Needs transcription from Original Scan Images DN2023-05-28B-02
190 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Page 14 — DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, November 20, 1991
YESTERYEAR
That was the boom year 1888
By JOAN WEBSTER
AUCTIONEERS spruiked outside giant marquees, ladies with parasols took afternoon tea and Doncaster land prices rose in a bubble of champagne.
This was the boom year of 1888.
Land speculators had followed the trail of the mythical Canterbury to Doncaster steam train railway line to the top of the orcharding township’s Big Hill, on the peak of which a station was planned.
There they lured land buyers with advertisements of free lunches, bubbly, and transport to save the steep climb.
A cab service met intending purchasers at Box Hill station.
The crowds drank in views on top of the 67-metre Doncaster observation tower and liquid refreshments were served at the Tower Hotel at its base.
Picnic races
Along with the thrill of land speculation they could enjoy a bet at picnic races on Doncaster Rd.
A handbill with a map of the Heights of Doncaster Estate claimed “the railway was likely to run through the land now offered for sale or terminate thereon”.
The land, on the north-west corner of the Doncaster-Williamsons road intersection had 55 allotments available on £5 deposit.
Opposite the present Doncaster Shoppingtown bounded by Williamsons Rd and Bayley Grove, the blocks sold readily for 14 to 29 shillings ($1.40 to $2.90) a frontage foot or an average of £101 to £237 ($50 to $118) a block.
Their dividing streets were Beaconsfield and Meader, intersected by Carnarvon and Tower. This Tower St is now called Firth St.
The 1880s land boom, rumbling wherever a train might run, turned rich orchard and farm land into weed-covered paddocks pegged into suburban-sized pieces.
After the boom backfired around 1890, some of these parcels of land in Doncaster stayed waste for decades.
Others remained as orchards and continued to be shown as subdivisions until the late 1960s and one, on the south side of Doncaster Rd, between Short and Station streets, opposite Council St, was still empty and unused in 1986.
In the late 1880s a group of Doncaster men brought the first electric tramway in the southern hemisphere to the area.
Landowners along the tram route were offered shares in the Box Hill and Doncaster Tramway Company in return for access through their properties for the line.
They later angrily blamed the tramway company for the mysterious dropping of the Doncaster Railways Bill and the pricking of the Doncaster land bubble which followed.
They had relinquished land sale profit opportunities by taking up the shares offer and lost out there, too.
Land sale tourists tramped through their orchards, plucking fruit as freely as the landowners grabbed ripe profits.
Resentment
Resentment fermented against the tourists and the tram company.
They strung fences along the tram tracks, tried to tear up the lines and at the top of the hill strung upon the overhead wires a burning effigy of one of the company directors.
Both the tramway and the “big top” atmosphere of the Doncaster land sales collapsed with the depression of the 1890s.
Ever since, jokes about Doncaster’s meagre public transport service have fallen as flat as the champagne dregs at the end of its bygone land auctions.
191 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Nov 27, 1991
YESTERYEAR
A case of Koonarra revisited
— JOAN WEBSTER
CONTROVERSY about changing the name of the City of Doncaster-Templestowe to Koonarra has an historical background.
The official Petition for Declaration of a City, July 11, 1966, requested proclamation of the district as the City of Koonarra. Doncaster Riding (later ward) wanted City of Doncaster and the Templestowe Riding wanted City of Templestowe.
Bulleen, the first municipal name, had been put forward. Koonarra, the result of compromise, was a name to immortalise the ancestral borders of Koonung Creek and the Yarra River.
Ratepayers’ feelings ran high, indignation seethed, polls and petitions were gathered and everyone had their say.
The first council vote on the naming was deadlocked, with the casting vote of Shire President and Warrandyte Councillor, Stan Sheppard, for Koonarra.
An East Doncaster ratepayer then telephoned the Minister for Local Government to ask that naming be deferred until a referendum was held. He considered a postal referendum.
The Doncaster East Riding Community Development Association conducted its own postal referendum among 398 residents, of whom 367 were against the Koonarra change.
A telephone poll conducted by the Doncaster Mirror found that 90 per cent of people were contemptuous of the proposed new name.
