Bass Coast Post - ESSAYS ON BASS COAST LOCAL HISTORY

Guaranteed to cure

18/6/2019

By Carolyn Landon

THERE are more people in Wonthaggi this winter coughing and sneezing and blowing and generally taking to their beds than I can remember anywhere. They say it’s been a bad year for the flu: the hospitals and care centres have been declared off-limits to visitors and people have been going around wearing masks or staying home and not going around at all.

Maybe this small selection of advertisements from the local papers of early Wonthaggi will make us all – including me – feel better.

An Inverloch holiday in grand style

15/6/2019

Guests at afternoon tea on the lawn of Pine Lodge, 1930s

By John Hutchinson and Ray Burtt

IF PINE Lodge still existed, it would be the prime historic building in Inverloch, yet its fame would go wider. The story of Pine Lodge and the visionary who built it during the Great Depression are legendary.

Sitting on seven acres at the comer of Ramsey Parade and Scarborough Street, it cost a reputed $40,000 to build in 1930. It was built on what was known as Graham’s Pine Paddock by Calvert Wyeth, better known as Cal Wyeth. Wyeth had trained as a pilot in World War One but the Great War finished before he could challenge the enemy with his new flying skills.

A walk on the wild side

14/6/2019

His friends jokingly called it The Wilderness but Mr Bonney made a wise choice when he selected scrub-covered land at The Gurdies.

That’s what Wonthaggi people are like!

30/5/2019

Rod Churchill became absorbed by the intricacies of pigeon racing

Racing pigeons was considered a working class pastime, just right for the working men of Wonthaggi.

By Rod Churchill

I’LL TELL a little story. I was born on a farm at Kilcunda. We had pigeons on the farm and so I brought a few of them into Wonthaggi when my parents sold the farm. I started playing cricket with the Workmen’s Club. There were a number of people in the team who raced pigeons.

It took me a while to become interested in pigeons because I was really into cars, racing cars. Back in those days, I had the fastest car around. If you had a fast car, blokes used to come from other towns to see if they could beat you. We used to go out to the Korumburra Road, which was straight and flat and a quarter mile. One Saturday night I was dragging this fellow from Traralgon. There would be cars on either side of the road and we would be dragging down the middle of the road. Well, I finished in front and when I got to the end of the run there were these blue lights flashing. All of a sudden I was pulled over. And who got out of the car but Terry Weir and Billy Studham, two Wonthaggi Policemen. I played cricket with them. And I knew they raced pigeons.

A young man and his truck

2/4/2019

Fred Webb in his shed, now used by Wonthaggi Secondary College.

By Carolyn Landon

This is the story of a man whose cleverness and energy helped to shape Wonthaggi. Fred Webb hasn’t been around since 1985, but his presence is felt every day when the mine whistle blows in the middle of town to signal midday, or whenever anyone passes “Webb’s Shed” in McKenzie Street.

This essay is based on a speech Fred gave about his life in Wonthaggi called “A Young Man and his Truck”, plus additional information taken from an essay, Red Wonthaggi, by Carol Cox (Bass Coast Post, November 1, 2014), and Kit Sleeman's explanation of red stone in his PLOD essay Drains (June 6, 2016).

Reminiscences of The Gurdies

8/3/2019

The Gurdies by Ethel Pike, 1970s

By Florence Guilfoyle

I WAS born at the Gurdies in 1897. My father, Henry Edwards Cole, a surveyor who later worked on the Wonthaggi line, had a property which backed on to the Hurdy Gurdy creek. I had four brothers, twins born in 1893 and two younger brothers.

My grandfather William Henry Cole from Harrow in England was a pioneer of the Hurdy Gurdy and went there in 1885. He lived in a wattle and daub hut on the bank of the creek. Over his hut he planted a grape vine which bore luscious purple grapes for many years.

At home on the hill

21/2/2019

Phillip Island Cemetery. Photo: Geoff Ellis

Pamela Rothfield’s meticulous history of the first 73 occupants of the Phillip Island cemetery provides a moving snapshot of this fledgling society: the vulnerability of babies, children and pregnant women, the prevalence of depression, the high rate of death by accident.

The Campbells of Kernot

7/2/2019

John and Rebecca Campbell, who settled near Kernot in 1891

By Merryn Chapman

MY grandfather Bruce Campbell feels that he has grown up in the luckiest family, in the luckiest district, in the luckiest country in the world. Here is some of his story.

Bruce’s grandparents John and Rebecca Campbell leased some land on the banks of the Bass River In 1891. They built a house and a 60-foot-long milking shed using tea tree from the land they cleared.

The house had a dirt floor. Rebecca had to carry water up from the river and cooked in an open fire in the kitchen. As their needs expanded, they just extended the house until it was quite a grand building with a verandah on both sides.

The day the mine closed

14/12/2018

Last shift, Kirrak shaft. December 20, 1968. From left, Unknown, Alan Thompson (mine manager), Gus Pizzol, Giovanni Bordignon, Bill Coulton, Fred Oldaker (?), Bill Bernardi, Frank Zanella, Bill Morgan, Arnado Caile, Unknown, Mario Ghitti, Unknown, Tony Bernardi, Bill Hudson, E. P. Rogan (Deputy Commissioner of Railways), Jim Byrnes (general manager), Jack Battaglia, Ray Williams, Leo Vivian, Paddy Sleeman. Photo: Tom Gannon, Wonthaggi Express.

NEXT Friday marks 50 years since the official closure of the Wonthaggi State Coal Mine. The last shift of miners emerged from Kirrak shaft on the morning of December 21 1968 to be greeted by their fellow workers, a few casual onlookers and a contingent of reporters and photographers from Melbourne.

