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Crises I have known

15/4/2020

 
PictureAn outdoor school session for children affected by infant paralysis (polio), Frankston Children's Hospital, Jackson's Road, Mt. Eliza, 1936.
Up to 40,000 Australians, mostly children, developed paralytic polio.
Photo: State Library of Victoria.
​Esteemed local elder Eulalie Brewster looks back on some of the turning points of history she has experienced in her 93 years. 

By Eulalie Brewster

The polio epidemic
 
In 1937, when I was in grade five, the polio epidemic meant that for eight weeks we couldn’t go to school and school lessons came through the post. It must have been spring – October and November – and it felt like a holiday. We spent the time building huts, climbing large tea trees in back garden, reading, helping with chores. We had a big garden for play.  A friend sometimes came to play. Her older sister had a crippled leg from a polio infection some 10 years earlier.​

Prior to that, as our house had a spare bedroom, Mum had a door made opening to the garden at the side of the house and a carpenter cousin built an asbestos sheet room that became a kitchen for the flat.  This was let to a country family of mother, son and small daughter who was strapped to a mobile stretcher so that she could have medical attention in Melbourne not available at Wycheproof where they usually lived with the father. 
 
At the time the illness was referred to as infantile paralysis.  Polio was a term that seemed to come in later with vaccines and injections.
 
I don’t remember feeling scared.  We felt safe at home.  When we went back to school some of the children wore callipers on their legs and some needed help.  ​
 
The Great Depression
 
Before I was old enough to start school in 1932 I can remember occasions when worn-looking men came to our front door asking my mother to buy small items – safety pins, cards of needles from small to darning size, hairpins and shoe laces for only threepence or sixpence.  She bought an item when she could but often had to refuse for lack funds as there was not much to spare in our household.  She explained to my smaller brother and me that these men had been soldiers but now they had no work so we should help them when we could.

World War Two
 
I was at Hampton High School when war was declared in 1939.  I didn’t listen to the radio news but I saw newspapers and heard family discussions.  There was no real fear but an awareness of the changes.
PictureA Melbourne resident digs an air raid shelter in the backyard. Photo: Museums Victoria
The following year our basketball court in the girls’ playground was dug up for air raid trenches for the whole school.  We had to practise use of these at times but fortunately they were never needed in reality.
 
At home our windows were criss-crossed with sticky paper and night times brought blackouts. My brother and I spent time digging a dug out in the back garden in case of air raids in a coastal area.  We couldn’t dig very deep for the pure sand kept falling into the hole.
 
My mother and grandmother lived through both the first and second world wars. Four of my cousins only a year or two older than I went into the Air Force.  One did not return.  An older cousin had served in WWI and returned not well but he was called up for duty when the war situation was most serious.
 
We children accepted it but many school friends were unhappy because they had fathers and big brothers in the Forces.
 
After finishing high school in Form 5 I became a student teacher at Hampton State School until I turned 18.  Then I went to rural training for a fortnight and was appointed to a state school at Sandy Creek beyond Wodonga. This school of 11 pupils was held in a back room of the local hall.  Apart from a church building half a mile further up the road and a cemetery half a mile back towards the north that constituted Sandy Creek.  The post office was in a front room of a house by the road. It was a long trip from Melbourne to Wodonga to change to rail motor on the old Tallangatta line for Huon.  One trip took 14 hours for our train frequently had to go to the side lines while troop trains were on main line.
 
The next year I went to Melbourne Teachers’ College but only for a year as there was such a shortage of teachers due to war. And that year each of us had to spend one term of the three in a rural school!  My bicycle travelled in the guard’s van to each of these wartime rural school appointments so I was able to tour each district and cycle to a nearby rural school to learn from a more experienced teacher for one day.

PictureThree friends, part of the crowd that gathered in Bourke Street
to celebrate the end of the Second World War, August 15 1945.
Photo: Australian War Memorial
​I was in college in Melbourne when war in Europe ceased so was there for the VE commemoration service. I recall the relief and thankfulness at the end of hostilities in Europe.

