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Essays on local history. If you have a story to tell, email it to the Bass Coast Post.
Sam's pears
Sam Anderson's pear trees still bear fruit today, 181 years after they were planted.
By Libby Skidmore
IN 1835 the first orchard in Victoria, wholly pear trees, was planted in Bass, in the eastern district of western Port. Here also the first real farm in the state came into operation, growing wheat on the rich Bass River flats that season necessitating the establishment of what is regarded as the first Victorian flour mill.
Samuel Anderson was that pioneer tree planter and his pear trees are still flowering and bearing fruit.
The Western Port locality was at that time the most prominent part of southern Australia as Tasmanians were investigating the introduction of sheep and the place was cashing in on a prolific supply of wattle bark.
Anderson followed the water supply, landing at Bass landing. He made his way upstream to the extreme extent of the tide's action and there on the higher north bank set up his farm. The fruit trees, although now only two in number, flourish and produce pears on the farm that is still on the site.
Medal celebrating Samuel Anderson, Sesquicentenary of Victoria, Shire of Bass, Victoria, Australia, 1985
Samuel Anderson was born in Scotland in 1802, came to Tasmania with the Van Diemen's Land Company, and visited Portland with the Hentys. Returning to Tasmania, he learned of the activities of Batman and Fawkner and decided to investigate Western Port. He built a small vessel and in June 1835, accompanied by Robert Massie, he sailed through the eastern passage of Western Port and landed his stock, goods and chattels at the Bass River site.
He commenced farming operations immediately. Wheat was the staple crop for some years and 40 to 60 bushels per acre was common. Oats were also grown. Salt was another crop, sea water being pumped on to the lower flats by the river and the water evaporated. This found a ready sale in Launceston and Melbourne.
Anderson and Massie thus began the first farms in the Bass area.
Libby Skidmore (eskidmore@dcsi.net.au) is secretary of the Bass Valley Historical Society. This story was first published in The Waterline News.
I enjoyed the story of Sam Anderson's early farming ventures at Bass. I found his choice of crop interesting, since pears generally store and keep less well than, say, apples. Was choosing to grow them due to his personal liking for the fruit, or did it give him a marketing edge because there were less other growers?
A point which also puzzles me: in reports of early settler farming that I've read, there are few mentions of honey bees. You would think that keeping honey bees would make crops like pears much more productive, and that yields in the presence of only native bees might be much lower. Does any reader know if honey bees were routinely kept by early settlers for the benefit of their crops? Was their presence simply taken for granted and so not mentioned specifically in descriptions of early farming?
By the man who opened the first business in Wonthaggi
Date unknown
THE first shaft was sunk in a flat that used to be a swamp in wintertime with ducks and snipe on it, so you have some idea how the teams got on. A good seam of coal was found at a depth of twelve feet and other shafts were much deeper. It was a common sight to see bullock teams bogged up to the axles, sometimes twenty bullocks on one wagon.
A team of four bullocks came in one day with a wagon with caterpillar wheels, the first to come to Wonthaggi. I remember the old teamsters looking at it and making a joke of it. They said, "He will never get out". So, he loaded up six tons of coal and went out without any trouble and laid his own road as he went. I can still see the look of the faces of the old bullock drivers. They could not believe it.
Jim Glover, was a founder of the Wonthaggi Historical Society and the father of Jill Miles, the current senior vice-president of the society. Jill recently found this fragment of memories amongst her father's papers. We think the man who wrote or told the story is Mr Cain, because we think Cain's was the first butcher shop on the coalfields. It is written in the vernacular of the day and gives us a sense of actually being in the past listening to a man tell a story.
E. B. Cain, the butcher: Did he write this charming memoir of life in the first days of Wonthaggi?
This essay was first published in The Plod, the newsletter of the Wonthaggi Historical Society.
Then the tractor came in and carted to Inverloch before the Railway came. A coastal boat named Ripple took the coal to Melbourne. The wind was very strong and several vessels were wrecked around Cape Paterson as the coast there was very rough. Also it was very dangerous for fishing off the rocks. Several lives have been lost there.
At that time, no one knew where the town was to be so we all had our own ideas. You would buy a block anywhere thinking you were right. I bought some in Hicksborough, but I was wrong.
I opened a butcher's shop in a tent after forty men arrived from some gold mining centre. They came to San Remo and had to come by coaches to Wonthaggi as there was no railway yet built. The early settlers had a bad time of it as most of the land was very poor except for a little on the Powlett River. The Mail Coach used to run from San Remo to Inverloch. These forty men arrived thinking there was a store or something for food and there was nothing at all.
I bought ten sheep from a local man and killed four of them to feed the men and I had no block so I chopped the sheep up on a big log. Then I had to get a shop built.
The next man to start a shop was Mr Jack Reynolds, a grocer from Moorabbin. As men arrived the government gave them each a tent and the carpenters had to make frames for them and it was all formed in the streets just like a city. I have seen new arrivals go and get a frame for their tent and then they had to go to the depot for the tent. By the time they came back their frame had gone further up the street.
Our first Barber was a little Scotchman, but he had no shop. He did business in his tent. He had no chair so he lay his customers on his bed and shaved them for 6d. Now you pay 3/- and 4/6 for a haircut, which was 1/- then. When the first beer licence was granted, you could buy less than two gallons at a time. The owner used to run around in a four-wheeled buggy and deliver to the tents jars of beer holding two gallons. He called regularly and took the empty ones away, leaving full ones so the men were quite happy and contented. He called his wagon The Blue Pig and as an advertisement, he painted it blue and drove it with a blue harness. He also wore a blue hat and blue boots. He did well until more licences were granted.
The first restaurant opened next to me in a big canvas building. For a while they cooked everything outside in an oven built into the ground and were kept busy as more men kept arriving every day.
I saw the first funeral, which was a little girl [named Joy Brown] and the men carried her to the cemetery and everyone marched behind.
When the railway was being built, things got very busy after the site for the new town was selected by the government. We all got notice to move from the tents into town. There was a wild rush to buy blocks for shop sites and dwellings. It was equal to a gold rush. Some blocks were sold at high prices. Then the fun commenced as teams tried to cart in timber for buildings. The whole place was just a big bog of mud and water.
One enterprising man had built a big tin place when we were still in the tents. Underneath was a dance room and upstairs was beds for men. Just a ladder up the wall like a stable, but he was kept busy. When we received notice to move, he moved two feet per day with a 'forest devil'. There were plenty of trees and stumps to hook onto. He had the authorities beaten until he was ready.
The first Club on the new town site was a big Marquee, which was started by two brothers named Smith and the first billiard table was carted there by bullock team. The canvas building was used also as a stadium and some very good fights took place there.
Many houses were moved onto the house blocks in Wonthaggi from Outtrim as it was in decline, also from Jumbunna. Many miners moved their homes with bullock teams after they got work in Wonthaggi.
So before the railway was built to get to Wonthaggi from Melbourne, you got a train to Stony Point and then took a boat to San Remo then went by coach for twelve miles through Kilcunda and Dalyston. Dalyston was named after a few families (early settlers) named Daly and when Wonthaggi opened it made the place very valuable and the old settlers did well, as there was a good demand for mutton, lamb, beef and vegetables of all kinds and fruit, which did well there, too. So the pioneers and their families got a good turn up.
Well, I hope some of my old friends happen to read this and I would be very pleased to meet any of them if they are in Melbourne or I would like a letter from any of my old friends.
We do not know when the man who opened the first shop in Wonthaggi wrote this or if his friends ever read it. We hope they did and that they sent him some letters thanking him for the memories.
Business side of Collins Street, Powlett Camp (Wonthaggi). Photo taken May 1910; Tent Town was abolished in June of that year.
From billy carting to tobogganing, steep slopes were a source of pleasure for the kids in Kit Sleeman's neighbourhood.
The joys of gravity
Billy cart kid: David Read, 1966. Photo: Lake Macquarie City Library
By Kit Sleeman
ROSE Lodge Nursing Home rests on a low, inconspicuous hill on the south side of Graham Street, Wonthaggi's main street. It is strange how this hill has apparently shrunk since my childhood.
The hill used to be a precipitous mountainside covered by a wild pine forest and undergrowth. It was home to snakes, rabbits, foxes and who knows what else? There were also human inhabitants: wild warring tribes of kids who occupied forts spread though the forest. The forts were subterranean, terrestrial or arboreal and represented strong points in jealously guarded territories carved out by continuous tribal warfare and raids. It was advisable to keep up with current affairs and have a mental map of current tribal boundaries and treaty shifts when visiting the forest. Being armed was also sensible.
The south of this forest was bounded by the road to the rifle range. There was another road down the east boundary and a fence between the forest and the hospital grounds to the west. To the north, across Graham Street where Guide Park now lies, the pine forest continued, denser and wilder in swampy ground there. Most probably, a Bulliphant may have lived there since there were adjacent old mine workings to take refuge in. That part of the forest was quite spooky.
Through the middle of this forest and down the steep hill ran a dirt track. The soil underneath the forest was sandy loam and if people wanted such material to mitigate the clay in their veggie patch soil, this was where they came to get it. There were little excavations and holes all over the hill.
The steepness and length of the track made it an ideal billy cart run. The surrounding trees and the obstacles of holes and tree roots, not to mention passing snakes, made it ideal from a skills point of view. Only a skilled billy cart driver could get all the way down the track without a wipe-out and possible injury. Carts would crash into trees, become airborne, flip over, or disappear off track into the undergrowth or down a hole. Many cuts and bruises and occasional broken bones were the outcome. It was a perfect course.
Then, billy cart construction was a right of passage: every boy built and drove one. There was no financial cost involved: old pram wheels and wood could be found at the rubbish dump and the only extras needed were some rope and some nails from any Dad's shed. Cart design was flexible and allowed one's originality to show.
There was only one real bone of contention between rival design and construction teams: should a billy-cart have brakes? There were both yes and no supporters, but the overall consensus was that you're probably a woosy if you drive a cart with brakes: Gravity should be free to do its stuff.
My brother Jon and I built a billy-cart. He was the budding engineer, so he did most of the building, but I scrounged for stuff to build it with as well as he did. As the older brother, he was going to get first dibs on its use, so his doing most of the work was only fair.
