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.