Essays on Bass Coast local history

They worked hard in Wonthaggi’s early days and they partied just as hard.

By Carolyn Landon

BEFORE the “talkies” made their impact on social traditions at the several cinemas in Wonthaggi, young people got together at dances. Peruse the Powlett Express or the Sentinel – and even the Criterion – from 1909 until the mid-1930s and the columns are littered with advertising for dances at halls scattered round the district. Among the halls, there seemed to be a roster so there was at least one dance being held somewhere every week and, more importantly, so that the different bands – or orchestras, if you were lucky – were available to play.

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Chicory and the Island

14/5/2024

Robert Cleeland and Barry Toovey working at a Phillip Island chicory kiln, 1961. Photo: Laurie Dixon

By Pamela Rothfield

THE root vegetable chicory is synonymous with Phillip Island, with the first crops being grown on the island as far back as 1869. It is said that the famous botanist Dr Ferdinand von Mueller, who established Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Garden, advised a number of the early settlers on Phillip Island to avoid planting crops such as wheat and barley and instead grow crops of either chicory or mustard – which would be either too bitter or too hot for the destructive pests such as caterpillars.

Many took his advice and chicory, which was used as a substitute for coffee or as an addition to coffee essence, became the staple crop of the island for about 100 years.

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These precious things

16/4/2024

Arthur Constable's tenor horn ... it’s not just the objects in the Wonthaggi Museum that intrigue
but the stories that come with them

By Mark Robertson

THE Wonthaggi & District Historical Society is fortunate to be gifted a wide variety of objects to add to its extensive and diverse collection held in the Railway Station Museum. All the donations are interesting, especially if there is a story or provenance available to go with them.

Things that come to us have usually been once beloved or valued or are reminders of painful but important memories that have perhaps been forgotten Often, when they find their way to the museum, they are in less than pristine condition. They have possibly been left in cupboards and drawers or away in attics or corners of sheds waiting to be re-discovered after decades of neglect have masked their value.

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The wreck of the Speke

11/3/2024

By Pam Rothfield

IT was 22 February 1906, a wild Thursday afternoon and the 3,000-ton steel sailing ship, The Speke, was bound for Geelong to load a cargo of wheat after having completed her voyage from Peru to Sydney Heads.

The Speke was the second largest triple masted full-rigged vessel afloat, only being beaten by her sister ship The Ditton by an inch or two.

She had passed the Wilson Promontory and now faced the full force of the gale, battling the mountainous seas of Bass Strait and in the words of the first mate Mr Cooke, they were “as high as the topgallant mast”.

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Time at the Tech

16/2/2024

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Wonthaggi Technical School, 1963

By Bruce Phillips

I ONLY lived in Wonthaggi for a total of 18 years but they were years that had a profound effect on me. My parents – Jack and Agnes Phillips – had a grocery at 72 McBride Avenue where South Gippsland Photographic now is. My first recollection of the “Tech” was standing outside our shop and looking up at an imposing brick monolith. Miss (Win) Baker’s music room was located in that building – right on the corner of Watt Street and McBride. In the warmer weather the songs would drift out of that room and down McBride Avenue.

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The master muralist

9/12/2023

Dennis Leversha’s experience as a stage scenery painter stood him in good stead when he began painting the extraordinary murals that tell Wonthaggi’s history.

By Carolyn Landon

IN 2006 after renovation of the Wonthaggi Railway Station was painstakingly completed over several years, the Wonthaggi Historical Society was finally able to return to permanently inhabit where it had been located since the 1980s. It was then that Irene Williams enlisted Dennis Leversha along with his wife, Bev, to help her (and many other dedicated WHS members) organise the displays for the new museum.

When I first joined the Historical Society in that same year – 2006 – and began writing the PLOD Essays once a month, I witnessed the energy put in by the Levershas in arranging displays and also in figuring out ways to take the displays on tours.

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The toast of Phillip Island

16/11/2023

By Pam Rothfield

THE beautiful Isle of Wight hotel was a most imposing sight to greet the arriving passengers at the front door of Cowes from as early as 1870. It was known as being the premier accommodation house on the Island for many years.

This essay was first published on the Phillip Island and District Historical Society website.

Starting life as a two-bedroom wattle and daub cottage, the stately hotel was built around the original structure, developing into what was described at the time as one of the most comfortable hotels in Victoria. From its confines, the sounds of revelry often punctured the evening quiet.

Described in the press in 1889, as a “picturesque Swiss-looking house with its peaked gables and galleries and verandas”, the original Isle of Wight hotel was the toast of Phillip Island.

