakers Road.
DS: When was this house actually built?
JJ: In 1940.
DS: And you told us the other day an interesting story about the building materials in this house, could you tell us about that?
JJ: My grandparents and relatives, they were a building company, and they used to do a lot of demolition as well. There are parts from the old Coburg Post Office and numerous bits from buildings around Coburg that were used in the construction of the house. The original ridge that held the roof is from the original Coburg Post Office, it supports my roof at present.
DS: Can I get some of the background of your parents and the social conditions?
JJ: My father, he was a bricklayer, he served his apprenticeship as a moulder as a lad, but the dust gave him a lot of trouble and his father and family were bricklayers, so they took him out bricklaying. My mother, she had meningitis as a babe and she’d had, instead of the abscess that used to, in those days, seem to go to the brain, it went to the hip. And she had the hip removed, one leg was four inches shorter than the other. She spent most of her time at home, but at some stage in her early life, she used to work for a person called Wenny Shaw. He had auction rooms on the corner of Sydney Road and Murray Road. My father, he worked for the grandparents, and they met and it continued from there.
DS: And your mother’s family background, you told us an interesting story.
JJ: Yes, they were here very very early in the history of Victoria. They came on the third or fourth ship after Batman settled here and they came out to a property where Landells Road now is. Their name was Landells, and there was Singletons as well. They were involved with the Singletons, but I’m not conversant with that, there was never much said about it.
DS: That’s interesting, because I was looking up the book on the history of Coburg and there was a Landells mentioned there, who lived in the Pentridge area pre-1850 .
JJ: Yes, that would have been them. The early Landells were on the Town Board, which was the early Council, he was also tied in with the Post Office, I think he was the Postmaster.
DS: Where did you go to school?
JJ: I went to Merlynston State School till sixth grade and then into Moreland Central, then a year across at Essendon Tech.
DS: From there, what occupation did you take up?
JJ: From there I took an apprenticeship as an electrical mechanic and served a good time as an electrician. I shifted around and decided I was very keen on learning how to weld, and I took a job welding. Things went a bit quiet with that. And I finished up as a store man at William Holyman and Sons down at the Melbourne wharf and from there I made application to join the Federated Clerks Union. I was a wharf clerk and I was there 37 years. And I was told I was too old to retrain, driving forklifts and climbing up and down hatches, lumping bags, so I was given a redundancy package. That was in 1991 and I’ve done very little work since.
DS: I would like to get a general idea of the social background of this area in the ’40s and ’50s. What would have been some of the occupations of the neighbours?
JJ: Well, on the left hand side, the Creek side of where I live now, number 12, was a gentleman by the name of Eric Stafford, he was assistant governor of the gaol, the other side of me was a man by the name of Fred Ward and his family, he worked for the Government Aircraft Factory, he used to train the apprentices in sheet metal. The next house up from him, was a person by the name of Bob McNaughton, he was an engineer with Armisteads, they were an engineering company that was in Gaffney Street. On the other side was Forsythes, he was a builder around the area, and the others up there I couldn’t tell you. Further up near the top of the street was a policeman, and I couldn’t tell you what the occupations of the other people were.
DS: Did migrants move into the area in the post-war migration period?
JJ: They started to move in, yes. Into Goleen Street, and there weren’t many of them here until later on.
DS: Would you describe it as a working class area?
JJ: Yes, probably working class.
DS: Now I’d like to move to some of the physical aspects of the Creek and the surrounding landscape in the 1940s and 50s. If you stood in your front garden, and you looked west to Coburg, what would you see?
JJ: There was all open paddocks and you could practically see all the way to Coburg itself, see across from the Lake and further on from there. There was nothing, except the Convent which was the Sisters of Mercy on the corner of Sydney Road. It was quite a big building which I believe in the gold rush days was supposed to be a hotel, and there was surrounding land behind that, we were told, they agisted horses there. When the hotel was in operation, there was a big row of pine trees around that, the Merlynston Creek was on the other side of it. It was very good for agisting horses, because horses couldn’t get off. You could get through this little track at the back of the college.
DS: What about if you looked east across the Creek?
JJ: That was all box thorn bushes and cape broom. That comes up with yellow flowers on it, which used to dry out in the summer time and all go dead. Some bright individual always around the place would drop a match in it and it would burn from McMahons Road right through to the Lake! When that went, and that fire was on, there were millions of sparrows and starlings and everything like that, and they would just about block out the sun. The fire would go, and they would come up in a big cloud. Yes the area was very very open.
DS : At the start of the interview you mentioned the swing bridge. Where was that ?