Jon had first goes from part-way up the hill and had a few write-offs, but none were serious. I had similar experiences. We then tried from further up the hill and had even better write-offs. There was no shame in crashing: it was your reaction that was under the microscope. Sometimes, you had the hill to yourself, but at other times groups would take turns and scrutinise each other's technique and courage. It was not billy-cart racing, but an exhibition event. How you reacted to the inevitable crash was the important thing. Being carried away battered, bruised and bleeding was not a problem, but under no circumstances were tears allowed.
Eventually we pretty much mastered billy-carting down the hill and gave it away. I still found the hill an attraction, though, and used to ride my bike down it sometimes. I reached some pretty good speeds, so control was tricky. It was a bit like today's mountain bike racing except with bikes not designed for the job.
There were other challenging places with steep grades that enticed us. Mine waste dumps were tantalising. They were there, and they were steep sided. So what can we do about this? The answer was corrugated iron. Tobogganing down mine dumps on sheets of iron was a popular activity among the boys. There was always waste iron around near the dump, so it was a no-brainer.
There were a few risks associated with this activity. Most of the mine dumps are rocky. A high-speed wipeout is painful. The dumps are not pristine: partly buried timber and metal can impale or slash you. If you're tobogganing on a dump that is still live and burning, you might also get burned.
Further risk was associated with the location of the dump. In many cases formation of the dump disrupted local drainage so a swamp developed at the base. East area was a good example of this: they were very good toboggan dumps, but your ride path left you waist deep in a swamp at the bottom. As always, the swamps crawled with snakes. Despite the risk, many tried it and I did not hear of any injuries worse than could be fixed with a few stitches.
Near Wonthaggi there are also steep sand dunes at the beaches. Some of the tallest and steepest, due west of the town, no longer exist. Too much foot traffic over them for many years killed the plants, so the dunes were eroded by the ever-present wind. But there were still some steep dunes left. These also got the iron sheet toboggan treatment. Surfboards were also used as toboggans on the dunes.
Sand dunes may seem a safer prospect for tobogganing than mine dumps, but they also held some dangers. As the wind reshapes the dune, the sand moves, repeatedly covering then exposing shrubbery. The shrubs die when buried and then, when exposed, the wood is sculpted by wind-borne sand into sharp spears. These are buried again and can impale people who fall onto them from their toboggan. But it was still great fun to fly down the face of the dune.
Gravity was a fun plaything.
The coast dwellers
By Frank Coldebella
THE mounds of shells dotted along the Bass Coast are evidence that these have been relaxing and bountiful gathering places for millennia. On meeting Australia's original coast campers, Captain Cook noted "They live in a tranquillity … and are far more happier than we Europeans … They think themselves provided with all the necessarys of life … they seemed to set no value upon anything we gave them."
During the Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, many single men were forced to leave home to look for work or food. They camped wherever they could, including along the coast. One such was Jim McDonnell, who was still living in a hut on the coast between Harmers and Cape in the mid-1970s, preferring a moderate and harmonious life away from the noise, competition and trivia of town, attuned to nature's positives.
Jim was born in Outtrim and moved with his family to Hunter Street Wonthaggi in its early days. Like most soldiers, he came home after the Second World War to a world that was much changed from the one he had left. His brother Wally had died in action. Many returned soldiers, loaded with grief and stress, sought out quiet places away from people and the echoes of war. When Jim's girlfriend was killed in a car crash, he moved back to his hut at the beach.
Jim had a succession of dogs called Pluto. Photo taken near Jim's hut, 1980s.
His hut was in a well-chosen spot. It fitted snugly with a minimum of disturbance into a north-facing gully like a concealed bird's nest, sheltered from the cold ocean wind by tea tree and banksias. On the edge of country where farmland, swamp, bush, creek and marine ecosystems meet, a short walk from what was then a very rough dead-end track called the Old Boiler Road, his hut evolved as materials became available or arrived by sea. He kept chooks, a small garden and a series of dogs, all called Pluto.
Jim's mates came to stay and, when the weather was good, families camped nearby. There was a strong presence of union clans camped along this part of the coast, including the Cutlers, the Harmers, the McKells, the Norrises, the Longstaffs, the Bells, the Fosters and the Wilsons. Their inquiring and well-ordered minds were open to learning and ideas. Few believed in a god but they accepted any plain impious stranger as a potential mate. After working at the coalface in fumes and dust, they reckoned the sunlit colours, sounds and sea air were paradise enough. The waves washed away the coal dust and town stress. Perhaps a regular leisured pilgrimage to the beach was the original inspiration for baptism.
At a time when competition, gambling, alcohol and religion dominated town culture, the coast had its own priorities and rhythms influenced by weather, tide, winds, moon and season. There was a freedom from need in getting by with less. Fishing and coalmining both allow the brain to explore ideas and bring things up from the deep. Success lay in careful observation then doing the right thing. Coincidentally the earliest writers of the then revolutionary religion Christianity were also said to be fishermen.
Tom Gill was a teenager in the 1950s when he fell out with his father and headed for the beach with a tent. When the dark curtains of winter closed in, he moved in with Jim McDonnell. Both were cultural expatriates from beer, competition, conflict, TV and consumerism.
Jim worked at Kirrak mine and then for the railways doing track maintenance between Dalyston and Woolamai. He rode everywhere on a one-speed bike with upturned curly handlebars. We would see it parked outside his sister May's place at 58 McBride Avenue, and he would wave when he passed us on his way to the beach.
Tom also rode a bicycle to work. His first job was at the mine, then he left to work on the night shift at the cotton mills as it allowed more time for fishing and other interests.
Over the decades Jim had acquired a thorough understanding of the seasonal ebb and flow of marine life as well as an intimate knowledge of concealed fish holes and submerged ledges between Wilsons Road and Cutlers beach. On a high tide, with no moon and little swell, they used a miner's pit lamp and net to catch garfish, feeling with a toe near the rock edges lest they end up in the deep.
The combination of changes in seaweed, salt odours, avian activities and flowers hinted at the change of seasonal activity. After the spring tides when there was a midnight high tide they would set lines at low tide for gummy sharks and check them next morning. They caught crayfish with a hand line and net using a fish head or piece of abalone for bait. Surplus crays and fish could be exchanged for milk and other produce with the Cardamone family on Wilsons Road. For the calm days, Jim had built a fishing boat from wood collected on the beach.
With a few chooks, vegies, wild ducks and mountain trout in the nearby creek, they ate well from both land and sea. A cellar dug into the cliff face kept food cool. Beehives in fish boxes and hollow winter-flowering banksias provided abundant honey.
One of Jim's mates who worked at Cottee's jam factory in Melbourne would bring heaps of jam. "We couldn't eat it all," says Tom. "I'm sure there is still some buried out there."
The hut was seven feet by 14 feet (2.1 metres by 4.2 metres). There were bees in the wall and a ship's hatch served as a window shutter. After winter storms exposed the coal seam at the base of the cliff, they would dig the coal, bag it and cart it home. There was about four ton of coal stacked near the hut. They burnt half coal and half melaleuca roots.
Fox skins were nailed on the door to dry. They checked about 100 rabbit traps morning and night. Every month they sent a chaff bag of dried flattened fox and rabbit skins to Younghusbands, the skin merchants in Melbourne. "At times our living expenses were ten bob a week."
Jim combed the ocean beaches wearing sand shoes tied with string. It was the days before shipping containers so "a big blow" could bring treasure. His "yard" was a miracle of supply, with masts, rigging, rope, beams, numerous planks, crates, floats, fishing gear, nautilus shells. On one timely occasion some good roofing iron washed up attached to part of a roof.
While the track was impassable over the wet months, Jim and Tom left their bikes at the Boyds' place on Wilsons Road and trekked across the paddocks. For Jim, this was a "leisurely stroll" after his wartime treks in the New Guinea heat. He was weathered, wiry and still energetic, a survivor of depression, war and lost love. He spent most of his time outdoors.
Winters were hard but also a time of remote stillness that, with an adjusted outlook, could be cosy and enlightening. Days passed immersed in reflective routine, chores were done and things understood with few words. By meditative firelight and ocean churn, winter melancholy could produce insights, the clutter of life's experience could be evaluated and understood. All the hut owners between the river and Eagles Nest had a humble shyness. An ecology of mind helped them to fit in, figure out, make do, and adapt to changing circumstances.
Surrounded by the beauty and power of nature, Jim was comfortable with what others would consider a hard life. He reminded me of a line from a poem called The Miller of the Dee in our primary school reader: "I envy no man and no man envies me." I think of Jim when I hear the song Simple Ben. There is virtue in an unadorned life that gets its serenity from moderation and the capacity to be contented with little.
The last time I spoke to Jim was at Cutlers Rocks summer 75-76 he was slowing down but spoke of recovering some bricks from the wreck of the Artisan out at Harmers Haven. I don't know if he ever did.
Fifty years later, Tom Gill recalled his years of living in a hut on the coast as "the best time of my life".
After a few years in the hut, Tom had saved enough to buy a Triumph motorbike and a block on newly opened Viminaria Road in Harmers Haven, between Jock McLeod and Eddie Harmer. Eventually he moved back to Wonthaggi. But like many who have spent long, golden, carefree days at the coast during their teenage years, Tom's experiences and insights from those years loomed large in his memory.
Fifty odd years later, sitting in his mansion in an upmarket neighbourhood, Tom told me, with a quavering voice, "It was the best time of my life."
Gippsland's hall of fame
By Geoff Ellis
LAST month members of the Bass Coast South Gippsland Reconciliation Group stood in the Sale Entertainment Centre trying to make sense of the motto on a crest. "MISERIS SUCCURRERE DISCO".
It's in the detail of one of six plaques by Annemieke Mein commemorating famous Gippslanders. This plaque was the last item on our itinerary; the final monument to honour Angus McMillan.
A quick google solves one mystery. The motto can be translated as "I learn to care for the unfortunate". A slow stare reveals the message that Mein cast into the bronze: the saddle pack reveals the outline of human skulls that whisper the truth of what happened to Gippsland's Gunai-Kurnai people.
THERE are two memorial cairns in Corinella. One reminds us of the failed attempt at British settlement in 1826. The other informs us of Count Paul Strzelecki's 1840 journey through an area inhabited for thousands of years.