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From Caridà to Wonthaggi

10/10/2023

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SAM (Sebastian) Gatto is well known for his works about the rich history of Wonthaggi, including books about the hospital and local contribution in the two world wars.

His latest book is a lot more personal. A Sort of History of Me, My Family… And a Cow Named Gina tells the story of the Gatto family’s migration in 1951 from the village of Caridà, in the south of Italy, to the coal town of Wonthaggi. Much of the story is seen through the eyes of eight-year-old Sam, who, as the eldest child, is invested with great responsibilities to help his parents and siblings along the journey.

A Sort of History was shortlisted for the 2022 Victorian Community History Awards.

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The homing instinct

22/9/2023

This story was first published in The Current community newspaper in September 2004. Cherry McFree died in 2018, aged 93.

A lifelong Phillip Islander, Cherry McFee didn’t like to go too far from the sea. Photo: Gill Heal

By Gill Heal

CHERRY McFee remembers being a little scared of her grandfather, hot tempered William Thomas McFee, ironmonger and importer. But then, he had a reason to be cross. He'd lost most of his fortune in the 1890s Depression.

William Thomas - there's been a William going back through eight generations - had bought land in Rhyll and built a holiday house there. When the crash occurred he sold up the family home in Auburn and took up farming in Rhyll.

And this is where young Cherry McFee grew up, going to school in the Mechanics Hall which her grandfather helped to establish.

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Hanley's Dairy

11/8/2023

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Photo courtesy of Altona Historical Society

By Carolyn Landon

LAST summer the Wonthaggi Historical Society held a series of “15-Minute Talks,” which usually lasted for half an hour and only ended when the mine whistle blew everyone out of their seats and rendered the speaker silent. The talks were well attended and always interesting.

One of the most thorough and meticulously prepared talks, that could have kept the audience spell-bound for another hour were it not for the mine whistle, was given by Peter Hanley. It was based on the recollections Peter (the second born of seven children) and his mother had of Hanley’s Dairy, which operated on McKenzie Street from 1960 until 1983 and was owned and managed by Peter’s parents, Chick and Sadie Hanley. (While Peter and his mother were comparing memories of the family business and the people they worked with, they sometimes had to correct one another and had to admit that others might have different recollections. Nevertheless, the detail is wonderful.)

Their story takes us back to a time when milk was delivered daily to households and businesses by horse and cart. The sound of yesteryear that many of us still remember is the clip-clop of the draught horses pulling milk wagons through quiet streets before dawn, accompanied by the jangle of bottles in their crates and the sound of running footsteps made by the milky as he ran past the bedrooms of those just waking to drop off his delivery on the back verandas of the kitchens and retrieve empty bottles which were noisily placed in crates on the wagon while the faithful horse kept going slowly through the streets it knew by heart.

Daily routine
Running a business such as Hanley’s Dairy in the `60s and `70s, before the horse-and-cart days were overtaken by motorised milk trucks, was complex and relied on honest workers dedicated to the smooth running of a stressful daily routine that could easily come undone. It required workers willing to rise at 4am and set to work without delay loading carts from the cool room with milk (bottled or bulk) and cream (bottled), harnessing horses in their stables, leading them to their milk carts and hitching them up; then commencing home deliveries in the pre-dawn to be completed by 8am, when they would return to the dairy and unload and clean the milk carts, all before washing and cleaning and releasing the horses into their turn-out paddocks.

Various other tasks also had to be completed (some of which were the responsibility of the Hanley children before and after school). These included bringing coal from the backyard coal stack to the kitchen; cleaning the stables, the washroom, and milk carts and trucks; sweeping the landing and loading bay; stabling horses in the late afternoon; delivering late orders; and myriad household jobs. Most importantly, they had to make sure the cool room was ready later in the day for Arthur’s Dairy milk truck from Frankston to deliver the next day’s supply of milk and take away the rinsed and stacked crates of empty bottles, which would be sterilised and re-filled at Arthur’s.

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Our whale turns 100

19/7/2023

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Hundreds of sightseers made the long trek out to Wreck Beach to see the dead whale, July 1923. Photos: Wonthaggi & District Historical Society

By Catherine Watson

OF ALL the objects in the Wonthaggi Museum, this is Mark Robertson’s favourite: a vertebra from the 74ft whale that washed up at Wreck beach, now Harmers Haven, 100 years ago (July 4th, 1923, to be exact) after heavy winter gales.

The centenary of the whale’s beaching was marked this month in typical Wonthaggi style. The Wonthaggi Hotel, AKA Taberners Hotel or The Whalebones, tied ribbons to the iconic whale jawbones at the front entrance. And on Thursday, members of the Wonthaggi Historical Society gathered for a supper of fish and chips and some good old-fashioned yarning about our whale.

