Sad End to June

It had been my intention to do a post before the end of June but I didn't feel I had much to say. It has been a dry month, apparently we have entrered an El Ninio phase, my friend Glen who records the rainfall told me yesterday only 35mm of rain had fallen for the month in Gembrook. It is dry underfoot which is good in a way for someone like myself who works outside. And there has been no problem to easily find dry kindling wood under the trees for the fire each day.

Business has been brisk. We are kept going picking flowers for the herb and spice people and foliage and spring blossom for the florists. Not that it's spring yet but some of the early trees start in June as does the japonica which is in full swing now. I have had other commitments also and last weekend I attended an historical society conference all day Saturday and then helped Rob and Hao cut back the garden on Sunday at their flat as they are moving into Hao's house in the next week or so and didn't want to risk being slugged for their bond money by leaving an excuse for it in the form of an overgrown garden.

A highlight of the Saturday conference at Ringwood was the talk by Bruce Postle who was photographer at the Brisbane Courier mail for some years then more than 20 years at the Age in Melbourne. He showed many wonderful photos on a slide screen and gave an insight into the story behind them. The conference was attended by historical societies from all over Melbourne's east including the Waverley Historical Society. Each society including us had a table display and sold books, I bought 3 of theirs and gave them to Jod who was rapt.

On our way home tonight we had to give way to a CFA truck which was in a hurry and turned off at Avonsleigh when it met up with another truck. I gave it no more thought till I was in the bath and heard on the tranny 7pm news that a car had hit a tree in Phillip Rd killing 3 teenage passengers, two girls and a boy.

I have been feeling a little anxious due the Greek financial crisis thing as Lib and I are booked into a week on Crete in September. Who knows what will happen, or if we have to cancel. It wouldn't be much use going if we couldn't buy petrol for our hire car.

And I have had some pain and tightness return as I have reduced the cortisone. It's a bit depressing. But in comparison to the unfortunate families of the three young people killed tonight I have nothing to complain or feel down about.

Mildura Trip (3)

I'm weeks behind I know that but I wanted to finish this off as its been rolling round in my head.
I had some breakfast with Bert Penny on the Saturday morning before he left about 8.30am. I talked a little while with Shirley before I too left to take a photo of the Methodist church where Doug and Dot were married in 1946.

I bought a long black coffee at Macca's and headed off down the highway towards Ouyen in bright sunshine and feeling happy knowing I had two days to get home at leisurely pace in my own company which I have always liked, and the scenery of rural Victoria, always a total pleasure.

There was a Mallee flowering on the roadside, which must be an early, or late, variety, so I pulled up some way down the track to look at the buds. I broke off a twig to bring home to consult a tree book when I got home. It is still behind me here in the office and I have not yet researched it. There was quite a bit of mallee firewood about as limbs had broken from the trees and I had my chainsaw in the van so cut some up and loaded several armfuls into the van. It was dry and and gave wonderful heat to a number of fires when I got back. I was amazed at the amount of litter  so I picked up some cans for Jod.

I turned off on the road to Robinvale thinking I might find where Doug's friend Bucky had lived and have a chat to his neighbours. Henry Buchecker was Doug's best mate from their army days. I knew Henry had died as Bert Penny had told me. Anyway I was in no hurry and couldn't recall ever being to Robinvale before except to perhaps pass through on my way to beekeepers conference at Mildura in the 1970's. I hadn't worked out my route home although I had a rough idea of going through Ballarat to find the house Doug grew up in. Deanie Twaits, wife of one of Doug's cousins, had given me a photocopy of a photo of the house and I knew the name of the street it was in, but not the number.

Gas Engine

Henry Buchecker Block 36B

The Murray at Boundary bend -black box tree in foreground

Ron and Nance Tonkin's house Maryborough

The drive to Robinvale was totally charming as I travelled through irrigation farms of vegetables, almonds, grapes. I was struck by the immense value of the Murray River to agriculture and as a water supply to towns along its length, including cities like Mildura.

Lettuce

I pulled into a Robinvale servo and fueled up, and as I paid I bought a map of Victoria from which to plan my route home. The man serving said "What are you looking for," when I asked him where the Info sign was in Robinvale. I told him I would like to know where Henry Buchecker lived before he died as I was researching some old soldiers. He then said, "Hang on a minute mate while I serve this bloke, Bucky's daughter just walked past with another lady not five minutes ago, I'll tell you where she lives." He then asked another bloke to show me, and he told me to follow his car which I did. The daughter wasn't yet home from her walk so I went to the museum opposite the servo and found a picture of Bucky among the soldier settlers, and I had a good look around and one of the attendants gave me a demo of an old gas engine that 120 years ago powered a generator for lighting in a 32 berth shearing shed.