Well before the Count's party stumbled through, Samuel Anderson had made a number of exploratory journeys to the Tarwin River and Anderson's Inlet. Why would a day in 1840 warrant such a marker?
In the mid-1920s the self-appointed Victorian Historical Memorials Committee decided to glorify Angus McMillan and Paul de Strzelecki with a chain of historical cairns across Gippsland. According to historian Tom Griffiths, "The cairns were intended to define a local geography bound to the colonial era."
The committee believed that the landscape lacked markers of the past. Simultaneously, some of its members were stripping the country of Aboriginal stone objects They wanted to direct historical thought toward events they believed had shaped modern Australia (Griffiths: Hunters and Collectors).
The Melbourne-based committee directed the design and placement of the cairns and asked local groups for financial and organisational support. The committee also co-opted local enthusiasts: a local businessman, Mr J.T. Knox, built the Leongatha cairn with concrete blocks from his own quarry.
Enthusiasm for the cairns was not universal. Initially residents of Sale were indifferent. The Maffra Shire council supported the committee though the people of Maffra preferred to spend the money on public seating.
In some places locals took over the design process. The Mirboo North effort sprouted electric globes. The Corinella cairn, dedicated to Strzelecki, was amended to recognise an indigenous man, Tarra, who had saved Strzelecki and his men from starvation. The Tarra River, Tarraville and the Tarra Valley were all named for him.
In April 1927, the committee and the Governor, Lord Somers, toured Gippsland to unveil the cairns. This provided a platform for Somers to lecture on imperial loyalty. He called on Victorians to acknowledge a debt to explorers who had "won" the country for the present-day inhabitants. Committee member Barrett and Governor Somers argued that McMillan was not an Australian bushman but a Scot, and therefore the link between modern Australia and Britain.
A jingoistic letter to the Argus newspaper in 1927 concluded "The pioneering spirit is necessary today … they possess it who feel impelled to uproot their lives and grasp the opportunities held out by the development of Australia. They have a title to her citizenship which makes an impertinence the thought of restricting their ambitions."
"The general public are naturally forgetful, and uncontrolled memory cannot be trusted."
Kirk Savage, The Politics of Memory: Black Emancipation and the Civil War Monument
Memorial cairn to Angus McMillan unveiled under a Union Jack, Sale, April 1927. Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
"A memorial is a buffer against the tide of history sweeping away memories of certain figures or events."
Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire (1989)
Our founding, murdering father: July 16, 2016 - Scottish writer Cal Flyn confronted the truth of her ancestor Angus McMillan, a revered pioneer who perpetrated the slaughter of Gippsland's Indigenous people.
Nola Thorpe road tests a new digital walking tour of Wonthaggi.
Walk this way
By Nola Thorpe
LATE last year the Wonthagi library received funding to make a digital walking tour of Wonthaggi.
The Wonthaggi Historical Society became involved and members spent many hours working with Mick Green from Drift Media filming and recording information about historical sites around the town:
The Air Observer site, at the top end of Wishart Reserve
The Post Office & Telephone Exchange, in Watt Street
Ludbrooks Corner, at the corner of Graham Street and McBride Avenue
The view south along McBride Avenue
The Old Bank & Moyles Building, on the corner of McBride Avenue and Murray Street.
The Whalebone (Taberner's Hotel), on the corner of McBride Avenue and Murray Street
Wonthaggi Railway Station, in Murray Street
To access the tour with your smartphone, iPad or tablet, download the Geo Tours app from Google Play or the app store, search for Wonthaggi Digital History and save it to My Tours.
Head out to the location and load in the GEO TOUR App as you walk around. When you get close to the location you can enjoy a YouTube video made by members of the Historical Society.
We plan to do another walking tour later this year.
Wonthaggi Railway Station
The Post Office & Telephone Exchange
Ludbrooks Corner
The Old Bank & Moyles Building
The Whalebone (Taberner's Hotel)
By Terri Allen
WONTHAGGI has changed. There can be no better measure than to look at the average yard. Today's new estates have smaller blocks with McMansions, narrower nature strips and roads, pocket-handkerchief yards that are concreted, pebbled and yucca-ed. Evidence of children is usually a jumble of lurid plastic toys and the netted trampoline.
What of the old quarter-acre block? Many are subdivided into two or three units. Cars abound on nature strips and lawns. There is little pride in gardening; kikuyu and blackberries are rife. Just walk down the back lanes to see flapping tin fences, piles of grass clippings, rubbish, dead cars, clogged drains.
Compare this with the house blocks of the `40s, `50s, `60s. There was an expanse of lawn with a clothesline, prolific vegetable gardens, fruit trees (remembering the miner's lifeline during strikes – have a well-stocked larder, vegetable garden, fruit trees, chooks, access to a cow, skills to acquire rabbits, fish, mushrooms, blackberries), a coal heap, a wood stack, a donkey boiler for hot water, a separate wash house (at first with copper and troughs), a toolshed/garage, and shady trees. Admittedly there were open drains, a pan toilet on the lane and red-metal roads, but there was a close community and plenty of room to play. The mine whistle dominated life, signalling when to rise, get ready for school or lunch, and come in at night.
Ours was a typical quarter-acre block on an unmade road with a back lane for the nightcart man to access the dunny (beautifully draped with Dolichos pea). The chooks and ducks resided at the back, the dog midway. A huge boobialla gave privacy and shade and was great to climb. In the wooden garage and its lean-to, children could create wooden models, including billy-carts. The coal heap was under the remnant messmate, from which the swing hung, the wood shed next door. The side fence still had scrub sheoak and swamp tea-tree along its length. Pride of place was given to the rotary clothesline, a replacement for the old prop clothes-line.
Peter Allen is ready for action with bat and ball in the Allen family backyard.
Leonie Allen, aged six, 1959
Leonie with a kangaroo tail (grasstree flower)
Our front yard harboured the house, detached wash-house, shed for the donkey boiler, sheltered verandah, neat flower beds, the whole securely fenced. Trees provided shade and shelter. The front door was for strangers; everyone else came into the house via the back door and porch; here the breadman collected the tokens, Dommy Dobson came for the co-op order, wet and muddy shoes and coats were deposited, schoolbags were stored, and boots and shoes polished every day.
The yard provided endless scope for games, balanced walking along the front fence, ball games using the fence as the "net", skating on pieces of watermelon skin on the concrete paths, running through the sprinkler, swinging on the rotary clothes line, climbing trees, building cubbies and shops, collecting insects, hidey, chasey, shangeye practice, jam-tin telephones, stilt-walking, marbles, hopscotch, rounders, cricket (over the fence was six and out).
The local environs were an extension of the yard, common ground on which to mix with the neighbourhood children. We had a sandhill, claypits, vacant blocks, bush, a common, drains, footpaths. Our open drains were a source of pleasure: skating over the icy bridges in winter, hiding in the culverts, floating toy boats , tadpoling. Many of these gutters were thickly fringed with swamp paperbark, so sticks for huts were plentiful. Forced to drag little brother along? Penetrate the scrub, jump the gutter, through more scrub – oh bother, he forgot to jump, fell in again! Oh well, there he goes off home, bawling. Can't seem to get the gift of gutter-jumping!
A nearby hill provided tracks for chasey and trip wires, sandy patches for cooking bandicooted spuds. A vacant block was perfect for building a communal bonfire. The Saturday arvo flicks fuelled our imagination for games: cops and robbers, pirates, cowboys and Indians, outer space adventure. Cricket and footy were played on the streets or the "flat" (now oval); here, too, we flew kites.
The neighbour kids played and squabbled, brokered deals, swapped comics and swap-cards, shared games and play-things, combined to build and make toys (billycarts, kites, swords, stilts, bows and arrows). They improved their social and communication skills, learned teamwork, knew their community and environment intimately, shared ideas, practised being leader and follower, traded treasures and looked after each other.
Their horizons expanded to include new ventures further from home: blackberrying, mushrooming, fishing, rabbiting, trekking to the beach, visiting new patches of bush.
Those were the days. And those were the yards.
I greatly enjoyed Terri Allen's descriptions of backyards past. I well recall the layouts, games and freedoms she writes of. Every back yard was the same but different. I remember that each of the yards I visited or played in had some special attraction that made it special in some way.
I loved one grandmother's yard because of the jungle of bamboo in one corner, perfect for playing all sorts of games in. My other grandmother had a large overgrown aloe garden patch that housed the most wonderful colony of jackie lizards, a great attraction for little boys.
Other yards had different pleasures and attractions but they were all wonderful.
A very enjoyable story and stirring of memories.
Watery wonderland
Baxters wetland, part of Wonthaggi's extensive drainage system
THE township of Wonthaggi is built mainly on a hill. To be precise, a hill of Jurassic rock intruded through the surrounding younger, coal-bearing Cretaceous sedimentary rock formations. Whether planned or serendipitous, it meant that there was no coal under the town and hence no undermining, which is a good outcome. Although the coast is only a few kilometres to the south, most of the town's stormwater drainage is to the north and west, that is, toward the Powlett River basin. Our house was on the north-west corner of the township proper and much of the storm-water collected all over town passed by our house.
Sometimes there were some interesting results. Storm-water drains became a playground.
On the north, front side of the house in the nature strip was a standard nature strip concrete drain that serviced the eight houses of our block. As is usually the case with such drains, it was dry except after rain. Running through the nature strip on the west side was a secondary concrete main from the south of the town. This drain always had water and we used it for leaf boat races. It disappeared under Murray Street through a culvert to the concrete main drain across the road after also connecting with the front drain before the culvert.
The main drain, which passed by about 25 metres from our front gate, was a metre or more wide and deep and U-shaped in cross section. It always had water in it. There was also an unlined drain or drainage trench, which ran through the paddock to the west of the house and connected to the main drain as well. It was always water filled, slow moving and because it was unlined had lots of vegetation and beasties living in it. Just beside this trench was a 'cave-in'. This was where the roof above shallow coal mine workings had collapsed. Eventually this collapse eroded into a crater about fifty meters in diameter and about twenty meters deep. The old tunnel workings were exposed and retired miners would sometimes illegally enter to help themselves to a free supply of coal.
