Edited transcript of interview with Heather Cox.
I’m the eldest daughter of Evelyn Peachy and David Ennis. They were married in 1938 and they were together for quite a few years before they could afford to get married because there was no work around. He worked in a clay pit in Brunswick and they had to work very long hours, it was all physical. Then he bought a truck and worked for the Broadmeadows City Council. For many years, I can always remember my dad being in a truck. He used to do all his own maintenance on the truck weekends and he’d be gone again on Mondays and he worked hard.
I was born in 1941. My sister was born 15 months later and then my brother was born four years after that in 1944. When I was born, my mum and dad lived in Coburg. My mother lost her mother and father within five months of one another and one of her younger brothers was killed in the war. When my grandmother died, we went back up to what was my mother’s home and lived with them. There were uncles (mum’s younger brothers) and her sister, Rachel. She was only 11 when her parents passed on so mum went back and she would have been about 27 and because she was the eldest, she took over the family.
We had a bathroom cum laundry, which was really only a shed tacked on to the stables. Everything was stripped Mondays and washed. She’d wash it by hand then put it in the copper, then she’d go back into one trough, through into another one that had a blue… we used to call it ‘blue knob’ and that was to whiten the whites. She was big on starch, everything had to be starched. All the men’s shirts had to be starched and because her brothers had been out dancing on the Saturday night, she always had miles of shirts and things on the line. The clothesline was just a pole, one each end and in between there was strips of wire with an old piece of wood to prop it all up. I could remember once, my uncle Nev, he was training a horse and he screamed out to my mum (she was putting the washing on the line) and he screamed out to her, “Get inside! Get inside!” The horse had broken and he got tangled up in mums washing and I can still hear her screaming about her washing all being on the ground and the horse trampling all over it.
Sunday morning was baking day. My mum would put the roast in the oven and there’d be cakes and scones coming out of that oven wholesale. She’d need cream to put on the scones so my dad would put a cushion on his pushbike, tie something around it and I’d sit there in front of him while we went down to the dairy and got the cream. I remember the fun we used to have as he used to go over the bumps and everything you know? And that’s a real happy, special memory I have with my dad.
They had a beautiful marriage. They were really good. My mum was very outgoing. My dad was very quiet and they were married 38 years before my dad passed on so my mum never got over that. She never ever got over losing my dad. It was something really special.
About the ReCollection project.
As part of the 2017 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Memento Media partnered with Moreland City Council to present ReCollection at the Coburg Carnivale. ReCollection is about celebrating, sharing and capturing the memories of Moreland’s places, history and faces. The ReCollection exhibit showcased short documentaries and printed historical material which helped attendees take a trip down memory lane.
During the Carnivale, many locals generously shared their stories about life in Moreland in our specially built ReCollection Recorder.