Some reasons for disapproval were: No-one would know where it is; we’ll have to explain where we live; and a silly made-up name. The few who approved Koonarra did so with reservations, typical comments were “It’s not so bad I suppose, worse things can happen”.
Despite this public feeling Cr Sheppard pushed for the change to Koonarra. Twice in the council, Templestowe and Warrandyte councillors voted for Koonarra, twice the East and West Doncaster’s councillors voted against it, twice voting was deadlocked and twice the president settled the matter “for once and for all” with his casting vote for the change.
The significance of the name Doncaster-Templestowe and its wide recognition was eloquently declaimed by Cr Les Cameron, a descendant of Doncaster pioneers.
Doncaster, he pointed out, was noted for its tower. Doncaster had the first electric tram in the southern hemisphere. Doncaster built the first Government cool store. Doncaster still exported its fruit products, acclaimed throughout the world for their quality and lasting characteristics.
Doncaster apples were known as Doncaster Apples whether they were grown in Doncaster, Templestowe or Warrandyte. So, by inference, he said, should its people.
The people, led by Cr Russell Hardidge, presented to the council and the Minister for Local Government a petition of 2434 signatures, almost 10 per cent of the 32,500 population, in November 1966.
The council went into recess for December and January and the proclamation of city and name was set for February 28, 1967.
The clock struck, the official pen wrote, and with no time left for counter-petitions the old Doncaster-Templestowe name was inevitable.
Medals for school children could at least be struck, letterheads printed and invitations issued for the city celebrations.
Guests would know where they were going and ratepayers where they lived.
But maybe if no time limit had been set, some other mooted monikers might have succeeded.
We might have lived in Donwarrentstowe or Templedytecaster.
[Image 1] THE City of Doncaster and Templestowe Municipal Offices in 1967 at the time of the first Koonarra controversy.
[Image 2] THE Petition for Declaration of City as the City of Koonarra, July 11, 1966 and the Notice of Proclamation as the City of Doncaster and Templestowe, February 28, 1967.
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DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, December 4, 1991 — Page 35
YESTERYEAR
The early dentists
By JOAN WEBSTER
MANY a tooth was pulled in parlor of the quaint timber house with the double ridge roof and palm trees in Leeds St, East Doncaster.
Built in 1860 as the home of lemon-growing pioneer William Sydney Williams and his wife Anne, it passed to their 12th child Alice, born there in 1878.
Alice’s husband, William Zelius, was one of Australia’s earliest trained dentists. He had grown up in the most elegant house in East Doncaster, Plassey, on Doncaster Rd, now heritage-listed.
In those days, no injections or anaesthetics were given for pulling teeth.
Many people had no dentist at all. In 1900 there were only 738 dentists in the whole of Australia.
The Victorian Dental Act was passed in 1888, the year Henry’s father built Plassey but the training of dentists by indenture did not happen until 1897 and not until 1901 were the first dentists registered. Traditional tooth pullers had for long been blacksmiths who had strong tongs or barbers, who doubled shaving with surgery.
The first trainee dentists such as William Zelius worked as apprentices for three years at a shilling (10 cents) a week which was paid to their masters.
The apprentice was to obey his master night and day and at no time absent himself from his master’s business without consent.
Boys of 14-15 could become dental apprentices without even a general knowledge test and could qualify as young as 17.
The brass plates they hung showed “Occulist’, ‘Dentist’, ‘Corm Operator’, ‘Teeth Extracted’, ‘Cupping’, ‘Bleeding’, ‘Horse and Cattle Medicines’ and ‘Loose Teeth Fastened’. Pain killers used were mandrax root, poppy juice or alcohol.
The first injection to deaden pain was given in England in 1845 but a century later many Australian teeth were being drilled without that benefit.
A foot-operated drill was invented from a spinning wheel in 1790 and another in 1874 but only a few leading dentists used this. Most early drills looked almost exactly the same as hand-operated woodworking drills.
In William Zelius’ time some dentists were still using a poisonous silvery-mercury mixture for fillings. They probably found it easier to mix and press into a cavity than ground animals’ teeth or a piece of walrus bone screwed or hammered into place and fastened with either slaked lime or turpentine or strong fish glue.