After passing our place, the main drain continued on for about a kilometre before emptying into a wetland swamp near the South Dudley rail yards. There were great beds of bull-rushes and reeds bordering the wetland and it was a permanent home and breeding ground for many swans, ducks, water-hens, grebes and all sorts of smaller birds as well as hawks and other hunters. Beside the main drain was a row of tall gum trees with an undergrowth of broom and other noxious weeds: a perfect place for playing cowboys and Indians or similar games. During these games, the drain served as a concealed pathway for sneaking up on enemies.
At one time or other every member of the household fell into the drain. I was first cab off the rank. One wet winter's day in my preschool years I went for a ride on my tricycle to Graham Street and then toward the shopping centre. A large secondary drain flowed along the west boundary of the primary school grounds and met the main drain after passing under Murray Street. There was a barrier along the footpath above the drain to stop pedestrians falling in. I parked my trike and went to watch the raging storm water rush by under the path. I was hanging onto the barrier rails and kicking clods from the gravel path into the torrent when I slipped, lost my grip and disappeared under the barrier and into the water below.
I was only a little bloke at the time and the drain was in flood. I don't know how I managed to scramble out, but obviously I did. I jumped on my trusty trike and made for home. Mum heard me long before I got home because I was howling loudly as I rode along. She came out and found me to be a strange spectacle: anguished and traumatised, soaking wet and dripping with green algal slime. There were certain limits imposed on solo tricycle rides after that.
One of Dad's "hobbies" was collecting firewood. If he found a fallen branch when we were out walking, he would drag it home. On a couple of occasions when trying to cross the main drain with his booty, he somehow managed to get entangled with his branch and finish up face first in the drain. Mum also came undone a couple of times when she misjudged her take-off or landing: the drain was just a little too wide for confidence in safe clearance.
Visitor's cars were parked at the rear of our back yard and the ground became cut up and muddy. My brother, the budding engineer, came up with an engineering solution to the problem: we should put down gravel. He also solved the supply problem: we would use free gravel. Apart from relatively few asphalt main roads, Wonthaggi's roads at the time were surfaced with 'red-stone' otherwise known as 'burnt-stone'. The waste dumps from the coal mines contained mainly mudstone, but also splint, which is mudstone with a high carboniferous content, and also coal. There was also wood waste and oily waste mixed in. Eventually, the combustible material self-combusts and the whole mountain of waste slowly smoulders. To walk on a waste dump in this condition is like walking on a volcano: smoke oozes from the ground, there are hot-spots with embers and flame and there is a sulphurous stench. In fact crystals of pure sulphur can be seen growing at the edges of vents emitting smoke.
The heat from this combustion roasts the mudstone in much the same way as clay is roasted in kilns to make bricks. And the result is much the same: mudstone is grey and relatively soft, but after burning it is brick-hard and brick-red. So the waste dumps were allowed to burn for a few decades and were then quarried and crushed to suitable pebble size for use in road surfacing.
Over time road traffic breaks down the pebbles into smaller and smaller sized gravel which gets eroded by rain and finishes up in the drain. Opposite our place the drain was half full of this fine gravel deposit. So Jon's brilliant solution to the parking issue was to harvest this and spread it on the back yard. Jon and I got a wheelbarrow and shovels and set to work. He did most of the work: if you convinced him that a task was a mining activity, Jon became fanatically enthusiastic, and this was clearly gravel-mining.
All went well until the barrow was almost full, when it became unsteady and began to tip. Now, I was quite content to let it tip and start harvesting again from scratch. But Jon was not. He jumped up out of the drain to steady the barrow – he was now between the barrow and the drain. A barrow full of wet gravel is very heavy, so he had no hope, which is why I was happy to let it tip. With an anguished cry he disappeared into the drain with a load of wet gravel and a barrow on top of him. He had to extricate himself because I was too busy laughing.
Jon sometimes had a very bad temper and this was one of those times.
In the paddock trench, as well as worm colonies, there were usually lots of frogs and tadpoles, floating duckweed and other water plants with a healthy population of water snails. Herons and egrets showed much interest in this drain and were regular hunters there. Though I never saw them, larger water creatures lived in the terminal ends of the stormwater drains and the wetlands they emptied into. A Dutchman lived in town for some time and made his living by trapping eels that he subsequently smoked and then sold somewhere (other than in Wonthaggi). It was rumoured that he exported them back to Holland.
Wonthaggi had a very wet climate. The precipitation was often drizzle, mist and light rain. But at times there was heavy rain, and there were occasional storm fronts that delivered huge amounts of rain. When this happened, the inflow of storm water exceeded drain capacity and we got floods. When large volumes of water came rushing down the main drain, it was like the Mekong River at Siem Reap in Cambodia: its water pressure forced all of the feeder drains to back up and flow backwards like Lake Tonle Sap. All of the land around our house became that lake. The water never entered the house because it was raised above the foundations, but there were times when the house was marooned in water a foot or so deep. I used to find this very interesting and liked splashing around in my gum boots.
Even more interesting was when the paddock trench flooded. It would break its banks and the whole paddock would flood, and the water would then drain away by emptying into the old mine cave-in. When this happened, we had our own waterfall about 20 meters high from the paddock level to where the water disappeared underground into the old mine workings.
The main drain would sometimes break its bank as well, and there would be a second waterfall from the other edge of the cave-in. It was quite fascinating and I puzzled about where the water went to: huge volumes disappeared into the mine – where did it go after that? At times like this when the drains were in flood, the ultimate drain for the Wonthaggi region, the Powlett River, would also flood large acreages of land between Wonthaggi and Dalyston. If the flood was heavy, the floodwaters would cut the road northwards out of town and prevent any traffic getting through. This would cause much happiness amongst school kids from Phillip Island and mainland locations across the Powlett because it meant the school bus couldn't get through, so they would get a holiday.
And that is the story of Wonthaggi's drains.
Night-time visitors
By Kit Sleeman
MY VERY earliest childhood memory involves an illness when I was about three. I had a very high fever, which caused hallucinations. Symptoms of this kind were not to be sneezed at, given the times. It was still the age of polio epidemics. Jonas Salk invented his polio vaccine the year I was born, but it was not until I was about six or seven that the threat of polio had receded. Kids with leg braces, who had survived polio, were not an uncommon sight. "You'll get locked up in an iron lung", was used as a threat for misdemeanours like not washing hands.
I don't remember the treatment or unpleasantness of my illness, but even now, the memory of the hallucination is quite clear. It was my behaviour during the hallucination that convinced Mum and Dad to take me to the hospital in the middle of the night. They said that I appeared to be not of this world during the event.
I spent a few days in hospital and do not know what the illness was, but given the symptoms and duration, it was probably something like viral meningitis, which can be caused by a bug related to polio. I survived that illness, but for several years I periodically had a recurring nightmare. It commenced like a migraine attack with changing patterns of light. From there it progressed to a surreal sort of landscape with geometric shapes that became rooms where the walls were not of fixed dimensions and kept changing. Either I was trapped inside and was unable to find a way out, or there was a malignant presence, never fully seen, outside and trying to get in.
In fact, Santa seemed to be so comfortable wandering around my house that he usually had time to scoff some food, drink a beer and write some poetry. If they could get in, then why could the bogeyman and his mates not? I was also puzzled by some food items that appeared daily during the night without apparent human intervention.
How did they appear if no-one came into the house at night? Each night Mum would put a large empty billycan on the kitchen table. Each morning when I got up, I would find that it had been magically filled with milk during the night. Not only that, but next to the billycan would be a loaf of fresh bread, sometimes so fresh that it was still warm and fragrant.
How did that happen without visitations? I made enquiries and got mumbled responses about milkmen and breadmen who came while it was still dark. Great. I'm supposed to feel safe and cosy in my bed because bogeymen can't get into the house, but tooth-fairies, Santas, milkmen and breadmen wander in at will.
I decided to investigate further. As the days got warmer and lighter and we moved toward summer, I tried to wake up earlier and earlier. Dad usually got up first; because one of his jobs was to light the kitchen stove so Mum could cook breakfast when she got up a bit later. I joined Dad on the early watch. One day I got up very early and my puzzle was solved. Dad hadn't even started to light the fire yet. Instead he was sitting at the table with a little old man with a wizened, sunburnt face and bald head, smoking cigarettes and talking quietly.
Each morning, a loaf of fresh bread appeared as if by magic on the kitchen table, sometimes so fresh that it was still warm and fragrant.
The meat delivery
Dad introduced me to Welshie, the milkman: I now knew what a milkman looked like. Not only that, I found out where our milk came from – he had not yet made his delivery. When he finished his smoke, he positioned our billycan on the floor and filled it from a big milk can that he had with him, and then put it back on the table. Then off he went with his can to the horse and dray waiting for him at our back gate, loaded with similar cans.
A little while later, a second horse, with a covered van this time, pulled up and our bread was delivered by another man, the breadman, whose name I've forgotten. The mystery of the magic food appearance and night-time visitors was solved.
There was another night-time visitor, but he only came once a week and only as far as the back fence. We did our best to keep out of his way and there was very little mystery about him, because he could be smelled well before he came into sight. He was the 'dunny man', the man who removed full lavatory pans and replaced them with empty ones.
There were also some regular day visitors. When I was small, we did not have a fridge, but an ice-box which needed regular resupply with ice. Along would come another horse and dray, this time loaded with big rectangular blocks of ice, which seemed to be almost as big as me. The iceman would grab one of these with a special pair of large tongs, sling it over his shoulder which was protected by a hessian bag, bring it to the ice chest and reload it.
Our groceries were also delivered by horse and dray. This time the visitor was the driver, Dabba Taffe. If I happened to be walking along the street when Dabba went past, he would stop and pick me up. I'd then ride on the dray amongst all of the groceries. I used to like that very much. Dabba did not even have to direct the horse – he would just slowly plod along until Dabba stopped him to make a delivery.
There never used to be any locked house doors, so it's just as well that the bogeyman did not call. Doors were left open so delivery people could get in. Their money would be waiting for them on the kitchen table, with a note if there were any changes of order to be made.
Last, but certainly not least, was the coal man. One of the benefits of being a State Coal Mine employee was a regular coal delivery. Mister Spunner would roll up every month or so in a battered green tip truck, back into the back yard and drop off a couple of tons of coal which we used for heating, cooking and hot water generation.
