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 Pauline Atkins, who lived on the Oakover Estate, West Preston, from the 1930’s to the 1950’s. The interviewer is Des Shiel, and the date is 4 June, 2014. The interview takes place in Pauline’s home in MacLeod.
DS: Could I start by asking you a few personal details Pauline. When and where were you born?
PA: I was born at Kulkhi Hospital, Coburg, on the corner of The Grove and De Carle Street on the 11 August, 1935.
DS: Where on the Oakover Estate did you live, and what years were you living there?
PA: From when I was born till when I was married, 1935 till 1956 And I lived at 36 Robeson Street.
DS: Can you tell us where that was in relation to the Creek?
PA: It ran sort of parallel to the Creek, probably three or four street blocks up from the Creek.
DS: I’ll come back to the Oakover Estare later on, I’d like now to pursue your and your family’s connection to the area. In particular, I want you to talk about your connection with the 200 Nicholson Street, East Coburg property. For a start, can you tell us where that property was, and the extent of the property?
PA: As I said, I find out now it is 144 Nicholson Street. Coming from Bell Street, it’s on your left, east side, there is a group of shops just before Harding Street, and it’s to the north of the shops. Then there was the house, the shops, Harding Street and the East Coburg Primary School, which is no longer the East Coburg Primary School. I’m not sure what it is called now.
DS: What was the extent of the market garden that was attached to it?
PA: It went from the back of the house down to the Creek and I presume up to Harding Street, I don’t really know the extent, but I think that’s right. I went there with my mother to get rrnt and so on, into the 1940’s, I’m not sure how long they had it.
DS: Now I’d like to get some of the background of your grandparents, who were the owners of the Nicholson Street property. What was the background of your grandfather?
PA: My grandfather was born in 1853, and he was part of the German settlement at Thomastown. His parents had come from Germany with the William Westgarth scheme, they came in 1849-1850. And my grandfather was the second child. They married just before they left Germany.
DS: And what was his name?
PA: Charles Maltzahn.
DS: Could you tell us a little bit about Westgarthtown. Where exactly was it?
PA: Some of it is in Thomastown and some of it is in Lalor. I don’t know how far north of Melbourne it would be, fifteen kilometres or something like that, maybe a bit more. There were about twelve families brought out by William Westgarth about the same time as two pairs of great great grandparents and two pairs of my great grandparents came. My grandmother’s parents came from Germany as teenagers, and married later on (probably about 1860). They were all allocated land up there, and to own the land, they had to be citizens, so they became naturalised as soon as they could. And then they owned the land. William Westgarth had bought a square mile. Up there, there is still a Lutheran church, and a cemetery that goes with it. There are four or give houses still left of the original settlement, but they are all really just suburban blocks now. The houses are all built up to the old houses, they were farms.
DS: The children of those early settlers, did they go on to the land? What did your grandfather do?
PA: My grandfather was a farmer and he didn’t marry till he was forty. Because his parents were still alive and he had a single brother and sister at home, he bought another farm at Somerton, where the Ford factory now is. And he farmed there from 1893 till 1914 when he came to East Coburg.
DS: When he bought the East Coburg property, was he still farming?
PA: No, he retired. He was only in his early sixties but he was obviously retired.
DS : So he bought the East Coburg property in 1914?
PA: Yes.
DS: What about your grandmother, what was her background?
PA: She was from the same background. Her parents were born in Germany too, as were my grandfather’s. But they were both born in Australia. She was born in 1865, she a was great deal younger than him. And my mother was the youngest daughter, there were four daughters. By the time my mother was born in 1903, her father was fifty, so he was really old enough to be her grandfather.
DS: So your grandmother, she looked after the house, she didn’t work?
PA: No, she worked on the farm of course. And she had worked on her own parents farm, which was actually at Wollert until she was married when she was 28. She didn’t have ” a job” (laughs ).
DS: So there were four daughters, and your mother was the youngest. When your grandfather died in 1919, why did they sell, do you know?
PA : I sort of got the feeling, I was never actually told, that my grandmother couldn’t settle after it, and wanted to go somewhere different. And they moved to St.Kilda which lasted only a few months, and they actually came back to Coburg. Obviously it was a wrong decision, and they came back to The Grove in Coburg. And that was where my single aunt, the oldest daughter, owned the the house until she died in 1962.
DS: What did your aunts do for occupations ?
