Bass Coast Post - ESSAYS ON BASS COAST LOCAL HISTORY

Stories of us

27/1/2022

Andrea Cleland: Interviews with farmers, hoteliers, a developer, an artist and a newspaper editor provide a fascinating insight into Phillip Island’s rich history.

By Dr Andrea Cleland

A PASSION for recording people’s stories and a deep love of Phillip Island led to my working on a major oral history project for the Phillip Island and District Historical Society. It’s been a rewarding experience as a local oral historian to record memories of the deep connections and experiences of local islanders.

The project, which we are now wrapping up, kicked off in December 2020 soon after the second lockdown impacted our tourism dependent community. In and out of lockdowns (including supporting my child learning from home) I interviewed nine Phillip Islanders around the themes of farming, tourism, business, lifestyle and migration on Phillip Island over the past 60 years.

A hive of activity

3/12/2021

Wonthaggi Railway Station, 1969 with the Goods Shed to the right. Photo: Peter Wright

By Jack Moyle

OUR family started a carrying business in Wonthaggi in 1924. I left school at 14 in 1949 and came to work in the family business.

Back when I started, virtually everything came to Wonthaggi by train and left by train, which made the railway station the commercial and social centre of the town. It was, therefore, the focus of the carrying business. There were two passenger trains and a goods train every day. The different trains came in on different tracks: cargo trains pulled in at the Goods Shed where the crane could lift heavy cargo off the open trucks, and the passenger train came in beside the station platform. Everything came that way: shop goods, feed, machinery.

The final insult

18/11/2021

The backyard dunny - modelled here by Raymond Tyrrell - was a feature of life in many country towns until fairly recently.

By John Coldebella

ALMOST 50 years ago, work commenced on Wonthaggi's sewerage system. Up till that time, most toilets in the town were located on the back lane boundary of house blocks. Human waste fell into a circular bitumen coated galvanised metal can 35cm in height and 36 cm in diameter, giving it the approximate equivalent volume of about 36 litres, or four laundry buckets.

Collected once a week, this created some logistical problems for large families, which were numerous in those days. This may have contributed to the practice of urinating on lemon trees in order to preserve the can's capacity for solid waste.

Local collections make a splash

7/10/2021

Portrait of Robert Smith, Gordon Binsted, 1955
Robert Smith Collection, Bass Coast Shire.

By Christine Grayden

WHAT a fantastic night for Bass Coast museums at the Australian Museums and Galleries Association Victorian branch 2021 awards this week.

The Churchill Island cataloguing team was Highly Commended in the small staff Victorian Collections category. This was a great team effort between curators, other Phillip Island Nature Parks staff and volunteers to get so many extra images and associated quality entries from the Churchill Island collection onto this publicly accessible online cataloguing program.

This was followed by Bass Coast Shire Council being Highly Commended in the new ‘gallery’ Victorian collections award category for all their wonderful work getting much of the Robert Smith Art Collection catalogued and online.

Researching one war in the time of another

26/8/2021

Phillip Island soldier Hugh Grigg leading an ammunition camel train, one of the gems uncovered during local research to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII.

By Christine Grayden

IN EARLY 2020, Covid 19 hit the world and placed us all on a war footing, fighting against a near-invisible viral enemy with any means at our disposal. Lockdown closed businesses and attractions everywhere, including the Phillip Island District Historical Society’s museum. The building housing the museum, library and meeting room was earmarked for demolition, to be replaced with a new community facility including a new museum by 2022. Unfortunately, the museum was not able to reopen before the big sorting and packing up had to proceed.

In the midst of this, the society received a grant from the Victorian Government to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two. This enabled us to contract a local audio/video editor, Simon Eddy, with whom we have worked on other projects, to work with me as project co-ordinator and documentary producer. Other volunteers such as committee members were also involved doing some of the research and phoning around during lockdowns. We aimed to produce two documentaries about WWII Phillip Island veterans and Phillip Island during the war.