It may have been mainly horses and carts, but it was a better level of service than today.
Moyle's delivery cart
Excerpts from a letter and diary written by two young men who joined up in 1915 for the Great War that was to end all wars.
'My Dear Dad'
By Carolyn Landon
ANZAC Day 2016 marks the second year in the continuing commemoration of the Great War that was to end all wars. Here are excerpts from a letter and diary written by boys who joined up in 1915. Neither of them made it home.
The first is a letter written on February 21, 1915 by Private George Wyeth, older brother of Calvert Wyeth, who eventually owned Pine Lodge in Inverloch.
D troop, Light Horse Depot, Broadmeadows
My Dear Dad,
As you can see by this fancy address, I am at last in the collar and on the way to becoming an efficient soldier of the King. I passed my medical exam flying and after a wait of four days and a lot of red tapism, I was sworn in at the depot South Melb (by the way, that took a whole day to perform) and was drafted with 150 more to Broadmeadows on Wednesday evening last. I soon settled down to camp life. The tucker is hard but very good. The menu runs like this – everyday Breakfast is Bulli Beef, Dinner is Stew, Tea is Bread and Jam. There is plenty of it and, as I said before, it is good.
For tent mates I have the best fellows in the squadron. There are three bank fellows, a "private means" man, my pal that used to work with me at Moores, a soft-goods man and two "mother's boys", who are shaking down to the life first class, I can safely say that we are the happiest family in the squadron.
Studio portrait of 498 Lance Corporal George Melbourne Wyeth, 22nd Battalion from Albert Park, Victoria. A 25 year old bookkeeper prior to enlisting in the AIF on 3 February 1915, he embarked for overseas with B Company from Melbourne on 10 May 1915 aboard HMAT Ulysses. While serving at Gallipoli, he was promoted to Lance Corporal on 18 June 1915. Later on the Western Front, he was wounded in action on 22 June 1916 near Bois Grenier, France and died of wounds the following day. He is buried in the Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension, France. Photo: Australian War Memorial
I have just returned from drilling a troop of men today with the lieutenant along side and he told me I did very well so you can imagine I've grown about six inches since then. I am here to get on and get stripes as soon as I can if I am capable. If there is a better man than me, I don't expect to be put above him but I am going to try for stripes and if I don't succeed, it won't be for lack of trying.
The call "in tents" [has just sounded] so I have very little time to spare now. I have a lot to tell you, Dad, and would do so now if I had the time but must conform with camp regulations if I don't want some C.B. (the horror of every man in camp).
Don't write to me, Dad, until you get another letter from me and I have just got word that we are to be drafted into another squadron. As soon as I get settled, I will write to you again. Probably next mail. Hoping you are keeping well or half as well as I am, which is A1 and first class. Believe me.
Your Loving Son,
PS excuse the mistakes, Pencil and writing
The second excerpt is from the diary of Private H.I. Walker, Uncle of Dorothy Weston Warren from Inverloch, written 27 January 1916. Private Walker was killed later that year.
The last bird I heard sing was a magpie in the Broadmeadows camp. He's a good honest old bird, and I look to the time when I shall hear him in Australia again.
This evening we had a concert. 4 or 5 men had two trumpets and mouthorgans and the conductor, who had a ladle for a baton, gave some fine exhibitions of wielding the baton. Other items rendered by members of the forces were passable enough.
Ships crew gave a concert tonight. Band was dressed up. Conductor had black dress coat filled out. 2 were dressed as women. Instruments – big barrel for large drum, 2 biscuit-tin drums, a bar of steel, clarionette and megaphone. I took part in the singing. You would be surprised to hear the men sing. There are some very good voices and it's really stirring to hear the great volume of sound and watch the faces of the men as they sing the old well-known hymns – 'Nearer My God to thee', 'Stand up, Stand Up', 'Light of the World" etc.
Every night the buglers play retreat in honour of those who fell at Gallipoli. It is an impressive piece of music, which starts high and goes down, then makes an attempt to get up again and so the cadence goes on and ends in a triumphant medium key. The drums then beat three times. I can't help comparing the music to the way our men died. They got shot but others went on. The spirit in them fresh as ever and though thousands are in their graves we can still take up the triumphant spirit and hope to continue on the same way.
We call ourselves the "six bob a day Tourists".
Foraging for mushrooms was one of the great autumn pleasures, and a profitable sideline, for a young Kit Sleeman.
The joy of the hunt
I DIDN'T like eating mushrooms, but I eagerly anticipated mushroom season each year in Wonthaggi. I used to spend lots of time wandering paddocks and scrubland near our house on Murray Street and was always on the lookout for signs of the start of mushroom season. Sometimes, the start of the season would be signaled by a few mushrooms growing on our nature strip: there were a couple of patches that produced a handful of mushrooms each year. The paddock between our house and the train line was also a good barometer and produced some good crops in some years.
Mr Trelawny would pay a shilling or more for a good horse mushroom.
"We managed to convince ourselves that they were good mushrooms rather than conkers, but I felt uneasy."
As soon as these signs appeared, the next weekend would be devoted to a mushroom hunt, and off we'd go with our baskets, billies and knives. Dad would also take his whacking stick with him to deal with any snakes that crossed our path. The whacking stick was about five feet long and made of five or six strands of plaited fencing wire. Dad always carried it whenever we were out walking and dispatched many snakes with it.
Usually, our mushroom hunts were within a wedge of territory between West Area mine, Dudley mine and our place. Sometimes, though, we also hunted them in the paddocks around Kirrak or East Area mines. At that time in the late 1950s, with one notable exception, landowners didn't worry too much about people trespassing or accessing their land. I don't recall ever asking for permission from any landowner before going onto their property. Certainly we all respected things like closed gates and never caused any property damage or frightened livestock. I guess, at the time, everybody knew everybody, so it was generally no big deal.
One particular property owner near one of the mines was a different kettle of fish, however. According to the stories and urban legends of the day, this particular farmer was dangerously loony and did not like trespassers. He was said to shoot at trespassing kids with shotgun and birdshot if he spotted them.
From a distance, the farm looked a bit run down, but we knew there were some perfect mushrooming, blackberrying and rabbiting spots on the farm that were worth the risk of being shot at to access. The farm backed onto mine-owned land, so we kids could and did safely approach the farm boundary and sneak onto the forbidden farm land. This was always done with great trepidation, however.
Apart from that proscribed place, we pretty much went wherever we liked. Usually we returned to places we had previously found productive and at other times we stumbled onto new productive areas by chance.
Mushrooms are mysteriously contrary beasts. Some paddocks never produced any, some paddocks produced each year and yet others had bountiful flushes of thousands one year, but nothing thereafter. I had an annual argument with Dad: I theorized that the new season's growth could be predicted by the fact that mushroom growth rings expanded outwards and that spores would be carried in the direction of prevailing wind. Sometimes I was right and sometimes not, so the argument was unresolved.
We had our own identifying names for some of our regular mushroom producing locations. These names were based on particular incidents:
Umbrella Paddock: We were walking along the railway one day and near the South Dudley road rail crossing and noticed a small paddock with a dense flush of mushrooms. We had not expected mushrooms – it was out of season, so we did not have baskets. We did have an umbrella with us though, because the weather had been threatening, and so we upended and filled that.
Underground Paddock: In a corner of the Mine Paddock near Nobby Smith's house, I once found heaps of mushrooms growing a meter or more down into old rabbit burrows.
Hay-bale Paddock: Near the scrub bordering the golf course lots of mushrooms sprouted from rotting hay-bales abandoned in the paddock.
Mushroom Hill: We were on our way home from a very unsuccessful mushroom hunt – not a single one.However our luck changed. A small hill overlooking where the South Dudley wetlands now are was absolutely covered in mushrooms and we soon filled all of our containers.
To this day I feel guilty about that last harvest. Frank O'Brien was again buying mushrooms at his Graham Street delicatessen for resale in Melbourne. We did not use any of the mushrooms from mushroom hill, but sold them all to O'Brien. Unfortunately, I suspect that all was not what it seemed.
Mushroom gatherers were generally conservative and only took what they were sure were safe, edible mushrooms. So field mushrooms and Swiss browns (Agaricus campestris and A. bisporus) were the usual ones collected. I suspect that there may have also been some wood mushrooms taken (A. silvicola). All these are perfectly safe and good.
Unfortunately, I now think that the ones we picked on mushroom hill might have been yellow stainers (A.xanthodermus). Yellow stainers were colloquially known as 'conkers' (from the verb, 'to conk' = to die). On this particular day we managed to convince ourselves that they were good mushrooms rather than conkers, but I felt uneasy.
Some people can eat conkers without discomfit, but others have quite nasty digestive system issues after eating them. So I hope that we didn't poison too many people: at least conkers are not generally deadly poisonous, just discomfiting.
I did pick one other sort of mushroom for financial gain. On the road verge opposite our house and at one or two locations in the mine paddock opposite the mine offices grew horse mushrooms (Agaricus avensis). These appeared each year in approximately the same place and grew in a fairy ring of up to about six or eight individuals.
If left to develop, they became huge and a fully grown flat could be up to about eighteen inches in diameter. Apart from the mentioned spots, we did not find them anywhere else and considered them rare. Historically, horse mushrooms were valued as food by farmers and some others, but no-one in our family liked them.
However, our next-door neighbor's friend, Mr Trelawny, loved them. When I saw him visit, I'd go in search of horse mushrooms, and if I found any, it was my lucky day. Because of the huge size of the things, Mr. Trelawny used to give me a shilling (or even two shillings for a very large one) for each substantially sized specimen. At the time, I could buy 48 rainbow ball lollies for a shilling, so I thought that was a good business deal.
Our mushroom hunts sometimes seemed like an urban archeological expedition. For one thing, we often searched near old mine ruins or that of the brickworks, but there were other ghosts of the past as well.
We often made use of the cinder track. This was a pedestrian, and perhaps bicycle track, which ran from South Dudley to Dudley mine, roughly following the axis of McBride Tunnel via thirteen and fourteen shafts. It was constructed with ash and cinder from the powerhouse and was used for access to and from work by miners in the 1920s.