JJ: The swing bridge ran from the bottom of Bakers Road , went across over the Merri Creek and joined McMahons Road on the other side. The people who lived the other side of the Creek, there were a few places along McMahons Road, the people who lived there, that was their access. There were other people up further who went practically up to Reservoir in places.
DS: When and why did the swing bridge collapse?
JJ: Well, it had been built on cables that had been used on the old cable tram that went into the city. It was steel and sisal, never ever maintained by anybody very very much, and of course the water got in and it rusted out. One day they were going across there and boom, it broke. It did sort of completely collapse down one side. It had a rail up the top, there was wire along the side that supported the bridge. Anyhow, the Council in their wisdom decided to pull it down. And people who had to walk from Gaffney Street, or from Carr Street and walk across if they were coming back late at night would have to walk across there in the dark. After much screaming and yelling by people around the area, the Council came and built the bridge that is here and now. It shifted up eight to ten feet further to the north on the Creek and they put a girder type bridge in there, built up on big steel girders. That would have been about in the 60s I’d say.
DS: So the Carr Street bridge was there then?
JJ: The Carr Street bridge. I can go back to the house that we lived in the middle of Parsons that had an attic . And I can remember as a very small boy, to keep me out of mischief, they used to sit me on a chair to look out the window, and I actually watched them building the new bridge from the old wooden one to the steel and concrete one that’s there now. I saw them when they did Carr Street and everything through there, they enlarged it again. That was in the 70s, I think they did tha . They made it bigger and opened the whole lot up.
DS: So it was first a wooden bridge. So can we go back to the old swing bridge. If you stood on that when you were a boy, and looked up and down the Creek, what was the Creek like then?
JJ: Looking north, as it is now it looks very very ……well, it was all the cape broom on the opposite side from Sydney Road. On the east side it was all cape broom. Up into the corner there were migrants who grew vegetables as far down as they could onto that piece of the plain. Across the Creek they planted these great whacking cactus which the Council made them clear out after, they chopped them all out and made them clear them away. It took a lot of money to get them out. It was not very very different to what it is now. On the east side, they cleared and got rid of the cape broom and they mowed it and they planted trees and kept it in the condition that it is in now, which has got it very very nice. But I always feel that they wanted to turn it into a drain. The Board of Works has had about three or four goes of wrecking it , and the clearness of the actual Creek as it is now ……….after some floods in the 50s or 60s , they came up here with a drag line crane and the only reason they couldn’t get any further than Bakers Road was that they couldn’t get under the bridge with the drag line crane so they stoped there. What they pulled out of the Creek , they didn’t cart anything away, they just left it in big smelly muddy heaps all round the Creek where they pulled it out . And away they went! They have had about three or four goes. They turned around and took a lot of the island that was down the bottom, they took that out.
DS: What was that island?
JJ: It was there as long as I was first allowed to go out wandering around the Creek, it was south of the bridge. The people opposite, it was directly down below their place. There was a peppercorn tree on the other side, it was just down across from there. The main bed of the Creek ran down and to the east side of this island, and it was a bit higher on the other side. When we got a bit of winter time floods, it was isolated, but when they started pulling bits out here and dragging bits out there, the beautification and cutting trees down, it suddenly disappeared. And I reckon it was the most beautiful soil, I reckon it went to top-dress somebody’s garden!
DS: How far out of the water was the island?
JJ: Oh, if you stood in the river bed, it would be six feet high.
DS: Were there any trees around?
JJ: Yes, a few gum trees. Different ones used to come along and plant along the Creek, they planted them up close to the bank of the Creek, and sometimes we got a lot of rain, floods through there, it used to just wash them out.
DS: Those peppercorn trees are a feature of the area, how long have they been there?
JJ: That I couldn’t tell you. It has been said that on the other side it was market gardens over there, and I would say the market gardeners planted them. They have been there for a long, long time. At the end of Bakers Road there was one, and when I came as a small boy, I would say it had a trunk on it about five inches in diameter and about two years ago they renewed some water pipes and they took it out. In their wisdom, they chopped it all out. We have photos of the peppercorn tree, it was a beautiful big tree. It virtually looked down the end of the Creek, it was big enough, it blocked the whole of the other side of the Creek out. Across the other side, it blocked it right out, you couldn’t see it.
DS: Where Parker Reserve and the DeChene Reserve are now, were they just open paddocks?