Children’s teeth were filled with gutta percha, a rubbery substance.
By 1889 the milky glass of lampshades was being ground, melted and mixed with ground brown bottles to make fillings look natural. Front teeth only were graced with fillings, which often fell out. It was hard to see back teeth with only natural light, kerosene lamps or gas light.
Natural false teeth were made from human teeth, from the living or the dead, sold by the poor or obtained by body snatchers and mounted on ivory, gold or wood. Of lesser cosmetic effect were teeth carved from bone or ivory.
IN the parlor of this Leeds St, East Doncaster house, William Zelius conducted a dental practice.
In 1890 some leading dentists had special rooms and employed dental nurses, but like most, William Zelius used the front parlor and called on his wife if he needed a helping hand.
To us the dentistry of his day may seem primitive but it had come a long way since tooth-pulling was a street side-show.
In the 1880s a band played loudly so patient’s yells were drowned while the operator, often a travelling barber-surgeon with jugglers and a troupe or performing animals, held the tooth aloft to a watching crowd.
193 ByWays DoncasterMirror
Page 26 — DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, December 11, 1991
THE Bulleen Shire Hall, 1875, municipal centre for the district known as Templestowe Roads Board.
Love, hate name
FROM the first Templestowe Roads Board to the present City of Doncaster and Templestowe, the farming flats of Templestowe and the orcharding heights of Doncaster have lived together in a love-hate relationship.
Local government of the area began in December 1856 when the Templestowe District Roads Board “married” the whole parish of Bulleen with a portion of Deep Creek.
The board’s first meetings were arguments over whether to spend its meagre funds on improving the road to its “front door” on Templestowe Rd or Doncaster Rd.
In 1875, the district known as the Templestowe Roads Board was declared the Shire of Bulleen and divided into two “apartments” municipally known as ridings — one for Templestowe, one for Doncaster.
In 1890, the two ridings were granted legal separation and independence as shires in their own right. They became the Shire of Templestowe and the Shire of Doncaster.
Order
In 1915, however they returned to the fold as Doncaster was ordered home by the Local Government Department.
Doncaster and Templestowe were united again under one roof but took on the name of the Shire of Doncaster.
In 1926, this was further changed to the Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe. The identity crisis over, in that same year the shire was blessed with a new riding: Warrandyte.
In 1966, however, Doncaster Riding wanted the district to be known as the City of Doncaster and Templestowe wanted it named the City of Templestowe.
The result was that City of Doncaster and Templestowe is still the only municipality in Victoria with a double-barrelled name.
194 ByWays DoncasterMirror
YESTERYEAR
Stones reveal history
MANY Doncaster buildings are made from an attractive stone which is more than 350 million years old.
The obvious landscape, however, is much younger: rounded hills 60 metres above shallow valley floors lifted up about 15 million years ago and were eroded by the Ice Age.
The ancient Silurian mudstone and sandstone was formed from sediment deposited on a deep sea bed at a time marked by alternating land emergences and submergences.
The distinctive colors of the stone was were added 15-35 million years ago at the last up-folding of the hills, when red bands from earlier sand sediments ran down through the weathering sandstone mantle.
A good example can be seen in the Victoria St cutting near the old Lutheran Cemetery and Schramm’s cottage.
The Western Quarry, in the municipal gardens west of Church Rd, was the first quarry to extract the Silurian mudstone. It was opened in the 1850s, and was used in the construction of houses.
In the 1860s and 1870s the rock was used for roadmaking but was found to be soft and the quarry abandoned.
In 1930 it was reopened to rebuild the chancel of Holy Trinity Church of England, Church St.
The stone originally used for the main building in 1869 is believed to have come from a separate quarry near the corner of Church Rd and George St.
About 100 million years after the formation of the Silurian stone, earth movements folded the rocks into slopes about 1.5 kilometres apart, creating high peaks and deep valleys which eventually weathered down to a plateau.
Another violent upheaval, 200-150 million years ago, tilted the region towards the southern coastline.
There have been many changes around the municipality of Doncaster — and those mottled stones have seen them all.