Island of dreams

1/11/2018

Historical Society members Christine Grayden, left, Anne Davie and Jan Andrews look through costumes and bonnets on loan from the Wonthaggi Theatrical Group for the re-enactment of the first land ballot for closer settlement on Phillip Island.

Descendants of some of Phillip Island’s first selectors will be among a cast re-enacting the first land ballot in Cowes next weekend.

Lifetime award to ‘revered’ Island historian

30/10/2018

Liz Rushen, Chair of the History Council of Victoria, with Christine Grayden at the awards Museums Australia Awards. Photo Mr Fox

HISTORIAN and conservationist Christine Grayden has received the Museums Australia Victoria Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her 40 years of volunteer work documenting and protecting the heritage of Phillip and Churchill islands. She was presented with her award at Melbourne Museum on August 29.

The wreck of the Amazon

19/10/2018

Sand erosion during storms in 2015 exposed parts of the Amazon shipwreck on the Inverloch surf beach. Photo: Heritage Victoria

FOR almost 155 years, the remains of a wooden sailing ship have been buried in the sands of the Inverloch surf beach.

Next month a team of maritime archaeologists and students will begin a major project to discover more about the wreck of the Amazon, a rare example of a mid-19th century wooden cargo carrier.

The band played on

4/10/2018

The Band of the 15th Battalion in 1914, before embarking for service overseas. Twenty-three of the original 31 members of the band were killed or injured in the Gallipoli campaign the next year. Photo: State Library of Queensland

A musical and acrobatic show in Bass Coast next weekend pays tribute to some of the least likely heroes of the First World War: the musicians who also acted as stretcher-bearers and medics

Bass Valley’s Anzacs

20/9/2018

Private Ernest John Henry Berryman of Glen Forbes, who was killed in action in 1918, is among those honoured by the Bass plaque.

Two days after leading a crazily brave attack on enemy lines in April 1918, Ernest Berryman of Glen Forbes, was killed in action. He is buried in a French cemetery.

The young private is one of 103 service men and women with connections to the Bass Valley district who will be honoured at the unveiling of a plaque in Bass next month.

The plaque will be unveiled at 2pm on Sunday, October 7, opposite the Cenotaph in Hade Avenue, Bass, followed by a presentation at the local cricket club, where many of the soldiers played cricket before enlisting.

BASS Valley Friends of the RSL secretary Trish Thick says descendants of the Anzacs are warmly welcome to attend both events but they need help in locating them. (The Anzacs’ names are listed below.)

The stories of Arthur Baker

12/9/2018

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Plant fossil, by Arthur Baker, date unknown. In the collection of the Wonthaggi & District Historical Society

The Wonthaggi & District Historical Society has many hand-written reminiscences which are being transcribed into typewritten form, both for legibility and longevity. They include a series of notes and memoirs written by Arthur Baker. Not much is known about Arthur but his writing is distinctive and quite beautiful, both in content and form.

Carol Cox, who is transcribing the stories, said they were passed to the historical society by Peter and Lorna Hall. In the 1980s they were lessees of a caravan park in East Gippsland where Arthur lived in an old small caravan, and he entertained them for many hours with his stories which he eventually put into writing for them.
Mr and Mrs Hall knew Arthur as a retired wild dog trapper who had a vast knowledge of the East Gippsland Highlands, possibly because his father had been a botanist. Judging from his notes, he was also a miner at some stage.

Arthur is buried in the Marlo cemetery - Mr Hall believes he died in the late 1980s aged in his late 70s.

A newspaper is reborn

29/8/2018

More than a century after the first Western Port Times went out of business, a new online version is uncovering the rich history of the Waterline communities.

Inverloch, but not as we know it

16/8/2018

Real estate agents like to accentuate the positive and when it comes to Inverloch their imaginations have run wild. The results of a century of spruiking are on display in a fascinating new exhibition.

'Commies’ Corner'

18/7/2018

The original Harmer's Haven sign posted outside Eddie Harmer's beach house. Photo 2004

The shacks built in the dunes of Harmers Haven and the fibro shacks that followed were holiday homes to a tight-knit socialist community, writes Marguerita Stephens.

The big fix

6/7/2018

The raids, as reported by the Powlett Express, September 4, 1952

Jim Bell never forgot the day the gaming squad raided the Wonthaggi Workmen’s Club with sledgehammers and axes. (Warning: Jim’s stories always contained strong language.)

Life and death in old San Remo

1/6/2018

San Remo with early houses, possibly San Remo Hotel in the distance,1920s. Photo: Phillip Island & District Historical Society

A memoir of life at Griffiths Point (San Remo) in the 1870s and 1880s makes fascinating and often harrowing reading.

The story of everything

3/4/2018

Mark Robertson is uncovering the stories of the everyday objects in the Wonthaggi museum. He shares some of them with Carolyn Landon.

Out to the Wreck

13/2/2018

Any time after Guy Fawkes Day, the cry would be raised, “Let’s go out to the Wreck!” Carolyn Landon revisits Joe and Lyn Chambers’ evocative essay.

Full and plenty

29/11/2017

No pasta, no salami, no tinned tomatoes … Italian migrants had to start from scratch when they arrived in Wonthaggi.

The town that vanished

2/11/2017

The remains of the Queensferry jetty are a ghostly reminder of a thriving seaside settlement.

If you’d visited Queensferry a century ago, you would have found a seaside settlement with hotels, a licensed colonial wine saloon, three public halls, a store and a series of large and small houses.

Miss Somerset teaches in Tent Town

18/10/2017

By Mrs I K Ledwidge

As Miss Somerset, I was appointed by the Victorian Education Department to the Powlett Coal Field School in 1910. The school was situated opposite the State Mine Office, one of the few buildings that wasn’t a tent in a town of tents that had sprung up, almost miraculously, when the first shaft was lowered for the State Coal Mine in November 1909.