PA: Well, the oldest one, the single one, she was a very good cook, but she actually worked at the Mutual Store which was in Flinders Street. I am not sure exactly what she did there, whether it was sales or the office or what, I don’t know. She actually then took in the second youngest daughter who was not at all well, and she had two children. Eventually that daughter died in 1944, so my single aunt became the stand-in mother of those two girls. She probably worked in my time but I don’t really remember. I just remember her being at home looking after the girls and so on. The second daughter, Florrie, didn’t marry till she was 39. She was a dressmaker and had been in her working life, a very good dressmaker too. And the third daughter, the one who died in 1944, she was a milliner. And my mother, she worked in Myers in the office, dealing with money, she was a cashier. Sometimes she worked in other departments as a cashier. And that’s where she met my father . We were a Myers family, yes.
DS: So your aunts and your mother came back and remained as locals?
PA: Yes. The one aunt who married and had no children, the dressmaker one, it was her husband who began Pura Milk. And he was actually a second cousin of hers, but they had no children, and they lived in Gilbert Road.
DS: We were speaking with someone of German extraction a while back, and they were mentioning about the anti-German feeling during the War. Do you know anything about that with your grandparents?
PA: Not so much with my grandparents, but with my mother. She told of going to the dentist during the First World War, she would have been a young teenager. She reckoned the dentist was particularly cruel to her because she had a German name. Whether that was so or whether she imagined it I don’t know. She hated dentists after that ( laughs). I know there was a lot of ill-feeling towards the farmers at Westgarthtown because of them being German. There was talk around that they were traitors or spies, and goodness knows what. And yet they supplied the milk to Broadmeadows camp, so they can’t have thought too badly of them to take the milk. There have been articles about sons of those families who fought in the Australian Army in the First War.
DS: Getting back to the market garden, how long was that in the family?
PA: From 1914 to the mid-1940’s, at least 30 odd years.
DS: And during this time it was leased?
PA: It was leased originally to the Chinese, and then to the Italians.
DS: Can you remember the gardens?
PA: I remember going down there, and as I said to you, that fennel was a real problem, it was a weed. Now it is regarded as a delicacy. All they were worried about was getting rid of it. That’s about all I remember of it, I can’t remember buying anything or any of the produce.
DS: Somebody else we did interview does remember going down there buying vegetables at one stage. We interviewed Joe Garita who had the garden from about 1940 till recently, he did have a shop there in the 60’s.
PA: At the market garden itself?
DS: Yes. So your father and mother met through Myers. They were both locals?
PA: No, my father came from Albert Park.
DS: To move from the past in Nicholson Street over to the Oakover Estate, your parents built there when?
PA: They were married in February 1928, I have actually got the record of them buying the land. It was at least 1927, it could have been 1926. The house was ready for them to move into when they were married.
DS: So you think the Estate was started to be developed in the 1920’s?
PA: Mid 20’s I’d say.
DS: Your house in Robeson Street, is that still there?
PA: Yes, my son owns it.
DS: What sort of house was it?
PA: It was a Californian Bungalow (laughs). It was a State Savings Bank house, it was timber.
DS: Do you recall anything about the original Oakover Hall in Stafford Street?
PA: As I said to you, I thought it was called Oakover House, but I was corrected by my friend who said it has Oakover Hall in raised stone work on the front of it. My first memory of it was, south from it would have been three or four vacant blocks. They might have been kept with the original house. The family of a friend of mine lived with their grandmother opposite us in Robeson Street until they built their house at 6 Stafford Street in 1948. I remember making a bonfire there for VP day, which we knew was imminent. We had several days to make the big bonfire. I have a picture of us sitting on a log there in their backyard with the Oakover Hall in the background. I was bridesmaid to that girl. I have found somebody else whose father took a lot of pictures around there, another Pauline who lived in Stafford Street, who said she donated the pictures to a library, but is unsure exactly which one. She lived closer to the Hall and closer to the Creek, and should have had photos.
DS: It is all built around now of course, but you can remember a certain amount of open land in the 1930′ s.
PA : The 30’s and the 40’s. There were of course houses built after the War, because nothing much happened during the War.
DS: Was there any degree of social stratification with the houses built on the Estate? Were the houses up near the Hall better than the houses down near the Creek?
PA: I wouldn’t think so. Generally, our house was was pretty much the same as all others around, although up in Concord Street, which went from Robeson Street to Gilbert Road, a lot of those houses were let, and generally they didn’t seem to be quite as good. Now they have been done up and they look very much like the others, but there were a lot of rental properties along there. But I don’t think anyone was looked down upon as coming from these houses. Everybody was about the same.
DS: So your mother and father built in Robeson Street and in 1935 you appeared .
PA: It took a long time but then they got the perfect person! ( laughs ).
DS: Well that’s right, well worth waiting for obviously. I would like to get an idea of what life was like around the Creek in the 30’s and 40’s and the 50’s even. Say for example, were the roads made?