Alternative energies

12/8/2021

Lionel Wilson, second from left, with other
State Coal Mine employees

By Mark Robertson

THIS article was inspired by a recent donation of "treasures" from the shed of Lionel Wilson. Thanks to Lionel’s family and especially his daughter, Jennifer Paproth, for donating an incredible treasure trove collection from both Lionel and Greta’s much prized collections.

The Wonthaggi Historical Society is truly grateful to be able to ensure the objects are retained for generations to come.

Lionel was a State Coal Mine electrician and later established a private electrical contracting business in Wonthaggi.

King of the roads

14/7/2021

Richard Kemp recalls the glory days of the Lang Lang Proving Ground, when a day at work might include dodging roos, racing with ‘Brockie’ or seeing the greatest collection of pristine Holdens.

By Richard Kemp

My involvement with the Lang Lang Proving Ground was early and long. My father Maurice Kemp got the job of chief security officer as a promotion from Holden's Fishermans Bend plant. In early 1957 I went with him in his friend’s car and we did a tour of what had been started of the test track. I was 12 at the time.

The circular track had not been built except for the concrete underpass and it stood like a monolith in a lake of water. We could not see much of the area as the little Hillman could not handle the mud.

In September 1957 we moved from Hurstbridge to a 21-acre bush block at The Gurdies and Dad started work at the PG under, as I remember, Charlie Paterson. My dad always spoke highly of Charlie and had great respect for him. He was a tall man, and impressive. He did not take rubbish and commanded respect from everybody.

The joy of the toy

1/7/2021

The sight of an old tin toy can spark a wave of nostalgia in even the crustiest old timer.

By Mark Robertson

There is one thing that we humans all have in common – we were all once children, and the most exciting part of childhood, apart from lollies, was toys.

Whether it was the anticipation of what was under the Christmas tree, the trip to the shops after months of pocket money saving, or visiting a schoolmate to play with their bedroom trove of toys, it is no wonder that the sight of any old toy sparks a wave of nostalgia in even the crustiest old timer.

Here at the Wonthaggi Museum we do not have many toys, but we were recently gifted an old tin toy from Mary Mabin. It is a pressed tin clockwork monkey riding a donkey.

Dark days for Wonthaggi

4/6/2021

THE use of Wonthaggi Town Hall as a vaccination hub has reminded local historians of the time when it served as a hospital during the so-called Spanish influenza epidemic. For some reason, Wonthaggi was one of the hardest hit small towns in the country.

On March 27, 1919, the Yass Courier reported:

INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC
The virulence of the influenza plague when it gets a footing has been exemplified
at Wonthaggi, a small town in Victoria, where a large number of cases have occurred. A report from there on Saturday last was as follows: The death toll from influenza has
reached 19. Three deaths occurred on Friday morning. A patient in the hospital gave birth it a child which died on Friday, and the mother is in a serious condition.

Australian Story featured nurse Elizabeth Beard’s account of working in the makeshift hospital in the Wonthaggi Town Hall during the deadly influenza pandemic of 1919.

All that can be desired

5/5/2021

Map courtesy of State Library of Victoria, republished on the Grantville History website. a project of Bass Valley U3A.

SEASIDE villas, a coffee palace, a shipping port, a railway line and agricultural show grounds … life in Grantville on the Sea was dandy. And all for £2 10s down.

Grantville on the Sea

The situation of this land is all that can be desired, having large Frontages to Main Government Roads, which will ultimately prove invaluable Business Sites, whilst the Inner Allotments are unrivalled for Residential purposes.

The land overlooks the ever-charming and magnificent
WESTERNPORT BAY.

Vale Cam Walker

22/4/2021

Cam Walker played a vital role in a close-knit community.

By Marion Walker

A LINK with Bass Coast history has been broken with the death of Cam Walker, the fourth generation of a family that settled in Glen Alvie in 1883. In fact, Cam’s great-grandmother actually named Glen Alvie, though the family moved to Almurta in 1909.