[Image] A GOOD example of local Silurian stone can be seen at Holy Trinity Church of England.
195 ByWays DoncasterMirror
STONES REVEAL HISTORY
[OLDER THAN HILLS]
by JOAN WEBSTER
The stone of which many Doncaster buildings are made is older than the hills - older than the hills from which it was quarried.
The landscape as we know it: rounded hills 60 metres above broad, shallow valley floors, made their first uplifting about 15 million years ago and were weathered and eroded by the Ice Ages. But the attractive stone is 350 million years old.
Most of this municipality’s topography was carved out of this 350 million year old Silurian mudstone and sandstone. [Incidentally, the Silurian Era was named after a Welsh tribe, the Silures, which gave much trouble to the Romans during their occupation of Britain].
This stone was formed from sediment deposited on a deep sea bed when the main life forms were crablike creatures, at a time roughly halfway through a 300 million year era marked by a rhythm of ups and downs, of alternating land emergences and submergences.
The distinctive colours of the stone was added 15-35 million years ago at the last up-folding of the hills, when red bands from earlier sand sediments ran down through the weathering sandstone mantle. A good example can be seen in the Victoria St cutting near the old Lutheran Cemetery and Schramm’s cottage.
The first quarry to extract the Silurian mudstone was opened in the 1850s, mainly to build houses. It can be seen in the municipal gardens, immediately west of Church Rd. This is called the Western Quarry.
In the 1860s and 1870s the rock was used for roadmaking but was found to be too soft and the quarry abandoned. In 1930 it was reopened to rebuild the chancel of Holy Trinity Church of England, Church St.
The stone originally used for the main building in 1869 is believed to have come from a separate quarry near the corner of Church Rd and George St.
About 100 million years after the formation of the Silurian stone, earth movements folded the rocks into slopes about 1.5 kilometres apart, with minor folds within the major folds, making high peaks and deep valleys which weathered down to a plateau. Another violent upheaval 200-150 million years ago tilted the region towards the southern coastline.
There’s been some changes around here - and those mottled stones have seen them all.
Correct Manuscript [published version has inaccuracies due to editorial changes] JKW
196 ByWays DoncasterMirror
YESTERYEAR
Dec. 21, 1991
CHRISTMAS: the time of peace and good will.
— JOAN WEBSTER
Why are there such ritualistic contradictions on December 25? Why the split image of holy divine babe and holly-decked drinking bouts?
Almost every feature of our present-day Christmas celebrations—from nativity scenes to midnight songs—can be found in ancient, universal customs that influenced early Christians.
The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe came from both the Norse and Druidic worship and the cult of Venus. It was the sacred plant of Venus and to be kissed beneath it was a sign a maiden would find a husband within a year.
The Mary Mother-and-divine-child custom was introduced in 431 at the Council of Ephesus, that city where for millenniums the mother of the world and of the resurrected god had been worshipped as the virgin goddess Artemis. The virgin goddess became pregnant through interaction with a sky god.
Incidentally, ‘virgin’ originally meant ‘ready to receive God.’ The actual celebration of the birth of Jesus first became part of Christian Church ritual in Rome in 336 AD, not celebrated in Western Europe until the 5th century and did not become a great popular European festival until the Middle Ages.
In 1644 the keeping of Christmas was outlawed by the Puritan Cromwellian Parliament, revived in England by the Stuart monarchy in 1660, and suppressed in Scotland until the 19th century.
The date of Christmas coincides with that of the immensely older northern hemisphere winter solstice festivals which celebrated the mythological birth of a semi-divine child, the renewal of the light of the world.
Ancient Rome celebrated the winter solstice on December 19. The Saturnalia, the Roman celebration of the end of autumn plantings was held from December 17-24.
The Saturnalia, originally itself a solstice celebration, was the merriest of all Roman festivals: gifts were exchanged at domestic celebrations; there were nativity festivals to honor the birth of the sun; businesses, schools and courts closed; wars stopped so that the public could feast and generally enjoy itself. One of the traditional Saturnalia feast dishes was roast boar (pork) and a solstice dish was turkey.
Does this sound familiar? Wait. There is more.