JJ: The Parker Reserve, that was a tip. Originally that was Howie’s quarry. Parker Reserve, they used that as the Council tip, that was the household rubbish tip. A flock of seagulls would come off it there of a night time. They would go down to the sea to roost at night. The mobs that would go down were something incredible. But that was all quarry holes and Andy Howie was the person who owned it. The Council got it and they filled it in.
DS: And the DeChene Reserve?
JJ: That was a tip, the Council used that. The trees, the elm trees they had round Coburg, when they came for pruning, they used to prune all the trees, lop the branches off them, the only place they could put it, was down at the Reserve, and they would stack it up there. On bonfire nights, that was where kids from all over Coburg would come, get the stuff for the bonfire. It was there until it dried out, and when it dried out, that mysterious person was around again with a match and up it went. When they were doing the digging, testing for the new sewer pipe they put through, the geologist that was there, she said every time we get down in these cores, we get all this carbon. It’s black, we can’t work out how it got there. I was talking to her one day. I said, I can tell you how it got there, that’s where they used to burn and that was the residue of the cuttings from the trees.
DS: Were there deep holes in the Creek?
JJ: Yes, there was one at the end of Shorts Road, there was one at the end of Spry Street. There was a house there, it was a bit awkward to get to swim, but we used to swim there, which was classed as Shorties. On the corner where the Creek turns at Ida, down the bottom of Ida Street it was very deep there. And when you went round underneath Carr Street bridge, and you turned again to go into the Lake, there was a hole that we were told as kids never to go and swim there. They couldn’t find the depth of it, and it was known as Devils Elbow. And I believe my mother used to say, that when she was young, as kids, from Devils Elbow down into the turn into the Lake, there were a few deep holes that were in there. The way the water used to run down the Creek and shift the rocks was something incredible. Even the little Merlynston Creek. There was a story about that. They were clearing up and deciding they were going to get rid of all the willow trees and what have you, but there was a little bridge over the Merlynston Creek on the Merri Creek path, they had to renew. A group came up from the Board of Works, Melbourne Water or whoever they were, and they looked at it, the Merlynston Creek, and said we will have to put a new bridge in. So on the bank there, they turned around, got this big drot (mechanical jack hammer), they were chipping away at the sandstone to get it out. And I said what are you wrecking that for? There were a lot of native trees and bits and pieces around the place, I said there’s nothing wrong with that. They said oh, if a flood comes down here, it might collapse and hurt somebody. I said, that’s funny, I have played around here since the last 40 years, and I said I’ve seen the water rushing around here, and there’s never been a piece come off it. But anyhow, they went ahead, and they dug all this out, then they brought in all these big rocks and they put all these big rocks and everything in. And the next decent flood we had down there, it washed the whole lot of them out and dumped them all in the Merri Creek. So I reckon that guy with the drot was there for a month, and the cost to put it in, and all for nothing. But that section above Carr Street, that was a tip as well, you can go along the banks of the Merlynston Creek and see where they built it up and threw the rubbish in, parts of old car bodies, and what have you, they are still in there. They have never ever taken them out.
DS: The works along Merlynston Creek, were they part of the Board of Works sewerage works?
JJ: When they put in the sewerage works originally they put the pipes down along the Merri Creek. This is all volcanic around here, all bluestone everywhere. No matter where you go, there’s pockets of bluestone. I can go back to when I was a kid, walking around the paddocks here, there were places where they dug holes looking for good clean bluestone all over the place. So when they put the sewerage through, they dug their tunnel and instead of carting all that away, they just pulled it up onto the surface and they just tipped it into the Creek. I reckon in some parts they probably dropped the depth of the Creek by four or five feet because they put so much bluestone and stuff in it. At the end of Shorts Road where we used to swim, one side there was a tree, we used to climb up to the top of the tree, and we could dive off that and had no hope of hitting the bottom. I’d hate to try to do it now. There would probably be only a foot and a half of water over it now. They just destroyed it. It used to be clean.
DS: You swam there, so the water must have been in reasonable condition.
J.J. Yes, the water was. If we were kids running up and down the Creek , and we were thirsty, there was no chance to go home . All we looked for was a part in the Creek where the water was running over the rocks , and that’s where we drank. Most people don’t seem to realise that we get a lot of run-off from the Donnybrook Springs , we had mineral springs water running down into the Merri Creek and the water used to be beautiful . But then they turned round and opened up along Newlands Road and on the other side up around Fawkner ,they put the factories and that in there. And also if you are going north up Newlands Road, on the left hand side , there are a lot of quarry holes there , and they used them as a Council tip . And they just tipped everything in , it didn’t matter what it was, whether it was liquid waste , the whole lot was poured in there and it leached out into the Creek . Before, you could sit out on a summer’s night , you’d sit here , and you couldn’t hear yourself talk for the croaking of the frogs. And you’d go down and stand on the bridge , and have a look at the pool that was up north , there used to be an algae that used to grow in patches all around on the water , and they’d be covered in frogs , big bullfrogs were sitting there , wah,wah, wah, they were going all the time. And they just all disappeared. You’re lucky if you turn round and see a frog in the Creek now.