PA: No, actually Robeson Street wasn’t made till 1938. And I think I might have said to you Oakover Road went south from Bell Street and went down to where Oakover Road is now and turned and went to High Street. And mum and dad were 120 something Oakover. I have a cutting of my birth certificate , they were 36 Robeson Street then, so it must have been pre-1935 that it was changed.
DS: You mentioned before there were a number of one child families.
PA: And perhaps two, but there were not big families.
DS: What were some of the occupations of some of the neighbours?
PA: As I said one man was in the bank. He lived in Stafford Street, he was in the State Bank. I think next door to him was probably a clerk of some sort, he wore a suit to work you know. A lot of men seemed to ride bikes, probably worked in factories or foundries or something like that. One man a couple of doors up from us , he was too old to have been in the army during the War, but I think he might have been in the permanent army, because I remember him in a uniform. Most of the men seemed to ride bikes to work when I think about it.
DS: Maybe they would have ridden to the station.
PA: They were in working clothes.
DS: There would have been a lot of small local industries around.
PA: Well yes, there were a lot up, around High Street. I mentioned to you about Stangers and that a woman I know worked there. She would be happy to talk to you.
DS: What was Stangers. What did they make?
PA: I think they might have been steel fabricators, I’m not sure what they did actually. There were a lot of local shopkeepers and that who lived pretty locally, butchers and green grocers and newsagents.
DS: Were there nearby shops?
PA: Well around in Gilbert Road which was just one street block off, there was a butchers and green grocer and a grocer and a dispensary, so it was all the things you needed. None of them operate now. Then there were shops on the corner of Bell Street and Gilbert Road. And of course, down there at Miller Street, and into Gilbert Road. So there were three lots that you could go to.
DS: As well as that you would have had home deliveries I suppose.
PA: Home deliveries of groceries. I don’t remember the butcher coming. A man used to come round with a horse and cart and sold fruit and vegetables.
DS: Where did your mother shop, mainly locally ?
PA: She did a little bit and she went to the butchers up in Bell street. My mother was very particular about which butcher she went to. (laughs) She would walk in and say it smells, and she would walk out again. She mostly went over to Sydney Road to the Coburg Market to meet up with her sisters.
DS: How did she travel over to there?
PA: By bus and tram. My mother had had her licence since 1936, but she didn’t drive till 1947. When she started to drive she would then drive over to there. It was most unusual. My aunt, the oldest one, she had her licence since the 1920’s.
DS: What about cars in those days? Did many people around here own them?
PA: An aunt of my mother’s died just before I was born and mum inherited some money, and they built on another bedroom and a garage. It was only a two bedroom house to start with, they also bought a car. So we had a car from 1935. A Dodge, then we got a Chev. Sorry it was a Chev first then a Dodge. (laughs) It was 123895. When mum started to drive, we had a Willys made by the Jeep people. It was a Willys Overland, a 1939 one. No, there weren’t many people had cars, there would have only been one or two others in our part of the street.
DS: I suppose the horse would have been in vogue to some extent then.
PA: It was still used by a lot of the delivery men, by the milkman and the baker and that sort of thing.
DS: You mentioned you had blacksmiths near you.
PA: Yes, two blacksmiths in Concord Street, they worked in sheds in the back. Their lathes were going all day. When they turned them off at lunch time, you would think why is it so quiet.
DS: So the local butchers and bakers etc would bring their horses there to be shod.
PA: Yes, they would have been cart horses.
DS: What about your childhood and play, did you play near the Creek?
PA: No, mostly at other people’s houses or in the streets. I didn’t play a lot down near the Creek because I think mum used to say not to go down there. There was a handicapped man who lived near the Creek, I was a bit scared that he might be around. I think he was probably alright, but you know. I used to ride my bike down to the Creek and walk across the swing bridge and then ride to my aunt’s in Coburg. I would have only been ten or eleven, I just didn’t play down there a lot. I had some friends who lived in Stafford Street and some other friends that I was in primary school with, when I went there, I possibly went further down towards the Creek. But not a lot.
DS: You mentioned you once got caught over in the cemetery playing hidey. Which cemetery was that?
PA: Coburg Cemetery, which is in Bell Street, which was only three street blocks away. I used to catch the bus along there for Coburg High. It was a penny ( laughs ). My mother gave me a shilling a week for fares and I had twopence over. I could buy two icy poles if I wanted to and if I walked or rode my bike, I had more money over (laughs ).
DS: No sewerage of course on the Estate?
PA: Yes, there was, it only came about the time mum and dad moved in. You still had to go to it from the outside, but it was attached to the house, and a lot of them weren’t. Yes, I’m pretty sure mum and dad had it all the time.
DS: Another person we interviewed who lived further down the Creek recalled a bit of religious divide between Catholics, Protestants, Masons etc. Did you recall anything of that ?