In the mine paddock, opposite the offices, I discovered two cracked and long-disused concrete cricket pitches. Subsequently, I found another in a paddock north of South Dudley and opposite the golf course. (There must have been quite a few unused grounds about town.
Our own house was built as part of a post World War I soldier-settler estate. Prior to that, the area had been a sports ground and the old concrete cricket pitch lived on next door as part of a backyard footpath in our neighbour Webby's place.
Many miles were walked around the surrounds of the town over the years in search of mushrooms. I enjoyed those times and the pursuit of the quarry very much, and even made a few bob of pocket money while I was about it.
COMMENTS
A trench-eye view
Colonel Ryan outside the Australian 1st Division's
headquarters at Gallipoli. Photo: Australian War Memorial
IN 1914, at the age of 61, Sir Charles Ryan was appointed consulting surgeon to the Australian Imperial Force, embarking from Melbourne in October towards the Middle East and on to Gallipoli.
A Camera on Gallipoli, an exhibition of the photographs he took during that campaign, will be on display throughout Bass Coast until early May as part of commemorations for the centenary of the First World War.
Bass Coast Council applied to the Australian War Memorial for the exhibition, which will be displayed at Inverloch Community Hub, Phillip Island RSL and Wonthaggi Plaza.
The director of the Australian War Memorial, Dr Brendan Nelson, says the 39 candid photographs capture the reality behind the 1915 Gallipoli campaign, depicting a unique and often harsh view of our soldiers' experiences.
"Ryan's photographs reflect the Australians' true experience of war, depicting the dry, forbidding landscape, tired troops in the trenches, and squalid dug-outs.
"Ryan also managed to capture the true spirit of the Australian soldiers who fought at Gallipoli. Their mateship, stoicism and endurance underpin the photographs and embody the meaning of the Anzac spirit."
Behind the photographs in the exhibition is the story of Sir Charles Ryan's remarkable life. He served as a doctor with the Turkish army in 1877–78, treated Ned Kelly at Glenrowan, was a leading Melbourne surgeon and gave long service as a senior military officer. He was extended high civil and military recognition by his peers.
The exhibition is on display at:
Inverloch Community Hub, March 19-31
Phillip Island RSL, April 11-28
Wonthaggi Plaza, April 29-May 5
Steven Haby delves into the history of Bass Coast's bus fleet of 1976, when dozens of small bus operators criss-crossed the shire.
All aboard, please
By Steven Haby
WE SEE them every day and we might even travel on them to work or to school and from time to time you might wonder about the history of a particular bus or company.
The Bus and Coach Society of Victoria (BCSV) is one such society and one of its aims is to record the history of bus fleets across Victoria. Information from one of their books, published in 1976, is the impetus of this article.
No. 32 of Latrobe Valley Bus Lines was typical of the Bedfords with Comair bodywork acquired from this operator by local Bass Coast bus companies. These Bedfords were known as "shark fronts" due to their unusual frontal treatment and also as "turtlebacks" due their curved rear roof line. (photo © Andrew Potts, Steven Haby collection)
Forty years ago, in 1976, the Bass Coast area was quite different from what it is today. Wonthaggi was still served by a railway line from Nyora but that was to close a year later; the waterline communities, including Bass, Grantville and Corinella, were served by small primary schools and Phillip Island's tourism at that point focused on the penguins and surfing.
A number of small bus firms operated in the area with one or two buses, primarily to serve the various primary schools and the only secondary school (Wonthaggi). Many of these only operated school buses, with others perhaps offering a charter service to bolster their income. Low floor access, air-conditioning and cloth-covered seating were decades away and the fitout of these buses was basic.
Notes on the buses
The Bedford marque was the most popular for the small to medium operator as their chassis was relatively inexpensive, lightweight and simple to maintain and repair. By far the most common bus bodies, known as CAC and later Comair, were constructed by the Commonwealth Aircraft Factories following the decline in aircraft production after the Second World War. With their attractive design and well built and finished bodies, CAC buses soon found eager buyers right across Victoria with some units selling interstate.
R. E. Mee was a small bodybuilder based in West Heidelberg and specialised in building buses on Austin and other similar chassis. Known for their "futuristic" design features, Mee bodies were characterised by large "lantern" type windscreens and pronounced front and rear ends. Mee also operated a small fleet of school buses and several coaches.
Ansair, adivision of the once mighty Ansett Transport Industries, was another well known bodybuilder.
Many of the buses in the list below were acquired new by the operator but others were second hand, either acquired from another operator, e.g. Latrobe Valley Bus Lines was a frequent supplier or when one operator had sold their business or retired.
T. & D. Wilson, Bass
Operated GTN-533, a Bedford SB3 with CAC bodywork built in November 1957 and acquired from Latrobe Valley Bus Lines in 1966.
L. Coldebella, Cape Paterson
Operated JAF-556, a Bedford SB3 with Comair bodywork built in July 1964 and acquired from Latrobe Valley Bus Lines in 1974.
P. G. J. & L. M. Hart, Cowes
Operated JZS-747 a Ford R192 with Athol Hedges bodywork from Queensland and built in May 1968; KHW-426 a Toyota Coaster from 1969 and KNA-002 another Ford R192 with Ansair bodywork dating from March 1969 and was acquired in late 1975 from Broadmeadows Bus Service.
A. H. West, Cowes
Operated JPX-906 a Bedford SB3 with Freighter bodywork from Moorabbin built in December 1966 and new to this operator.
D. & M. Sutherland, Grantville
Operated JRY-151, a Bedford SB3 with Comair bodywork dating from March 1967 and was new to this operator.
G. & T. O. Atkinson, Inverloch
Operated KDO-616, an Austin 4.60F with Mee bodywork dating from November 1968, which they bought new. Austins were rarer in Victoria than in other states and were frequently bodied by Mee.
Inverloch Bus Lines
Operated LSK-328, a Bedford VAM3 with bodywork by Freighter from December 1973, which they bought new.
M. R. Thompson, Inverloch
Operated HSC-181, a Bedford SB3 with bodywork by CAC dating from March 1959 and was acquired from F. W. Fallon in Neerim South.
H. Booth, San Remo
Operated JUZ-307, a Bedford SB3 with bodywork by Freighter built in July 1967, which they bought new.
I. Carmichael, San Remo
Operated JZX-308, a Bedford SB3 with bodywork by Comair built in May 1968 which was acquired from B. W. Wheeler of Towong.
W. J. Brown, Wonthaggi
Operated GXA-514, a Bedford SB3 with CAC bodywork dating from October 1958 which was acquired in January 1970 from McKenzie's Tourist Services, Kew.
M. J. Hill, Wonthaggi
Operated KDO-677, a Bedford SB3 with Ansair bodywork dating from January 1969 which they bought new.
K.G. & S. M. Klun, Wonthaggi
Operated JKY-630, a Bedford SB3 with Comair bodywork from February 1966 and was acquired from Burge of Wonthaggi.
A. L. Sloan, Wonthaggi
The Sloan family would eventually develop their business as Gippsland Bus Services or GBS which at their extent operated the stage service from Wonthaggi to Traralgon, the local Wonthaggi and Cape Paterson town service and the route to Cowes from Wonthaggi. Moreland Bus Lines eventually acquired the business and rebranded it as South Coast Bus and Phillip Island Bus. In 1976 they operated HRL-692, a Bedford SB3 with Freighter bodywork dating from January 1963, and KUM-976, a Bedford SB3 with Mee bodywork dating from 1972.
I. & J. Stephenson, North Wonthaggi
Operated HRV-900, a Bedford SB3 with Comair bodywork dating from February 1967, which they bought new.
R. & T. M. Wardell, North Wonthaggi.
Operated JDO-784, a Bedford SB3 with Mee bodywork from February 1965, which was new to them.
Wonthaggi Bus Lines
Operated three buses: GCF-879, a Bedford SB with CAC bodywork; GDE-541, a Bedford SBG with CAC bodywork; and KVV-900, a Bedford VAM3 with Comair bodywork dating from March 1971.
Other operators in Bass Coast
Grenda's operated a stage service from Dandenong to Cowes via Cranbourne. The service continues to this day except under V/Line branding and operated under contract by Ventura Bus Lines, which acquired the Grenda operation several years ago.
The Penguin Parade drew coach parties from Melbourne but not to the same extent as today.
Bus and Coach Society of Victoria. The private operators of the Mornington Peninsula and Gippsland. Melbourne: The Society, 1976.
I recall during the 1970s when Wonthaggi High School held their swimming sports at Korumburra, Jungle Sloans bus would be the last to leave and the first to arrive – a feat that would make Jack Brabham proud, given the state of the Korumburra road back then. I think the teachers drew straws to see who would be on Jungles' bus for the trip.
Mark Robertson, Cape Paterson
Next month marks 100 years since mining started at the eastern area mine, and the Friends of the State Coal Mine are planning to celebrate.
In good times and bad
By Sheila Ormerod
ALMOST 50 years after mining ended in Wonthaggi, the State Coal Mine is now a major tourist attraction for the region. And the Friends of the State Coal Mine is the largest volunteer group in Victoria with around 200 members.
The mine opened in 1910 to provide Victoria with black coal during the New South Wales coal strike. It closed in 1968 as it was more beneficial financially to mine brown surface coal from the Latrobe Valley.
The site was then left in disrepair until the early 1980s when Strikebound, Richard Lowenstein's film about the struggle for better wages and conditions for workers and the birth of trade unionism, was filmed there. The underground workings had been flooded over the years and had to be pumped out before filming could begin.
When the film was completed, several former mine employees opened the site as a tourist attraction in conjunction with Parks Victoria. In the late 1990s, WorkSafe decided it was too dangerous to take tourists underground and closed the site indefinitely. After intense lobbying by Wonthaggi locals in 2010, the mine was reopened as a tourist attraction with funding from state and federal governments to upgrade the site.
We now have an attraction which is the only authentic black coal mine in Australia, if not the southern hemisphere. It is part of Victoria's heritage, not just Wonthaggi's, and should be preserved to show the harsh living and working conditions the miners had to endure.
Visitors from Victoria, the rest of Australia and overseas are enthralled by the underground experience, led by volunteer tour guides, some of whom actually worked at the mine. It is also an excellent educational tool for schools from a social, historical and geological aspect.