And there used to be a lot of water rats, terrible lot of water rats. When they did the so-called beautification as is there now. I was very worried because there was one water rat, a huge water rat, he’s been there for I don’t know how long, but he was nearly as big as a cat. And he used to work from Carr Street around to the other side of the Creek in Bakers Road, mainly living on yabbies. I used to walk there because of the diabetes, I used to walk there of a night, that’s where I used to get all my exercise, and I used to go down after tea and I’d pick him up just above Carr Street , and I’d follow him all the way up. And when they started digging down and wrecking , mucking round with Creek , I’d thought that he would either go or die. They took a lot of the foliage away from along the Creek there , and the cats would have got him. But the people that did the pipe from Reservoir across over to other side of Essendon somewhere, one of the guys there said he had just seen a water rat down the bottom. So I knew from that , went down and had a look, and oh yeah, that’s him. So to my knowledge, he still exists down there. Hopefully!
DS: Did you ever see any platypus?
JJ: No, I’ve never seen a platypus.
DS: What about fish? What types of fish ?
JJ: Mainly carp, eels, plenty of eels, and a Galaxias minnow that was about eight or nine inches long. They put a ladder in at the Lake wall to let these minnows up to follow their route up the Creek. There were a few of them along the Creek The ladder worked real good, but they came up into the Lake , and got up as far as the Merlynston Creek , and instead of continuing going straight up the Merri Creek, they did a left turn and went up the Merlynston Creek! There, dye from the old Lincoln Mills used to run into the Creek, and nothing was ever cleaned or anything like that, it was just poured down. And sometimes the Merlynston Creek would run red, it would run black or green ,or blue. All sorts of colors . And the minnows got into all the pollution up there and it killed the lot of them. And I don’t think you would now find one, that’s it. You don’t see them any more.
DS: You mentioned about blackfish being further up the Creek. What sort of fish were they?
JJ: They called them the Australian Blackfish, similar to a grayling. Not a lot of scales on them, like a slimy finish, when you cooked them they had very white soft flesh. And they grew huge, from about Somerton up, there used to be a terrible lot of Blackfish. My father and his mate, they used to ride the push bike up to Craigeburn, go down onto the Creek and they used to bring them home. When I was a kid, I used to go up there with them. He brought one home, one night, that he got up there at Craigeburn, and the old concrete wash troughs, when he brought it home, it was a very hardy fish, he put water in the trough and put this fish in there, and it was that long, angle wise, across the trough, that it still had its tail curved around the side. It wouldn’t fit across there, it was that big. Oh, it was about six pounds, it was a huge fish.
The migrant people found the fish were in the place—“me no understand, we don’t know the fishing laws and everything like that”. And you had a size limit of eleven inches. No size limit as far as they were concerned, they took them all. They cleaned them out. To this day, I have never actually been back, there is one place I’d like to go back and have a look at, where we used to go up quite a bit. Dad used to sit me on the bar of the bike, pedal all the way up there. He used to grow his own tomatoes, and his onions, the bread would be buttered, the tomato and the onion added and we’d sit up there with these tomato and onion sandwiches and catch the Blackfish. Very very good!
DS: Were the floods very regular?
JJ: Fairly regular. When I was young in the early days, every winter we would have a flood. That Creek would flood, I’ve seen it where the swing bridge and even the present bridge down there, I’ve seen the water lapping over the top of the bridge. Of course, now they have put that new ring road in that goes up to Craigeburn to the Hume Highway, and they have got all areas up there where they dissipate all the water that was collected from there, and put it in holding places for evaporation, we don’t get as much, but we still get enough now to raise the Creek level by at least ten feet. Where you could walk down to the edge of the Creek now, you might be ten feet from the original permanent edge, the water would be banked up, that would come up three foot, four foot.
DS: Tell us about some of the activities around the Creek that you and your boyhood mates would get up to.