December 25, the day after the Saturnalia, had for thousands of years honored the birth of Mithras.
Mithraism was a great worldwide moral and spiritual religion, very strong in the Roman, Persian and Indian empires up to the time of Constantine’s conversion in the fourth century.
His birth date was adopted by the church as that of the Christ, the light of the world, to absorb Mithras’ and Saturn’s festivals.
Mithras was a favorite of Roman soldiers. Once the emperor was converted, the legions had to follow suit. But there wasn’t a great change involved.
Mithras was known as a god of light: ‘the light of the world’, a god of truth, and a redeemer. To celebrate Mithras birthday on December 25 candles were lit (the eternal light) and placed on an evergreen tree.
In Germany, Mithraists placed candles on fir trees, which also withstood the dark forces of winter by not shedding their leaves. In Britain, Norse and Celtic countries the oak tree was an object of religious ceremonies.
The use of trees and burning of candles in Christmas celebrations was banned by the church for centuries until the Middle Ages, when it thought: ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’. The Christmas tree as we know it originated in Germany at the time of Martin Luther but was not common, even in Germany until the 18th century. Prince Albert, the Sax-Coburg prince who was consort of Queen Victoria, brought the Christmas tree to Britain in 1840.
So Christian reverence for the birth of Jesus became mixed with the secret of the evergreen tree that carries the newborn light, with worship of the dying sun god and also with the worship of the Great Mother goddess, among whose symbols are also the fire (candle) and the tree.
197 ByWays DoncasterMirror
DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, January 15, 1992 — Page 23
Hard long life
By JOAN WEBSTER
STATISTICIANS claim that life expectancy has risen dramatically since last century.
But they mustn’t have counted on Doncaster people.
Our city’s records are liberally laced with nonagenarians. Take the story of Henry William Crouch. He was born in Camberwell, England in 1820 and ‘died with his boots on’, still working his Doncaster orchard, in 1913 at the age of 93.
When he was 26, Henry married Sarah Lewis and six years later migrated to Australia with the help of a £4-5-0 loan for the fare from the Family Colonisation Loan Society.
Their first home was in the suburbs of Melbourne, but their only daughter and two sons died. Wanting healthier air and a livelihood he could pass on to his two remaining sons, Henry and Percival (Perc) began walking regularly the nine miles to Doncaster to look for suitable land.
It was 1862 when he bought from Robert Campbell, bailiff of the Carlton Estate, 30 acres in Strip Rd (now Church Rd) for £300.
Like most of his contemporary would-be orchardists, Henry Crouch had little, if any, experience with tilling and tending the land. He had been a waiter, a laborer and a house painter.
A relic of one of his cast-off trades, a white painter’s cap, became Henry’s local emblem. He was always seen wearing it as he worked, clearing and planting his land or building his house — from an old ship and wattle and daub.
Eight-year-old Henry junior had an important job helping his father with this building; holding a candle so his father could see as he worked on it by night, after the usual gardening work was finished.
The tired boy would fall asleep, to be woken by his father asking if he could see. ‘No’, muttered the boy. ‘Well’, asked his father, ‘how do you expect me to?’ And the candle would be put in the little hand again.
Young Henry Crouch grew to be a shire councillor for 10 years and four times shire president.
In 1863 they moved to Doncaster central, as that was where some fellow Baptists lived, and with them Henry senior pioneered the Doncaster Church of Christ which became the focal point of their lives.
In 1913, when ‘young’ Henry was in his fourth term as shire president, Henry senior has an accident that stopped him from making the century.
He was backing a young horse with a load of fruit into the fruit house when the horse was startled by something and bolted.
The 93-year-old hung manfully to the reins and was carried along for eight metres before being thrown against a shed so that the horse took off, the wheel of the wagon passed over Henry’s groin, killing him.
[Image] MOST pioneer orchardists had little experience tilling and tending the land. Picture from a painting by Frederick McCubbin, Clearing The Land.
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Page 16 — DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, January 22, 1992
Skeleton hints at historic hill site
By JOAN WEBSTER
WAS Doncaster Hill sacred to the Wurundjeri tribe of Aborigines who lived on Templestowe’s river flats?