More than 360 people attended Cam’s funeral at Bass on April 17 to show their respect and love for a man who had played a vital role in this close-knit community for many decades.
John Campbell (Cam) Walker was born on April 18 1945 at Wonthaggi Hospital. He was the son of David and Rebecca Walker of Almurta and grew up on the family farm, “Montrose”.

He and his three older sisters rode their horses to the Kernot State School. The school had only one room and one teacher for about 30 kids. Cam did all the things kids did in those days: built billy carts, went ferreting for rabbits, fished for eels, raced the other kids on his horse.

Tales of Tent Town

7/4/2021

Author Christine Bell with Sam and Claire Gatto, members of
the Wonthaggi Historical Society.

By Catherine Watson

WHEN children’s author Christine Bell visited the State Coal Mine museum in Wonthaggi in 2008 she was, like many visitors, in search of her family history.

At the museum shop that day she bought two replicas of the mining token of her great-grandfather, John McConochie. Later she strolled the streets of Wonthaggi and called into the museum,at the old railway station, where she found a treasure trove of newspapers, maps and artefacts. Volunteers were happy to help her fill in the gaps in her knowledge of her great-grandparents’ immigration journey that brought them to Wonthaggi in 1910.

'There was a storm in me'

11/3/2021

There was nothing in Agnes Doig’s middle class family background to indicate that she would become a champion of the poor and downtrodden and a legend of Wonthaggi. Photo: Melbourne University collection

By Carolyn Landon

WHEN you look at a picture of Agnes Doig from the Melbourne University Archive, she looks like your next-door neighbour – bright, energetic, kind – but take another look and you can see something else, something strong and clear-eyed.

“I had a storm in me,” she said when describing herself as a speaker at political meetings in Korumburra at first, then Wonthaggi, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra. The storm was caused by a strong sense of social justice that drove her to political activism. Although she came to it late, she defined herself as a true believer, a Communist through and through.

“Strangely enough,” she said, “I had a middle class, religious background.”

She was born Agnes Smith, in 1908 in Shotts, Scotland, a coal mining town of about 40,000. Her father was a mining contractor, which meant he was in charge of the construction and maintenance of the colliery.

Remo revisited

29/1/2021

The author aboard Sarelle 3, at home on Western Port

By Kevin Chambers

AFTER the Post published my first lot of Remo Memoirs (Weekends at Remo, September 14, 2020), it was nigh on impossible for me not to think about more poignant and funny times and happenings. As my dear Mum, Florence ‘Fofo’ Chambers would have said, “Tales to everything”.

Given the San Remo pier was such an important part of the town’s social and economic fabric it’s not surprising that so much happened in and around this structure. We kids used it as a playground in more ways than one. Playing in the craypot dinghies on the inside arm, paddling our hollow 3-ply “plank” surfboards in and around it, and using the beach between it and the bridge as the “be seen social place”. Swinging off the crane and into the water below was also popular. But this had to be checked first, otherwise a very hard and disastrous landing on one of the fishermen’s crayfish storage “caufs” would be your fate.

History draws a crowd

29/1/2021

Faye and Reece Quildford

By Geoff Ellis

“I’LL try not to rabbit on – but I am a Quilford!” Reece Quilford was addressing a small crowd who were on the edge of the seats.

From the shade of the old Wonthaggi railway station Faye Quilford looked proudly on as her son delivered a well researched 15-minute historical yarn about Jim McDonald, the last of the “shack dwellers” from along the Bunurong Coast.

It was the finale to 22 short talks as part of “Wonthaggi - Discover Our Secret” delivered in the first three weeks of January.

Off to the Powlett River to witness life at the camp

26/11/2020

The thriving Outtrim township, complete with railway station, coffee palace and hotels, ca 1897. Photo, John Henry Harvey, courtesy of State Library of Victoria

From The Argus,
31 December 1909

By our Special Reporter

POWLETT RIVER, Thursday –

“The Powlett! The Powlett! Right away for the Powlett!” several coachmen shouted lustily at the Outtrim Railway station as the train drew up to the platform yesterday morning. There was no occasion for the traveller to ask his way. He placed himself with a number of others in the hands of the coachman, and he remained under his care for a number of hours.