JJ: Most of us used to like go hiking. Up on Sydney Road there was …..,no originally they were on Bakers Road up near the school ….. Bettas small goods , they were Polish or Ukraine, they came from that area , they used to make all these beautiful sausages and saveloys and everything else like that . We would go up there and get a whole string of saveloys, we had a billy ,and a box of matches , and we used to make these model aeroplanes, and we used to go to some of the paddocks up further and fry the saveloys and take our billy and sit down and have lunch . It was good fun. We would go rabbiting, I had a foxy dog that used to sniff the rabbits out in the wall. You had to be careful that you didn’t put your hands in, in case there was a snake in there. You had to use a bit of wire, and you would soon know whether there was a snake or not. We used to get the bunny rabbits , used to be plenty of rabbits. Oh yeah, they were in the walls everywhere, because most of the walls, they didn’t have barb wire fences , they were mainly all bluestone, similar to that one across the road.
DS: So the swimming was the other thing in the summer? You swam in the hole at Shorts Road? And you often went skinny dipping ?
JJ: Oh yes. Most of it was skinny dipping .
DS: Tell us about Mrs.Paton .
JJ: Mrs.Paton, she lived on the other side of the Creek. Heading north, the house there that had been Todd’s originally. Alan McKay from McKay’s dairy owned the whole area, but there was a house that Harry Griffiths lived in, and then there was Paton’s , and the next house was a beautiful old bluestone place that had been built there many, many years ago. There was that one there and further up, there was another bluestone place. And of course we’d all get down near Shorties swimming , and Mrs. Paton, she didn’t like us all swimming in the nude. She didn’t like it very very much. She’d ring the police, they used to tell her don’t worry about it, they’ll soon be gone home for tea. They couldn’t be bothered coming out, so we swam there a lot. She used to watch us with the binoculars. We all knew where to watch to see if she was looking at us!
DS: So eels were an attraction in your fishing? Tell us about your father catching eels one night.
JJ: He had been down at the top of Devils Elbow. There were a lot of weeds, and he and his mate found this spot where they could get in there. They found it was too much hard work digging worm , so they went around the garden and picked up snails. They took the garden snails out of the shell, and they were very, very good bait and still are. It doesn’t matter where you go, a snail will catch an eel . They had a big sugar bag. They put them in this bag , and it was nearly full . When he came home with it, it was a bit late, and he thought he’d have to go and clean them and skin them . He thought it’s a bit late , so I’ll do it in the morning. This was on a Friday night, when they got them. So out the back door there’s a gully trap, so he thought the bag was all set up, and he just put the bag in the gully trap, and turned the tap on so it would just wet it down to keep them nice and fresh. Anyhow, my mother got up, and went out the back the next morning and there was a hell of a commotion out in the backyard. ” Jack, get out here, Jack get out here. And somewhere along the line, there was a hole in this bag, and all the blasted eels got out, they were all over the backyard, all over the lawn, they were everywhere ( laughs). He wasn’t too impressed!!
DS: Did you used to eat eels?
JJ: Oh yes. He’d clean and skin them, then he would turn round and take the backbone out of them, and he would boil them in a half and half mixture of milk and water. Give them about five minutes, take them out, put them in the colander and dry them, then he used to roll them in egg and breadcrumb and fry them. They were simply beautiful. But the silver ones were the ones he used to like, the mud eels, he wouldn’t have a bar of them. They were muddy .
DS: You mentioned some of the colorful people around in your young days. Tell us about the Spry Street two-up school.
JJ: Down the bottom, it was actually Shorts Road, a box thorn fence came down to the Creek, and there was a big tree down there. Every Sunday, they used to get down there, a group of them, used to play two-up. They used to hunt all us kids off. The other side of the Creek was a hole that was a bit higher than the surrounds and they used to have their cockies up there to watch in case the police arrived. That used to go on about every Sunday. Anyhow the police decided one Sunday to turn round and raid them. They went in all directions. One of the guys, one of my mates, his people lived in Spry Street, and he’d just got a big load of wood for the fire and what have you. Anyhow, this guy has come down, and is running everywhere, and he’s seen this big pile of wood there and the axe. So over the fence he’s gone, took his tie off and his coat, and he is into chopping the wood. And the local policeman that was sort of leading the charge of the the raid, he looked over the fence. Of course he knew the people who owned the house and knew this bloke had nothing to do with it. So he just sat there for the rest of the afternoon. He kept on coming back past. I think there must have had about five ton of foot blocks in the place and he cut the whole damn lot of them. (laughs). The policeman thought that was good enough to teach him a lesson.
DS: You mentioned the gypsies. What was that story?