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Historic hospital plans return to Wonthaggi

23/6/2023

By Brad Lester

Architectural plans for the first permanent Wonthaggi Hospital dating from 1913 have been returned home after a surprise find at a church sale in regional Victoria.

The meticulous hand-drawn plans were found at the Clunes Presbytery Open Garden Garage Sale by a connection of Wonthaggi historian Sam Gatto.

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Our neighbours

15/6/2023

No 6, left, and No 2 Graham Street, Wonthaggi, 1950s. Janet Akers lived in No 2 after her marrige then moved to No 6. This was the outskirts of Wonthaggi at the time.

By Janet Akers

WHEN I was married we first lived in No. 2 Graham Street Wonthaggi. There were no neighbours next door on the left side. The railway line connecting the Kirrak mine with the Wonthaggi Railway Station ran behind our house and crossed the road to Inverloch to our left. Next door to our right was No. 6 where my mother-in-law and two sisters-in-law, Pearl and Thelma, lived.

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Tall tales and true from island’s past

17/5/2023

By Eleanor McKay

HAVE you ever wondered why the main street of Cowes is called Thompson Avenue, or just when motorsport became part of Phillip Island's culture?

The answers to these questions and more can be found in Once upon an island, a collection of 39 stories that chart the history of Phillip Island from 1868.

The stories were originally conceived and published by the Phillip Island and San Remo Advertiser in 2018 as part of the celebrations to mark 150 years of European settlement.

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Unveiling the stories of Wonthaggi

9/5/2023

Members of the Wonthaggi Historical Society, councillors and council staff gathered for the unveiling.

THE local significance and tragic history of the No. 20 coal mine shaft site, where 17 miners died, is now memorialised with new signage and in a podcast series documenting the heritage of Wonthaggi.

Bass Coast Shire Council and the Wonthaggi and District Historical Society partnered with Storytowns, a group of travel-loving adventurers who record interviews with regional personalities to produce interactive geo-located podcast tours, to create a series about Wonthaggi.

The Storytowns Wonthaggi History Tour features seven stories about local icons, including the No. 20 Shaft on Bass Highway where 17 men lost their lives in two separate explosions on February 20, 1931 and February 15 1937.

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Dino team return to their happy hunting ground

14/2/2023

Mr Dinosaur Mike Cleeland. right, with trainee dino hunters at Flat Rocks.

THIS week a team of "dino hunters" embark on the first dinosaur dig at Inverloch since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team of 20, including leading palaeontologists, researchers and volunteers will start excavating sections of the intertidal (foreshore) zone at Flat Rocks near The Caves, south of Inverloch, looking for fossilised bones and evidence of the prehistoric age.

The Caves is a well-known site that harbours precious polar dinosaur fossils dating back 126 million years. It will also become one of the sites in the planned Bass Coast Dinosaurs Trail, to celebrate the area’s fascinating pre-historic heritage.

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No. 5 Brace

14/2/2023

An inspiration to generations of artists and photographers, the bones of the last remaining brace are a moving reminder of Wonthaggi’s extraordinary mining history.

By Carolyn Landon

WHEN we moved from our farm in the Strzelecki hills to Wonthaggi in 2005 our focus was mainly on the beaches. We would wander from the Channel at Cape Paterson past First and Second Surf beaches towards Harmers Haven, past Wreck Beach where the “biggest whale ever” had been beached and where the rusted ribs left over from the Artisan wreckage lay. It took a bit of time and familiarity for us to discover the path to Williamsons Beach through the scrub followed by the walk to Powlett River, our eyes on the waves and surfers rather than the dunes and nesting birds. Later, with some guidance, we found the path through the bush to Cutlers Beach at the end of Chisholm Road and recognised the middens there spread out over millennia by the Bunurong.

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Just what the doctor ordered

9/11/2022

Leo O’Connor, dispensary manager from 1953 to 1975. “The Dispensary” turns 100 this month.

IN November 1909, after the Victorian government established the State Coal Mine, and “the children of Eureka”, as Mr Alf Opie, a pioneer past Secretary of the Dispensary called them, set out to establish a welfare system based on co-operation and solidarity.

The Miners Friendly Societies Co-operative Dispensary - better known as The Dispensary" - was an integral part of this system. The Dispensary celebrates its centenary this month.

By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Wonthaggi community had a Medical Benefit Fund, a Hospital Benefit Fund based on the principles of democratic co-operation. All the employees of the State Coal Mine had to be members of these funds. The employees paid compulsory levies and in exchange received free medical and hospital treatment.

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Tall tales and the mighty leek

22/9/2022