When I went back to Henry's daughter's place she was home and we had a long chat. She was the youngest of six children and her family had a magnificent garden around the house on their fruit block thanks to Doug who brought up trees and shrubs on his regular visits. When the block was sold the garden was bulldozed. Henry moved into the old people's home where daughter Carol works. He died a few years ago.

I drove on to Swan Hill. The road follows the Murray closely so it was most interesting. It was about 4pm when I checked into a motel. I played with my smart phone trying to do various things and listened to the Demons get thumped by Port Adelaide. There was a Vietnamese restaurant across the road which provide me dinner after a flutter on the pokies at the RSL. I lost $20 quickly so got out of there fast.

Next day I drove to Kerang and turned off to Bridgewater, then Tarnagulla, a fascinating old town looking like it hasn't changed in 100 plus years, Dunolly, Maryborough, onto Ballarat where I looked for Doug's old house in central Ballarat. There were many old houses similar and I couldn't be sure which was where Doug first lived. They were all of the period and are heritage listed I believe.

In Maryborough I came across Ron and Nance Tonkin's house where I stayed sometimes while I worked for them in late 1974 and early 1975. Most of that period I was camped in the Mallee with Ron's brother Jack in a caravan in heatwave conditions of close to 40c or more every day. We went back to Maryborough with a load of honey supers, then returned to the bees. It was nostalgic for me. Ron, Nance and Jack are all long dead. I stayed in a back room with a ghost who visited. It was weird. This ghost stood over the bed when I woke in the middle of the night, watching me. Don't know who it was. It disappeared when I moved. I didn't like to say anything to Ron so I didn't mention it. Later I planned to ask him one day when I met him, if I ever did again, but it didn't happen. 

As I left Ballarat a bitingly cold southerley change with rain came and my drive home through Melbourne and into the hills in dark wet conditions was tedious. I was home about 6.30pm, Lib and Gord had the fire going and a roast on. 

*When I have inserted the photos on this post they do not go where I want them to, which would have made for better reading, but have bunched up and are out of sequence. Sorry about that.

Mildura Trip (2)

It was around mid May (2015) when I finally felt I could take the time to visit Bert and Shirley Penny in Mildura. I’d rung them more than a year earlier, say April 2014, to talk about Doug. I spoke to Shirley Penny on that occasion and she immediately said, on hearing that I was to write Doug’s biography, what a wonderful man he was and what a strong impact he had made on many young lives. She said Bert was having on operation to remove cataracts in May, so I should leave my visit till June. Well Mildura’s a long way from Gembrook, at least 600km so I knew I’d need three free days to go up and interview the Pennys and come home again. Three free days in a row are hard to find when always there’s work at farm and home then family commitments and trips that had precedence.

In early March Gord and I drove to Canberra to watch a World Cup cricket match, and then Lib and Gord and I went to Adelaide soon after, again driving. I’d enjoyed both these driving trips despite the hours stuck behind the wheel so the prospect of driving to Mildura and back was not so daunting, in fact it was now attractive and viewed by me as another little holiday.

I rang the Pennys again, after finding their number in my Doug file, in a letter that Brian Weightman had written to me after my enquiries started in early 2014. Brian, the father of champion Richmond rover of the 1980’s, said that Bert had retained friendship with Doug and had visited him a few times at Emerald. It was Shirley I spoke to again who said, after I told her I could come up next weekend or the one after, that next week was difficult as Bert was helping his daughter move from Redcliffs back to Mildura so the second weekend would be better. Then they were going away on a cruise for a few weeks early June. I said I’d ring next week to confirm.

Next week I rang and spoke to Shirley first then Bert. In my mind I would go to Mildura on the Friday and stay in a motel that night and visit them on the Saturday afternoon and then come home on the Sunday after another night in the motel. Bert said he was organized to cook on a barbecue for a club or something on the Saturday and also was helping his son move afterwards. He suggested I come up on the Friday and stay at their house and we could have our discussion on the Friday night as he’d have to leave quite early on the Saturday morning. I was not in a position to pick and choose so I agreed. He asked me when I was leaving Gembrook and I said I’d leave about 10am after getting a blood test done in Emerald for a medical appointment I had early the next week.

Bert said with no hesitation, “Get the blood test done on Thursday and leave at 9am Friday. Stop every couple of hours and have a walk about and a drink of water. Allow 8 hours and get to our house in daylight if you can as it’ll be hard to find in the dark.”