JJ: Every time at Showtime the gypsies used to arrive. They used to camp in Carr Street on a piece of land that has now got a scout hall on it and a crèche. But it was just open land then and they used to set up a tent city there, and their big black limousines and everything else like that. Most of the people of the area knew that that was the time that they would arrive. There would be locks put on chook houses, gates and everything chained. And they were always running around wanting to bless your money. Nobody would have a bar of them. Short shrift them out of the place. Then all of a sudden, I don’t know why, they just stopped coming.
DS: What about the local priest and his ploughing?
JJ: Yes, that was the other side of Sydney Road, there was a place on the corner there, some monks from out Box Hill way somewhere. But there was a priest there by the name of Father Cerini and he used to look after this big place. I think they might have had old people there. There was a big tree in the front, it had a mob of magpies in it, and they used to attack the kids going to school. From Bakers Road to Spry Street was all just open paddock. And he used to plough that and he used to put in grain, I don’t know whether it was barley or oats or something like that. And he used to plough it with a steam roller! And I mean a steam roller! A big steam roller! He used to chuff round in that.
There were other people around the place, there was one guy who used to come down here every winter time, finish up down Ida Street where it comes into Headley Street where it turns down the bottom. He used to come down there with a horse and cart, and he’d set up camp there, and he used to work for Alan McKay during the winter months at the dairy across over at Edgar’s Creek on the other side of Newlands Road. And he used to walk across and anyhow, Alan McKay had a couple of beehives. And he said to old Jacko, can you get the honey out of the beehives. Yes, I can do it, he was a Norwegian, and in his Norwegian accent, he said he could do it. So he got set up to attack these hives, to rob these hives, he got some hessian chaff bags and he made himself a suit. And he had the net over his head and he got into this suit, and he has gone over to rob the hives. If anybody who knew anything about bees, the time to rob them was in the middle of the day when all the bees were out working. He didn’t, he waited until it was dusk. And when he’s arrived—he’s found out later they were Italian bees– well anybody who knows anything about Italian bees, or what they class as Italian bees, they are very very vicious. Well he came back across the swing bridge still in the suit, going for his life. My father was out working in the front garden, and as he’s come past he said to him, what’s the matter. The bees, the bees, the bees! he said. And my dad looked at him, and you could see them walking all over him. So my dad took him round the back and got him out of his suit, and he had about thirty bee stings all over him. They’d got inside his suit and bitten everywhere. Needless to say, he never ever went back, he never robbed the beehive, they got some other people to come and do it. (laughs). But he used to camp there. I was speaking before about the gypsies , at Show time. Just down the end of Ida Street , there’s a set of flats, Jimmy Sharman used to come and set up camp there with his boxing troupe . There was Georgie Bracken and a few others, they used to train, they used to run up along the Creek , and train around the area . But as kids, we were always down there gawking, we got to know them quite a bit.
DS: A lot of color around then?
JJ: Yes there has been.
DS: You mentioned rabbits, but what about foxes?
JJ: Yes, we have still got foxes.
DS: The area has a great reputation for snakes. What sort of snakes were around?
JJ: We saw a lot of browns, lot of copperheads, blacks, and an occasional tiger, but not a great deal of tigers . There were a terrible lot of browns, terrible lot of copperheads. The copperheads weren’t what you would call really big . Before I had problems and couldn’t go walking, I went for a walk down on the path on the Creek , and just south of the bridge, where there is a vent from the sewer, I saw what looked like a branch there across the path. And I thought some kid is going to come down there on his push bike and have a nasty accident. So I thought I’d go down and get that off the path. And I got about fifteen feet away from it, and it sat up and looked at me. I’m nearly six foot, and he was looking at me at eye level, that’s how high he came off the ground. I reckon he would have been as thick as my wrist. He was a big king brown, real big one, and I looked at him and said ” alright mate, very very nice”, and turned around and went back home!
DS: Did you ever come across any kangaroos in those days?
JJ: No, kangaroos never came down. Everything was very lush around everywhere, and there was no reason for them to come down .
DS: What sort of birds were around?
JJ: Well, there were a lot of sparrows, there were plenty of crows, magpies, kingfishers, cranes. The kingfishers we used to see here along the Creek was a grey one, with a white breast . But there was one in particular, the last time I saw one down along the Creek..it would be four years ago because I haven’t been down there walking a lot, but it was what they call a Sacred Kingfisher . It was royal blue, his back and his wings were royal blue with white stripes. A brilliant orange , scarlet colored breast on him. And that was one of them, and he flew up north. Haven’t seen him since. We get a lot of cranes, storks, we get a lot of them down along the Creek. And ducks. In the Lake there,there are swans, there are a pair of swans that get down there every year . They have three or four little ones . But they have to watch them, because they get down near that wall, and there’s a current, they can’t beat the current, and finish up getting washed over the top . It’s a pity really .