The coachman packed his eight passengers aboard the open coach as if they were so many parcels and drove about two- hundred yards up the steep hill to the North Outtrim township. He stopped at the door of the first hotel and said, “You get dinner here.”

Taking the waters

14/10/2020

Postcard from the collection of the Inverloch Historical Society

By Eulalie Brewster

ONE hundred years ago, the townsfolk of Inverloch decided to build themselves a bathing enclosure for safer swimming in case of sharks in Anderson’s Inlet.

They held several working bees. Working at low tide, they made blocks of concrete. Then they set timber piles in the blocks with angled stay poles at the outer corners of the enclosure. During other low tides, they bolted two parallel rows of flat pieces of timber to the inner and outer sides of the piles, one at the top and one lower down. Finally they inserted upright lengths of milled timber between the two horizontal rows.

Thus the townsfolk had a safe bathing place.

The inside track

1/10/2020

A 1957 Holden FE on 24 per cent Test Hill at the Holden Proving Ground the year it opened. Photo with acknowledgement to Harold Ingamells and the Holden Retirees Club

By Hugh Videion

I’D BEEN an engineer at Holden for 24 years when I was appointed manager of the Proving Ground at Lang Lang. It proved to be one of the best jobs I ever had in my 43-year career with Holden!

Every new Holden since the 48/215 model was subjected to a rigorous and extensive testing program before its release to the public. In the early 1950s, General Motors - Holden recognised that using public roads to test vehicles under controlled conditions was unsustainable in the long term, and that a purpose built test facility was essential for the development of its future models.

Weekends at Remo

14/9/2020

Kevin Chambers, Bonwicks Beach, 1986

By Kevin Chambers

FOR nigh on 70 years, Western Port – and especially San Remo – has been an integral and lasting part of my life. It started in 1952 when my parents, Ernie and Florence ‘Fofo’ Chambers, bought an old shack from “the wilds” of Thomastown, put it on a low loader and plonked it down in Edgar Road, San Remo.

I remember that day, cos Mum took five-year-old me to a nearby park and, because the swings were not properly anchored, I promptly came a cropper. This building and the subsequent extension, was the genesis of our families 60 years of owning holiday houses in ‘Remo’.

My parents and the guests they entertained were a sociable lot, resulting in the unofficial house name of ‘Hangover House’. By dint of the fact that Ernie was a very good pub pianist, this situation extended to either the bottom or the middle pubs. Some unkind soul may have suggested that our place at Edgar Road was the top pub.

The first encounter

2/9/2020

The diary of Captain Pierre-Bernard Milius gives us a rare window into the world of the Bunurong people in Bass Coast before European settlement.

By Pat Macwhirter

IN 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte sent two ships out to Australia as part of the Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, led by Nicolas Baudin. In April, a party of explorers from one of the ships, Le Naturaliste, surveyed Western Port.

Four years earlier George Bass and his crew had seen fires burning on the cliffs on the eastern side of the bay. Now the French explorers finally met with Bunurong people, close to what is now Settlement Point at Corinella.

The following extract, taken from my thesis, is based on diaries of the expedition.

‘Toolumn’s people, who were connected with the Bonkoolawal (Bass River) clan, may have seen the pale men in George Bass’ whale boat sail into Warn-mor-in. Bass named it ‘Western Port’, ‘from its relative situation to every known harbour on the coast.’ ‘Bass River’ was the name given to the stream the Bonkoolawal called ‘Yallock Weardon’ and the island ‘Corriong’ became ‘Phillip Island’ after the white peoples’ Governor.

“Stand clear – here comes Mrs Gilmour!”

21/8/2020

Annie Gilmour, photographed at Cape Paterson, where Gilmour Track was recently named in her honour.