The underground tours take place at the Eastern Area site of the mine, which was completed in 1916, 100 years ago this year.
The site is managed by Parks Victoria with a staff of four. The volunteers from Friends of the State Coal Mine provide tour guides above and underground, maintain the gardens, buildings and equipment, take tour bookings, serve in the shop and raise funds to assist with the upkeep of the site.
The eastern area mine as it is today, a major tourist attraction
The entrance to the eastern area mine. Photo: Victorian Heritage Database
Written July 12, 2012
Crib tins opened, bottles of cold tea slaking thirst,
the miners rested, legs asprawl,
but protected by bowyangs to stop rats running up the trouser legs.
Yet they fed them crusts,
the miners' friends,
early warning of shifting timber, falling stone, gas ...
These miners used the longwall method of mining
from 1919-1931;
Benches No 1 and No 2, coal seam 2' 8", yielding 107,000 tons over 50 acres,
No 4 Bench thicker, 3' 3", producing 1,133,000 tons over 300 acres.
No 4 Bench, 18 Shaft, was a 4' seam, but 1450' below ground,
deepest workings on the field.
18 Shaft (along Inverloch Road) operated 1930-1946,
producing 941,553 tons from 475 acres,
its coal hauled to the surface at Eastern Area, 3 miles away;
this mine was very hot, dusty,
miners first walking underground 40 minutes to reach the coal-face.
Eastern Area appeared haphazard, makeshift –
a wooden rather than iron brace
hastily constructed rail line from the station curving south-west
across Inverloch Road,
great stacks of timber beside the railway sidings
redstone dumps radiating from the brace
temporary work post World War 1.
Men died in this mine:
William A Thomson, 51 24/7/1925, miner, fall of stone
Thomas A Freeman, 49, 30/5/1927, under manager, runaway skip
Arthur J Allen, 54, 27/4/1931, shiftman, fall of stone
Bertram Barnett, 43, 27/5/1932, shiftman. runaway skip
James D Tipping, 15, 28/8/1933, braceboy, crushed by Lizzie*
Eastern Area closed, a victim to economic circumstances andf shortage of labour; the Depression took its toll.
Still, miners' lads played dare-devil games here:
tobogganing on sheets of tin down the red-stone dumps
trespassing underground along the tunnels and up the airshafts,
daring each other in this dangerous environment.
Go underground and reflect.
(* Lizzie was a large winch-driven transporter of waste stone on a narrow-gauge railway.)
Terri Allen's grandfather, Arthur J Allen, was killed by a fall of stone in the Eastern Area in 1931.
Around 60 of us are active members and the remainder of the group can be called upon during peak season and special events. We are passionate about preserving and showcasing this part of Victoria's heritage for today's and future generations.
The volunteers are celebrating this centenary milestone with an event for all the family. The Coal Miners Country Fair on March 13 will be a day of fun and laughter and recollections of years gone by. We hope to have visitors from around the state to come and help us celebrate and visit the site that we are so proud of. A site where mateship and community spirit was paramount.
Coal Miners Country Fair: State Coal Mine, Wonthaggi, Sunday, March 13, 10am-3pm. Inquiries: Sheila Ormerod 5672 2720.
Kit Sleeman recalls a memorable miners' picnic at Cowes, enlivened by a foul-mouthed ventriloquist and a storm-tossed voyage home.
Gerry Gee at the picnic
The annual trade picnic was a great old Australian tradition. At a time of year when good weather was anticipated, each trade would declare a half day or day off work and staff and families would gather to celebrate, at management's expense, at a picnic. These picnics could be quite small and simple or large and complex depending on the business size and their largesse. There were bank picnics, butchers' picnics, builders' picnics and so on.
The State Coal Mine held an annual miners' picnic. Because of the size of the workforce, it was a big one.Often, it was a beach picnic at Kilcunda, that location chosen because a special train could be put on to get people there and back: Kilcunda station was on the cliff top directly above the beach.
One year, when I was about six, they decided on a more ambitious plan. The picnic would be near Cowes beach. This was before the bridge was built, so the Westernport ferryboat would be hired to travel between San Remo and Cowes.
The current website for the ferry includes the warnings: "Weather and sea conditions can make operations difficult ... some passengers may have difficulty boarding or disembarking." I don't know whether they advised those warnings back then, but if they had, maybe the picnic plans would have been different.
Ron Blaskett and his scurrilous dummy Gerry Gee
Cowes pier at the turn of the 20th century
Cowes pier on a rough day
As well as this exciting new transport plan for the picnic it was decided that some 'top class' entertainment would be provided. Dad was on the picnic organising committee, and it just so happened that an old mate of his from army days was Ron Blaskett, the ventriloquist who operated Gerry Gee.
Ron Blaskett and his scurrilous dummy Gerry Gee were one of the first acts when Channel Nine commenced TV broadcasting in January 1957. They appeared on Happy Hammond's children's show and were extremely popular for a few years. Gerry Gee became a syndicated toy: you could buy a Gerry Gee Junior doll and become a ventriloquist yourself, except that they were horribly expensive.
Unbeknownst to most of the kids and parents watching the Happy Show, Ron and Gerry had a dark side. Ron and Gerry moonlighted, mainly in RSL clubs, and the script they used there, based on crude army gutter humour, was quite a bit different from the one they used on the Happy Show.
Dad succeeded in getting Ron Baskett's services, and the boat was booked: all was good. The committee also organised catering. The day arrived and the weather was only fair, not as good as hoped: a change later in the day was forecast.
I think the picnic was set up on Cowes' football oval, not far from the beach. It was an open space where there were kids' and adults' races, sack races and so on. There was a stage set up where Ron and Gerry would appear, as well as tables handing out fairy floss, hot dogs, a lucky spinning wheel and all the other stuff that you normally find at fairs and fetes. There was also a large tent set up off to the side where men were congregating for a few beers.
There was a ripple of excitement when Ron Blaskett turned up, but there was no sign of Gerry Gee. Ron was shepherded away from the kids who mobbed him and was taken to the "refreshments" tent.
The day proceeded with races and games. The weather was starting to close in a bit and a wind sprang up. Quite some time elapsed before the announcement was made that Gerry Gee was about to arrive on stage, and the formal entertainment was to begin. All the kids crowded to the front of the stage, the curtain went up and the show began. At about the same time, it started to spit rain.
After the show had been going for a while, I couldn't help thinking that live shows were quite different from TV. I found Gerry Gee very funny when I watched on TV, but I could not get any of his jokes this day. None of the other kids seemed to be laughing much either, but I noticed that some of the men were, although the women were strangely quiet.
Soon someone came onto the stage, hustled Ron and Gerry off and indicated that his show was over. Odd, I thought, I was expecting a longer show than that.
I did not understand what was going on. It was only years later that I understood.
Ron had gotten half drunk in the refreshments tent and, in his confusion, had started his Gerry Gee act with his 'blue' army style script rather than his kid's script. The matrons were shocked and had him dragged off the stage.
From there the day went downhill. The wind had picked up and the rain was getting heavier. By the time we got back to Cowes' pier to embark on the ferry back home, a swell had gotten up. There was a heavy chop to the sea as well, and the moored ferry was pitching up and down several feet by the pier-side.
There was a gaggle of people, ferry sailors presumably, gathered around the gangplank lying on the pier and scratching their heads. Eventually, they tried to lay the gangplank between the pier and the ferry deck, but were unsuccessful and almost finished up in the drink. They tried again a few times and then gave up. The sea was now so rough that a gangplank could not be used.
They had a conference to come up with a plan B. Eventually, two sailors stood on the deck and two on the pier. Then watching the waves and trying to time things so that the deck was midpitch they would pass passengers, one at a time, from the pier to the deck. This was pretty hairy stuff and took ages, but it worked and everyone eventually got on board.
The trip back to San Remo was a pretty rough one. The ferry is quite small and pitched and tossed all over the place. The motion did not worry me too much, and in any case I was far too interested watching sea-sick people vomiting over the side to feel sick myself. We eventually got safely home without any further adventures.
The picnic organising committee did not use a ferry or Ron and Gerry ever again.
I hope Dad had negotiated good "mates' rates" for that performance.
Kit Sleeman is the son of Beau, a proud union man who organised the Union picnic in 1958.


Summer and Autumn at Falls Creek offers fresh mountain air, cool alpine forests,and mesmerising high country views and endless flower filled alpine meadows to explore.
Looking for a stress‐free alternative to a crowded beach holiday? Summer and Autumn at Falls Creek offers altitude training, bush walking, bike riding, fly fishing, horse riding and other outdoor pursuits are available.
Explore just some of the summer activities available at Fall Creek and surrounds on the right.
Use the links below to explore the range of summer acitivies in Falls Creek and Surrounds.
Historic huts, regenerating fire-damaged snow gums and Mt Bogong itself are a constant reminder of the living spirit of the region.
There are a variety of walks to enjoy, from an easy 1/2 hour stroll to scenic vantage points to more challenging day or overnight hikes.
Explore the High country's undulating plains for the vibrant alpine wildflowers. Breathe the clean air and take in the beautiful views. If you are lucky you just might also catch a glimpse of wild brumbies or the rare mountain pygmy possum.
One of the standout features that makes Falls Creek unique is the majestic Rocky Valley Lake.
At 1600m this is the highest significant body of water in Australia. Just a short distance from the heart of the village, the lake provides a playground for a range of aquatic activities.There are also incredible lakes at nearby Pretty Valley and Bogong Village, plus the village aqueducts, nearby rivers and waterfalls to enjoy.
Fishing – Rods are available for hire at the Visitor Information Centre and bait can also be purchased. Pretty Valley Lake and the aqueducts also offer great trout fishing.
Boating – Launching ramps on either side of the dam wall allow for easy launching and most types of boats up to 10HP capacity are allowed. Take a leisurely spin or find that perfect spot to drop a line in the deep.
Picnic – The main shore area features a grassy bank that is perfect for relaxing by the water, plus a number of picnic tables and toilet block.
Dragon Boats – The annual Mile High Dragon Boat Championships are held at Rocky Valley Lake late January. Register a team, volunteer for one or just relax on the grassy banks and cheer them on!.