​Next term I was at a rural school at Mt Duneed on the road from Geelong to Torquay.  I heard about the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan from the family with whom I boarded. That was the end of the war in the Pacific.  I went with a local family to the thanksgiving service for Victory in the Pacific (VP Day) in Cardinia Park in Geelong. I still have the order of service. I have written in it 15-8-45.  It was a fine sunny day and the park was packed. People were subdued for the service but sang the hymns most heartily.  At the conclusion they were happy but still fairly subdued.

 
How did the war change me? I think it gave me a greater appreciation of the differences in people.  
 
Eulie Brewster OAM was born in Melbourne in 1926. She was a founding member of the Inverloch Historical Society and has written four books on aspects of Inverloch’s history.  ​​

Natasha
17/4/2020 02:27:47 pm

Human beings have an amazing capacity to adapt and work with change. Thank you for sharing these inspiring stories. When we return to work, business, play and life - we will do it in an adapted way, think outside the box, and we will do it together - whether we ever have a vaccination or not.

KIM VENESS
17/4/2020 02:59:16 pm

Why do we continue to ignore these forgotten memories from our Grandmothers & Grandfathers? Mostly Grandmothers? 💖

Pamela
18/4/2020 10:44:31 am

Hello Kim, by virtue of the fact that this article has been printed, it seems clear to me that we do not ignore these memories. As a member of a district historical group, I can assure you those memories are being recorded and are available for everyone to see. Check out your local historical groups when all this is over and you will be pleasantly surprised.

Daryl Hook
17/4/2020 03:32:32 pm

Thanks Eulalie your memories made excellent reading .The bit about Post Office on the front verandah reminded me that Margarets grandmother ran the Pound Creek post office from her verandah?We even have a photo to prove it. Cheers Daryl

Wendy Davies
17/4/2020 05:20:31 pm

Thanks Eulalie, it is a great reminder to those of thus that until now have led a life free of these types of events. My mother was in London in WWII and tells me about how she was evacuated to the countryside where she enjoyed freedoms that she would not have had in London.

Rosemary
17/4/2020 07:26:32 pm

When I was 10yo the threat of a 3rd world war was areal fear due to the Cuba crisis . Never for got those few weeks. So my point is how much it affects the children during all of this.
We have had it easy compared with our parents. I appreciate the article written by Eulie Brewster

Carole Johnston
18/4/2020 12:19:13 pm

I so enjoyed reading your article Eualie. Polio still left its mark when I was at school in the 50's.The sister of a friend spent her days on an elevated bed with huge bicycle wheels and others had calipers on their legs. Alan Marshall came to Hampton High school when I was in Year 7 to talk about his childhood after writing " I Can Jump Puddles"
The epidemic I can recall was Scarlet Fever. The hospitals were so overcrowded that because my case was relatively mild I stayed at home in isolation. A barrier across the bedroom door so my younger brother and sister couldn't come in and ihad daily visits from a doctor. He gave me horrible huge injections for the first week then revolting tablets to suck. Imagine mum's horror when she found I was hiding them under the pillow!! I think I was about 8 at the time and books and coloring were about my only entertainment.
Didn't Hampton High School see some changes. We were in church halls and portable classrooms at Hampton State school down the road to start our secondary education. There'd been a fire in the main building. Later that basketball court was again sacrificed for a school Hall and now it's just a housing development.
Now isolation give more time for reflection and enjoying the garden and local environment.

John Gascoigne link
19/4/2020 03:41:53 pm

Ninety-three years bring a lot of memories. Thank you, Eulalie. The Scouts’ motto “Be prepared” produced an air raid shelter in our backyard during World War 2, but my mum famously filled it in after scooping out one too many drowned hedgehogs. In the 1950s, the motto also had us sent home from primary school after any big earthquake. Then, from our dad’s tool shed roof in the backyard, my brothers and I would peer over our neighbours’ hedge, prepared for the ‘tidal wave’ we’d been warned about. This was, after all, in Blenheim, near Cook Strait in the Shaky Isles. The wave, which, disappointingly to my overactive mind, never arrived, would have been in fact a tsunami, a word that came to (un)popular use decades later.

liana link
28/11/2022 08:46:57 pm

thanks for info


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