By Catherine Watson

ANNIE Gilmour, as usual, hadn’t noticed the car she’d just run off the road and onto the nature strip, so naturally she had no idea that it was a police car. So she was confused when she got out of her car at the Cape Paterson car park and saw a policeman waving his arms and shouting at her.

And that’s when the campers got involved. They didn’t know the policeman but they did know Mrs Gilmour. She was the one who taught their kids to swim in the shallows of the bay, and fired up the boilers at the surf club so they could have a hot shower after their swim. Five pence a shower, with the funds going into the club’s coffers. Annie Gilmour was a legend at Cape.

As the policeman pulled out his notebook and pen, the campers started booing and hissing. More campers arrived to see what it was about and joined in. “Oh, forget it!” the copper said, and stormed away.

In search of Truginini

13/8/2020

Truginini, photographed in 1866. Photo: Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office

By Ian Hayward Robinson

CASSANDRA Pybus's new book about Truginini, a Nuenonne woman from Bruny Island, off the south-east coast of Tasmania, is of special relevance to Bass Coast residents, as one of the most fateful episodes of her life occurred right here, near the mouth of the Powlett River, when she and her four indigenous companions were responsible for the deaths of two white whalers, an action for which the two males in her party were subsequently hanged.

Truganini survived and became famous in her later years as “the last Tasmanian Aborigine”. That she was the “last” was of course wishful thinking on the part of the Tasmanian white population. According to the ABS, there are currently about 20,000 people of Aboriginal descent living in Tasmania. Truginini’s celebrity presence in Hobart lasted until her death in 1876, and, as we shall see, for many years beyond.

Ciconte Close

28/7/2020

The renaming of Ciconte Close honours Domenico and Fiorina Ciconte and their love of Wonthaggi.

By Carolyn Landon

CHANGING the name of a street in Wonthaggi – or anywhere – is quite a process. On February 6 2020, the Bass Coast Shire Place Naming Committee met to consider road naming, specifically re-naming the short southern section of Loch Street, in Wonthaggi.

Submissions for a new name had been called for a year earlier, in February 2019. In March Irene Williams, secretary of the Wonthaggi & District Historical Society, wrote a letter on behalf of the society requesting that the street be renamed either Ciconte Close or Lane or Place.

Hospital clock ticks again

11/6/2020

Michael Jones (left) and Mike Linsell with Wonthaggi Hospital's
old staff time clock

By Brad Lester

FOR decades, an old time staff clock sat in a Wonthaggi Hospital workshop after being used possibly 100 years ago.

Just last week, the clock ticked again thanks to the magic of Bass Coast Health maintenance man Mike Linsell.

Mike fashioned a new part to replace a broken bit, enabling the pendulum to swing once again and the hands to move.

“We were pretty excited when we got the clock going again,” Mike said.

All stand for the Magistrate!

28/5/2020

Bachelors' Camp Wonthaggi, 1915. Postcard: State Library of Victoria.
The camp was home to several thousand single men.

By Carolyn Landon

IN 1911 Wonthaggi was trying hard to become a respectable town. Early in that year it became a borough, which meant that the Progress Association gave way to the Borough Council in making decisions about the goings on in the town. The council took responsibility for: supporting Dr Lancelot Sleeman in administering vaccinations to all children on the first Monday in the month from 2 to 4 pm, under the Victorian Vaccination Act; setting fees for collection of ‘pans’; making regulations about stray dogs; distributing licences for men’s clubs; supporting new businesses and making demands of the state government to supply the town with an adequate number of police, among other things.

The need for more police was apparent on New Year’s Eve 30 December 1910. Wonthaggi was a town of just over 4000 people. Most were single men, many married but with wives nowhere in sight. On this particular New Year’s Eve, according to The Sentinel Times, groups of ‘Sports’ gathered together and indulged in carol singing. They sang “We won’t go home until morning” at top volume and it was reported “a few didn’t reach home until afternoon, but no bones were broken”.