Years ago, up this end of the Reserve, there were three or four houses that were tied up with the quarries. Mr. Raleigh, who lived up there, he used to have turkeys, geese and ducks and everything like that that used to get loose and get down along the Creek. (laughs)
DS: This is a great bluestone area, there would have been a lot of market gardens and farms. Can you remember when you were a boy whether any of the bluestone farm houses were still there or their remnants?
JJ: If you come the other side from Bakers Road, as you go down the hill, there is a street, and in between that there was a track that used to go in there. I’d say there would be about seven or eight house foundations there. The houses had gone, nobody knew who had them. If you turned around and went south, where McMahons Road goes back down to Ida Street, or Carr Street I should say, up the top end there are one, two, three or four wells down along there. They filled them in and built the road over them. There would have been four houses along there. But that was long, long before my time. Goes back a long, long way.
DS: So the farms would have had the stone fences round their paddocks?
JJ: Yes.
DS: In your day they were mainly dairies?
JJ: McKays dairy. Every so often along Newlands Road he would put in a lot of sugar beet. Howdens were in the flat where it is now football fields, basketball stadium and everything. There was a farm house over there, that was Howdens. But McKay used to put in a lot of sugar beet along Newlands Road and he used to also put in a lot of corn. We used to get over there and get the corn. And down south of the Lake, the Chinese market gardens were all down along there. The old guy there had a horse and cart, and he used to go round to different people in Coburg selling his vegetables. His last effort, he used to go to my grandmother on Sydney Road, and when they moved up here, he came up here to them.
He used to come up here, and they would buy what they wanted off him. That was the end of his round. Then he would go out and get into the back of his cart, he’d get the bucket and come out to our front tap and he’d get a certain amount of water in the bucket, then back into the van he’d go and pull the back down. He’d be there for, maybe an hour or a little bit longer. Then he’d turn round, the bucket would go up, and he would pour the water and everything down the gutter, put the bucket in, take the nose bag off the horse, and he’d sit in there and get the reins, put his head back and go to sleep. The horse would take him up to Sydney Road, do a left turn, take him down to Murray Road, down Murray Road and down into the market gardens. And there he’d stop. And there his wife would get him out. He was on the opium, he was an opium addict, been one from a little boy.
DS: What was he doing with the water in the back of the cart?
JJ: He used to turn round and fire up his opium pipe in the back of the cart. And the water was to cool the smoke so it didn’t burn his lungs out. He used to come up here with beautiful vegetables, beautiful. He had a beautiful garden running there. They all went, they got rid of them.
DS: When would they have gone?
JJ: In the 50s.
DS: You mentioned about the quarries. Where were the main ones?
JJ: There were the ones on Newlands Road. The Council, as you go on the right as you go up on the hill, and up past what is now the turn into Kodak, there used to be a Council quarry there, a crusher and everything like that, where they got all their road metal. If you continue further up to where it turns to go up to Edwardes Street, on that turn, Albion-Reid had a quarry in there. And they had a big, big deep hole. I think they said it was the second or third deepest hole in the southern hemisphere. And the Council filled that in as a tip, the rubbish went into that. And there were quarries all along the other side, from the top when you come up down here over McMahons Road, Newlands Road goes up over the top of the hill, from there right up on the left hand side that was all quarry. They quarried all that as well. Right up on the corner there was an Italian family that lived up there, and if you got out the wrong door, there was a thirty foot drop. They had no water up there, he used to come down to the top here over McMahons Road where we come up off the bridge ,and there was a tap up there and a spout where they could get water . He used to come down with a couple of 44 gallon drums on the back of this truck . He’d fill them up and that would be the water for the day for his family . He’d cart them back. But during the war years on the top of the ridge and over the other side of the Creek, there was a stone fence along there. There was a big old river red gum, what was left of it —wood was very hard to get during the war years —–and the fathers would get over there a couple of times a week, with their wedges and everything else, and their axes and hammers, and they used to break pieces off. This Italian guy said ” ah, I’ll get it easily”, so he came down with an auger bit and a couple of blasting mats . He bored about four or five holes in it , put little bits of jelly in the whole lot , covered it all over, sat back , and boom! Well the fathers didn’t have to come over there and cut it up , all they did was walk round the paddocks over there and pick up all the little wee bits. ( laughs, oh dear)
A lot of colorful things happened around here!
