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.
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.
| Cherry's father Stan - "He was gorgeous. I loved him" - was William Thomas's seventh son. He took up land across the water from Rhyll at Long Point, on the opposite side of McFee's Rd from his brother Les. He married a young teacher at the school. Cherry was their fourth child. A bird sings somewhere, a liquid melody. "It wants to be fed," she says, indicating the Grey Shrike-thrush outside the window. "You'll have to wait," she tells it. Cherry remembers the tree pullers - "huge clumsy things" - her father used to clear the land. He milked cows, grew chicory and went oystering, dredging the bottom of the bay with net bags. Once her brother opened an oyster and found a pearl - all beautiful and milky - and though she begged him for it, he lost it. "We had a wonderful childhood here, roaming the beach," she says. They drove the spring cart around the road to school picking up all the kids on the way. Nancy, their chestnut horse, would wander off and feed by the roadside. "But at 3 o'clock you'd look out the window and there she'd be, coming back for us." |  Island farewells Cherry McFee February 12, 2018 - Much-loved Island identity Cherry McFee was farewelled by the Phillip Island community recently at a large funeral at St Philips Anglican Church, Cowes. |
Stan served as a councillor and shire president and a director of the Archies Creek butter factory. When her mother died in 1966, Cherry left her job in Melbourne and looked after him for 16 years. "We were mates," she says. Cherry herself worked in the Phillip Island Shire offices for 20 years.
Today, Cherry is on the Committee of Friends of Churchill Island and is the secretary of the Phillip Island Historical Society. She's also the treasurer of the Bass-Phillip Island Anglican Church. She worries that there's no-one who wants to take on this job. "The GST frightens them off," she says regretfully, "but it's easy. I love figures."
Out in the garden camelias tumble down trellises and there are daffodils everywhere. "Oh, it's a bush garden," she says deprecatingly. She's sad that grubs and possums and age are slowly killing the oldest trees. She does all the mowing and the pruning and says the garden is therapy. She looks through the trees to the bay and says, "I can't live without seeing the sea, the peace and tranquillity."
If she had to leave Long Point, she says, she would go to Rhyll. "Our roots are there." She's reminded of that old, old Phillip Island story about the horses that were sold to a man over at Hastings. They swam back. Apparently a fisherman quietly minding his business out in the Western Passage got a terrible fright when he heard a snort from the water behind him.
"It's the homing instinct," says Cherry.
Today, Cherry is on the Committee of Friends of Churchill Island and is the secretary of the Phillip Island Historical Society. She's also the treasurer of the Bass-Phillip Island Anglican Church. She worries that there's no-one who wants to take on this job. "The GST frightens them off," she says regretfully, "but it's easy. I love figures."
Out in the garden camelias tumble down trellises and there are daffodils everywhere. "Oh, it's a bush garden," she says deprecatingly. She's sad that grubs and possums and age are slowly killing the oldest trees. She does all the mowing and the pruning and says the garden is therapy. She looks through the trees to the bay and says, "I can't live without seeing the sea, the peace and tranquillity."
If she had to leave Long Point, she says, she would go to Rhyll. "Our roots are there." She's reminded of that old, old Phillip Island story about the horses that were sold to a man over at Hastings. They swam back. Apparently a fisherman quietly minding his business out in the Western Passage got a terrible fright when he heard a snort from the water behind him.
"It's the homing instinct," says Cherry.