PA: People over the road, diagonally opposite, were Catholics. I played with the son and the daughter, but they regarded my father, and my mum because she was married to him, as a ” b…….. Mason”. They were even worse than Protestants.
DS: The person we interviewed said that the kids used to play together, but it was the adults who had the stand-offishness.
PA: It’s funny, because you only get to know through your children. The people over the road who were Catholics, my mother spoke to them and all that. But you wouldn’t call them friends.
DS: Did they call each other by their first name?
PA: No, it was always Mrs, and my parents always called everybody Mrs. too.
DS: I think that was quite common at that stage?
PA: Yes. I think later on some of them thought they should call each other by their Christain name (laughs). You knew everybody’s name but you called them Mrs.
DS: What primary school did you go to?
PA: Bell, which was built about that time, in Scotia Street which goes from Oakover Road up.
DS: You used to walk there?
PA: Yes, and come home for lunch, and cross Gilbert Road with the trams when I was five. I went on to Coburg High from there.
DS: You used to catch the bus to there.
PA: Yes, or I would walk or ride a bike.
DS: And what did you do when you left school?
PA: I was a shorthand typist. I worked for the Shell Company.
DS: So you were connected with one of the local churches? Which one was that?
PA: Oakover Methodist which was in Robeson Street on the corner of Goodwin Street.
DS: What size of congregation did the churches have in those days?
PA: A church service of thirty or forty would have been the maximum, but there was a big Sunday School. I’m just amazed. We had a Queen Carnival in 1951 or 1952 just about the time I left school. I was a queen, we had queens out of the Bible, and we ended up with a pageant with all the stories of those queens. We had it in the Northcote Town Hall, and we were raising money to build the vestries of the new church. The vestries got built, but the church didn’t ever. It’s no longer, it’s been sold off for housing. I had the movie film which I have had put on to a DVD and gave it around to all the people that I still know. When I look at that, there’s got to be sixty or seventy girls ranging in age from six or seven up to their mid-twenties. You wouldn’t have thought a little church like that would have had so many. At our church now, at Sunday School, if there is four there, it’s a crowd. Just nobody goes.
DS: They would have had youth activities.
PA: Yes, we had a youth group, we had a basketball team and a cricket team. Originally they had a football team, but that got a bit too much.
DS: It was pretty common in those days for the church to organise those activities. Sports things particularly.
PA: Yes, and a church parade. You had to go to church once a month (laughs).
DS: So the church is not there any more.
PA: No, it has been sold off as housing, as has St Cecilias, the Anglican Church, which is in Kendall Street. It’s got other houses around it, but the church itself is still there.
DS: Was there a Catholic Church and school there?
PA: The closest one was Sacred Heart, which was down over High Street in Bell Street.
DS: You mentioned you can’t remember much about the Creek except fennel. Joe Garita described that area down there as jungle. So you would agree with him. The floods on the Creek, you did mention the 1946 one.
PA: I remember the 46 one. I was talking to someone who had older sisters who recalled a very bad one in the late twenties or the early thirties. But I just recall the 1946 one.
DS: What do you recall about it?
PA: I don’t remember going down to the swing bridge, but I remember walking down Bell Street and seeing all the water lying across the road. I presume the road was shut for awhile.
DS: It seemed not uncommon for the Creek to flood.
PA: Yes, now I know even around here (MacLeod) there are all retarding basins, like on Salt Creek, which goes down to the river. They stop the flood.
DS: The last really big one on the Merri was 1974. There have been small ones since then.
Finally, Pauline, today we often hear we have lost our sense of community. People are too occupied with themselves, too busy or whatever. In your days at Oakover, do you think there was a sense of community there?
PA: There was definitely a sense of community at the church, and there was a sense of community around the place. Many women would talk out the front to their neighbours. I remember two women down the street who used to talk till lunch time in their dressing gowns, it was a sort of a local joke ( laughs) . And most people were friendly, I can’t recall anyone being antagonistic to other people or anything like that. I do think there was a sense of community.
DS: I suppose even that fact of talking over the garden gate, showed it was a time when people had more time to do that sort of thing.
PA: My mother used to talk with the next door neighbour, but they would talk in the back yard over the side fence.
DS: Did your mum work?
PA: Not after she was married, one didn’t. Because she was married for seven years before I was born, she had various irons in the fire. She crocheted well and she knitted well, she made bed jackets for a shop in an arcade in the city, this sort of thing. But you didn’t go out to business (laughs).
DS: Thank you very much, Pauline, for taking part in the Project.
PA: You’re more than welcome.
-END–
Vale Pauline Atkins, a wonderful mother, grandmother, friend and neighbour, who passed away peacefully on 13th September 2024. Pauline leaves a broad legacy.