On the other side down McMahons Road, there were people by the name of Southam, Stan Southam, he used to deliver with a horse and cart. There was Stuart Kame, he was building a house at the back. They built a garage and a workshop, and they lived in that while they built the house. Mrs. Southam was doing the washing in the old wood copper , and little Colin was sitting on the side and he slipped and he fell into the boiling hot copper. The only part that wasn’t burnt was down there between his legs. And the scream and everything. Mrs. Griffiths, she heard it and she came across with a bottle of vinegar. Dorry Kame, she didn’t know what to do. The only telephone was in Leckies , the grocers up there. She’s gone across to ring for the doctor, and my mum was standing out the front. She said I can’t stop, Colin’s fallen into a copper of boiling water. Well, we were previously talking about fishing for blackfish at Craigieburn. I’d been with my father and uncle and a few neighbours, we’d been up to Craigieburn down on the Merri Creek on the 17 mile lane, and they were having tea and everything up there. And they took the water off to make tea, they put the tea in the billy and so it wouldn’t slop, they put some grease paper round the top and pushed the lid on, and put it on the fire. And of course, little boys and fire, they get sticks and that, and it blew. And all that water came out and I got it over my arms and other areas. There is a scar there ( on leg ) and I had other burns. It was three months till it all healed up. My mother had all the dressings, the stuff that my mother had been using to look after my leg, my burns, she had it in a shoe box in the linen press. She just came in, got the shoe box and took off. My mother suffered with the effects of meningitis and had one leg shorter than the other, but she took off. The little boy who was there was starting to go into shock. She had known what to do from the doctor who had been looking after me all the time. She had the knife and the gauze , and she had ungvita and she was putting that on Colin, the little boy, when the doctor eventually arrived. He said what are you doing? Mum said I’m using this, she said my son had just been scalded in a camping accident. That was what Dr. Gurry had been using, she said. He looked at her and said, go right ahead. They took him into the Children’s Hospital, they didn’t think he would survive. After, he sent a card every year for her birthday and Christmas. She always got flowers and she always got a letter from him. He is still going.
It was very isolated around here.
DS: Any other characters around?
JJ: Oh yes, there was old Happy Gore. Right across at the end of McMahons Road, there used to be a house back in there. And Happy, I think he worked in one of the banks, he used to like to get into the six o’clock closing, and he’d be a little bit tiddly often when he came home. He must have been doing some renovations at home. He had four long pieces of flooring board and his briefcase, put the boards on his shoulder and comes down to the bridge, they were swinging a bit on him. We saw him and had a bit of a giggle. So that was alright, he went down and across the bridge and there was a north wind blowing. So he got half way out in the middle of the bridge, the wind’s got these pieces of wood, they’ve turned around and they have got him under the throat. If he lets them go, they are in the Creek, he didn’t know whether to turn round, drop his bag and grab these or what to do. ( laughs ) So he slowly and surely sank down till they hit the two rails across the top. We used to see him go across there of a night, a bit tiddly, wandering across. There were quite a lot of characters around the place.
DS: You mentioned the clay tunnel down at Coburg Lake. Tell us about that.
JJ: Just north as you come around the bend at the top end of the Lake, there is a peppercorn tree in on the bank, and across there used to be a tunnel there that went in for about a kilometer. It wasn’t shored up or anything, the Council had put posts in and put a gate on it, the kids used to pull it off. So they filled it in and they put a track on that side of the Creek around up to Carr Street. Where this tunnel was, to stop all the hassles about it, they filled it all in. I doubt if they would even know it was there. Nobody seemed to know what it had been used for. But there’s a lot of pottery clay along the river bank. I’ve been in the tunnel, but I wasn’t game enough to go far down, didn’t know what was going to happen, there was a lot of clay in there. It goes in for about a kilometer.
DS: Finally John, you have given us a very detailed and colorful idea of what things were like. You have been around the Creek for almost 70 years, what is good and bad about what has happened here?
JJ: I really would not want to move from this area. In 1991 when I was made redundant, I had options to allow me to move out of the area, but down this end of the street it is quiet, now we haven’t got all the yahoos around the place, you get a few from the other side bring their cars down here, line them up, a bit of oil on the road, and do wheelies. All the time I’ve lived in this area, it’s always been quiet. You don’t get hassles from people in this area, we look after each other. I wouldn’t move, I could have had a beautiful house in Brighton, or turned around and bought a big house up in Wallan, but what for? The people are good around the area, and there are shops nearby. A really good little community, with just a few ups and downs.
DS: Thank you very much John for taking part in the Project.
This is an edited version of the interview.