Falls Creek has great rides for the family through to serious mountain bike riding and road cycling. Bring your own bike or rent one from Frueauf Village.
Falls Creek Village is situated next to the Rocky Valley Lake and the Bogong High Plains. It has series of flat and undulating trails for leisurely riding or the more adventurous can tackle serious mountain decents.
You can follow the aqueduct that winds its way above the village gently taking water to the reservoir. Great for a family ride. Or ride to the top of Mount McKay; or ride to mountain huts or just ride around the village.
Falls Creek is emerging as Australia's next serious mountain biking destination. With an established network of fire trails and cross country tracks, interspersed with natural and historical highlights, the groundwork is laid for a unique mountain biking adventure. The missing piece of the puzzle is now being delivered – the major development of an extensive single-track network.
With epic climbs, spectacular views and a year-round cycle-friendly village at 1650m+, Falls Creek is one of Australia's number one destinations for road cycling.
Falls Creek is home to the Peaks Challenge – this ride is recognised as one of the top 10 toughest one day cycling events in the world. Cyclists tackle a 235km course through some of the world's most picturesque and challenging terrain with over 4000 vertical metres of climbing over three major climbs: Tawonga Gap, Mount Hotham, and the beast that is the back of Falls Creek.
Falls Creek is also the pinnacle of one of North East Victoria's elite 7 Peaks Ride climbs. Head off from Mt Beauty for the 30km ascent with an average 4% grade (max 10%) through spectacular alpine wilderness.
A new fleet of Giant Stance Bikes have just arrived and available for rental. Large, medium and small. Helmets provided.
Bookings recommended: phone 03 5758 3476.
Join some of the world's best athletes who train here at Falls Creek. Situated high in the Australian Alps, Falls Creek has become a hot spot for athletes from around the world who seek to train AND stay at altitude.
The diverse features of the resort provide a myriad of cross-training opportunities from running and cycling the resort's trails and into the nearby National Park, a number of water training options at Rocky Valley and Pretty Valley lakes, a well-equipped gymnasium plus accommodation options that include spa, sauna and pool facilities.
Elite athletes, cyclists, rowers, skiers, triathletes, professional sports teams and more are making Falls Creek an integral part of their training routine.
In addition to its mile-high elevation, Falls Creek offers an extensive network of flat and hilly trails with a cooler climate and the benefit of the pristine waters of Rocky Valley Lake.
From November to March, elite athletes from around the world travel to Falls Creek to use this increasingly popular high-altitude training region.
Long-time aficionados include Steve Moneghetti, Craig Mottram, Nic Bideau and Benita Johnson, plus professional sporting teams the Geelong Cats, Collingwood Football Club (AFL) and Melbourne Rebels (Rugby Super 15's) have recently used the resort for altitude training camps.
Enjoy the time and a place in nature to relax and appreciate the alpine wilderness in Victoria's High Country.
Stay at Frueauf Village before you head out to your glamping camp site. Walk, ride a bike or drive.
Luxury glamping tent set up for you to enjoy with a king bed and comfortable set up Fire pit and outdoor chairs.
Enjoy your evening under the stars. Enjoy the high country hiking. Falls Creek's walking and hiking trails are second to none, exposing you to the beauty and majesty of the Bogong High Plains.
Horseshoe Creek and the mighty Kiewa River provide Falls Creek with two impressive waterfalls, easily accessible for all. Falls Creek Falls is a short walk from the entrance to the village and Fainter Falls is an easy stop on the way to Bogong Village, just 15 minutes' drive from the resort.
From the village, walk along the Bogong High Plains Rd past the village entrance towards Mt beauty (park in Gully Carpark if needed). The trail entrance is around 150mt past the entrance on the right hand side of the road with steps leading down into the valley. The waterfall is not far in and from here you can walk the Packhorse Heritage Trail, beginning here and leading to Howmans Gap.
Drive from the village towards Mt Beauty for around 15 minutes until almost at Bogong Village. When you have descended to an orange bridge over the Kiewa River, park in the large car park. The trail begins on the opposite side of the road, extending for 700mt until the falls.
Hot tub spa baths on the balconies of most Frueauf Village apartment are a feature our guests constantly thank us for. Whether for entertaining the kids for hours, or warming them up or cooling them down after a mountain adventure, they are a welcome luxury.
That is not to mention sitting in the spa watching the stars and mountain vistas while enjoying your favourite drink. Or using the spa to recover from an altitude training session on the running trails or mountain bike tracks.
Or after a game of tennis or a walk through the high plans. You can swim in the lakes, paddle in the streams, sit in the rock pools and always come back to your relaxing Frueauf Village hot tub. Some guests remark that the hot tubs are even better than going to the beach.
Take a step back in time with the historic Cattlemen's Huts of the Bogong High Plains.
The High Country huts are historical monuments nestled in the spectacular Alpine National Park.
Some huts date back to the 1860s and remain as a testament to the pioneers who lived, explored and worked on this land. While a few huts were used as homes for workers, others were built to shelter skiers and hikers.
Each hut has a story. Pack a lunch and take a tour of the high country huts.
Experience tennis a mile high in the Village Bowl. Falls Creek boasts two tennis courts in the Village Bowl which are available for use throughout Summer and Green Season.
These courts have a synthetic grass surface (mod grass) and are available for hire by the hour. With a stunning vista incorporating the hills of the Eagle and Summit ski areas, there is no better place to serve up with some friends.
To reach the Village Bowl, upon entering the village drive along Bogong High Plains Rd and turn right onto Falls Creek Rd (alongside the Accommodation Transfer building). Follow this to the Village Bowl at the end where parking is available near the courts.
A trip to Falls Creek is a trip through wine country. Wineries greet you along the way once you leave the Hume highway.
On the snow road, you are greeted with John Gehrig, Sam Miranda at Oxley and Brown Brothers at Milawa.
The Kiewa valley leading to Mt Beauty and Falls Creek features Ceccanti wines, Bogong Estate and Sweetwater Brewing Company.
80 Gehrigs Lane, Oxley, Vic.
1019 Snow Rd, Oxley Flats Vic.
Bogong Estate – Damms Rd Tawonga, Vic.
For families or groups of people where some love horse riding and others just want a holiday. You can combine a high country ride with Bogong Horseback with a high country luxury holiday at Frueauf Village.
The horse riders head of on their 3 or 5 day high country ride while the rest of the group stay at Frueauf Village and enjoy everything that Falls Creek has to offer. You can meet up with the riders via a one hour walk from just outside of Falls Creek at their second night camp. At the end of the ride the whole group can relax with extra nights at Frueauf Village.
Play against the back drop of Mt Bogong, Victoria's highest mountain. Mt Beauty Golf club is set just above the Mt Beauty township 30 minutes back down the road leading to Falls Creek. A rural golf course in beautiful surrounds, its 18 holes are an enjoyable way to spend a morning or afternoon.
Payment is via an honour system. Guests fill in a duplicate form before play. One copy is placed in an envelope with green fees and the other copy carried while playing for checking by club staff. Instructions are on the noticeboard under the "lean to" on the south side of the club.
It's a no fuss way to organise a game of golf while staying at Frueauf Village.
The Mt Beauty Gliding Club owns and operates an ASK-21 two seat glider using a fixed site winch to launch the glider. The Club has several highly qualified and experienced instructors. Training is conducted to solo standard, and for advanced cross country and mountain flying technique. The flying season is best from September to April.
The club normally operate on weekends and public holidays, but can also offer flights mid-week by arrangement. All flights are subject to the availability of suitable weather conditions, gliders & instructors.
Visitors to Mt Beauty may take an Air Experience Flight and view the magnificent mountain scenery from the air.
23 Jun to 1 Oct 2017.
Frueauf Village recommend Central Snowsports for our guests equipment rental.
Occasionally apartments come up for sale. Contact us for details.


At Harer & Mortensen Chiropractic, we take great pride in providing the finest chiropractic wellness care to our patients. Below is a sampling of the different chiropractic services we offer in our Ventura office.
We provide advanced spinal correction utilizing state-of-the-art chiropractic techniques. Never in the history of chiropractic have we been able to provide the level of help and expertise that now exists. These newer correction methods are even safer, more comfortable and more effective than ever before. As Doctors of Chiropractic, Drs. Harer and Mortensen have years of training and experience in spinal adjustment.
We provide specific recommendations on nutritional supplements and healthy food choices to enhance our patients' return to optimal health. Do you know which supplements and vitamins are good for you? Drs. Harer and Mortensen can provide a structured nutritional program based on your individual needs.


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The Election Commission of India has announced that the Tiruvarur by-poll, which was slated to be held on January 28, has been rescinded. The decision has been taken based on a report by the District Collector and District Election Officer that Gaja cyclone relief works would be affected due to the implementation of the model code of conduct.
In a letter to Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer, Malay Mallick, Secretary of Election Commission of India, said, "I am directed to intimate that the Commission has ordered on 6th January, 2019 that the Commission's Notification No. 100/TN-LA/1/2019 dated 3rd January, 2019, calling upon the said 168-Thiruvarur Assembly constituency to elect an MLA shall stand rescinded forthwith for the reasons stated therein. Consequently, all actions and steps taken by the Returning Officer of the said 168-Thiruvarur Assembly Constituency, District Election Officer and election authorities concerned are hereby declared null and void.
A copy of the Notification to be published in the Extraordinary Official Gazette of the State of Tamil Nadu is being sent separately." On Saturday, hours after Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Satyabrata Sahoo asked a detailed report from him on the conduct of Tiruvarur by-election, Collector and District Election Officer (DEO) L Nirmal Raj had called for an all-party meet to get the views of various political outfits. Meanwhile, various political leaders on Saturday aired their opinion on the by-election. DMK president M K Stalin said, "The electoral officer must take into account the views from all parties and fronts.
AMMK deputy general secretary TTV Dhinakaran said, "DMK is afraid to contest in the elections much like ruling party AIADMK. The opposition parties are afraid that AMMK will win and hence are asking for cancellation of the by-polls.". Former Minister and AIADMK spokesperson Vaigaiselvan said the DMK is fearful of the elections. "They are afraid and nervous upon the announcement of by-polls," he added.