I could tell straight away that Bert at age 87 was full bottle. I took his advice and did the blood thing on the Thursday. I drove out of my driveway at 9.02am after a busy morning and as it happened I found the Penny’s house as the light began to fade, having followed the directions Bert gave me on the phone. When I knocked on the door it was 5.05 pm.

It was a good drive up. I went the back way through Yea and Seymour to Bendigo via Puckapunyal and Heathcote, a route I knew well from my years in the Dep’t of Agriculture, and many trips to Bendigo over the last thirty five years to visit Lib’s sister and her family, often buying honey from Wardy at Heathcote also, when we used to sell a lot of honey at the farm. From Bendigo on it was pretty much all new to me, not having been to Mildura for a long time. The road wasn’t busy and it was nice to be in expansive open space.

It was lush green scenery when I left home and it started to get drier as I approached Seymour, worse the nearer I got to Bendigo, then worse again as I travelled north-west. There were large areas that looked like they had been harvested last year, with stubble and little if any new growth. I don’t know if these were left fallow as a rotation or simply hadn’t been ploughed because it has been too dry. There were large paddocks that looked as if they had been sown but no crop was showing, while others had a tinge of green in the drills. Oddly to me these worked paddocks seemed to have more growth the closer I came to Mildura. This is explained when I read last week’s Weekly Times that said crop prospects were a little better in the Mildura area than other parts of western Victoria as they were luckier with autumn rainfall.

I was surprised when Bert Penny came to the door to find that he was a tall man of robust stature. As he was 87 I had expected an elderly gent quite frail. There was nothing frail about Shirley either; again I had been expecting a little old lady. As soon as I walked in the door I could smell pea and ham soup cooking. Bert showed me my room, I returned to the kitchen and we got straight down to talking about Doug, with me making notes with pen and pad. Shirley led the conversation while Bert busied with other things and contributed here and there but happy to let Shirley have her head. After a while he went to the stove and attended the food, saying the soup had burned, and then mashing potatoes, and stirring another pot or two. The soup had a burnt taste but with a bit of pepper to overide it was still delicious. The main meal was chicken casserole followed by a cup of tea and buttered fruit loaf. Bert did all the dishes.

Bert and Shirley Penny

Bert bought this fountain from Doug and Dot's nursery in Essendon in the 1960's

As their story unfolded it became obvious that Bert was at home in the kitchen, Shirley revealing that she had been a City of Mildura Councillor for 13 years and also Mayor for a term, so Bert had much experience cooking dinner. Shirley had also been awarded an Order of Australia and had met the Queen twice. Bert was a master builder for most of his working life after leaving school at 13 and working for a bus company where his job was to go under the buses an hose them clean from the mud that built up from the unmade roads. As it was wartime and most of the men had gone he graduated quickly to changing wheels and tyres and other basic mechanical maintenance, then by the time he was 17 and a half he had a special licence issued to him and he was a bus driver. He used to pick Shirley up and she said he was quite rude telling her to get down the back of the bus. She didn’t like him, but she could see him looking at her in his rear vision mirror.

They were both in the Youth Club run by the Mildura Council but the males and females had little interaction and were quite separate. In 1946 Doug took up the position of Director of the Youth Club, it was shortly after he had returned from Europe where he had spent 4 years in Stalag 83. It must have been part of a work program to give returned soldiers employment. Doug had been a Australian champion featherweight wrestler before the war and a fitness expert and all round sportsman. He taught the boys, many of whom were from very poor families, wrestling, weightlifting and gymnastics. In this year Bert at 19 was older than the other youths and had been made president I think by the council. Shirley, also 19, was leader of the girls, so she and Bert saw more of each other and romance developed.

At the same time a lady from Emerald, Dot Fisher, had taken a job at the Youth Club as supervisor of the girls group. Doug and Dot fell in love and married that year in the Methodist church. Without checking my notes to confirm I think Shirley was in the bridal party. Doug’s contract was for one year and he and Dot moved on to Queensland at the end of it.

Doug and Dot 1946

Methodist church built 1912

Bert did night school carpentry and building construction and Shirley worked in a fashion shop. They have four children, two sons who are master builders also, and two daughters and six grandchildren. This of course is an abbreviated version of Bert and Shirley’s story from the top of my head without referring to my notes, but I have to say I have been bursting to blog about these two wonderful people with whom I clicked so readily because of their warmth and hospitality. Exceptional people I have been lucky to meet and who made my trip to Mildura rewarding and confidence boosting.