A skeleton wrapped in bark was uncovered in sandy soil on the summit when the original cutting was made into the hill to make Williamsons Rd in the 1880s.
The story was told to me by the late Miss Selina Serpell, whose father Richard Serpell was involved in many interesting early Doncaster ventures, including building on the hilltop intersection the emporium which preceded Shoppingtown.
In those days no one attached much importance to the finding of an Aboriginal skeleton, but one of Serpell’s store managers, a Mr Morrison, bought the bones and for years kept them in Serpell’s Glenferrie hardware shop, opposite the Roman Catholic Church in Glenferrie Rd.
It is believed that Aborigines gathered for ceremonies on the Doncaster hilltop site, which dominates the landscape for many square kilometres.
The site has an unusual geology. Most Doncaster soil is clay. But on this, Doncaster’s highest point, is an isolated sandy ridge classified ‘Tertiary Sand of the Miocene Age’ and estimated up to 26 million years old.
An anthropological expert from LaTrobe University told me that only in sand would such finds as the skeleton, or artifacts, be found.
Because of its beauty, its height, its panoramic view of the Yarra Valley and Bay, and its easily-dug rare strip of sandy soil, this site could well have had a special meaning to the Wurundjeri (Wurrun means ‘white manna gums’ and jeri, ‘grub’).
We know the history of the European pioneers who built first the orchard empire and the business empire in Doncaster, but what of the history of our original inhabitants, now bulldozed and buried beneath the bustle of trade? Who knows what artifacts holding the story of Doncaster’s pre-history lie sealed under the air conditioned malls and bitumen parking lots of this unique site?
The grey haze of its primitive past perhaps lies lost for every beneath its supposed colorful future.
[Image 1] RICHARD Serpell’s Doncaster hilltop emporium.
[Image 2] AN Aboriginal skeleton was uncovered when the first cutting was made for Williamsons Road.
199 ByWays DoncasterMirror
DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, February 12, 1992
YESTERYEAR
Love tied to history
By JOAN WEBSTER
DONCASTER has a link with explorer Robert O’Hara Burke, of Burke and Wills fame — the beautiful Julia Mathews, the Princess Theatre’s star actress and singer.
Julia’s brother Will settled in Doncaster on land that is now the East Doncaster Recreation Reserve at the corner of Doncaster Rd and Leeds St.
In 1968 Will Mathews’ son, Mr Jim Mathews, told me about the romance of his aunt and the explorer Burke.
It seems the explorer Burke first saw Julia when she appeared in a travelling show at Beechworth where he was then a police inspector.
Smitten by ‘love at first sight’, Burke followed her from town to town, imploring her to marry him.
When she refused, he is believed to have applied for leadership of the expedition being formed to attempt a crossing of Australia.
Had Julia Mathews’ heart been otherwise inclined, Australia’s history could have been different.
Robert O’Hara Burke died of starvation at Coopers Creek in 1861.
Though loved by the public and feted by theatre critics, the beautiful Julia had an unhappy and very restricted life.
A report in the Age on Julia’s tragically young death in 1876 described financial exploitation at the hands of her parents.
They were, it said: “... perfectly alive to the treasure they had got in their daughter and they watched that treasure with the utmost care while they were laying up a handsome provision for their old age from the fruits of her talents.
“The very critics who loved her and who exhausted all their most enthusiastic efforts in describing her and her acting cried out over the shabbiness of her dress”.
Legend has it that Julia Mathews’ father drew her salary of 30 pounds a week and allowed her only one shilling and sixpence as pocket money.
Her mother went with her on tour and during performances sat knitting in the wings.
In 1864 Julia ran away to marry a Mr Mumford in New Zealand.
Twelve years later she died, aged only 34.
Will Mathews said he had been so upset about the way his parents used his sister’s talents for their own financial gain that he left them and came to live in Doncaster.
Pine trees still on the East Doncaster Reserve were planted there by him.
[Image] EXPLORER Robert O’Hara Burke left on his ill-fated expedition to the interior in an effort to overcome his love for singer and actress, Julia Mathews, whose brother Will was an early settler in Doncaster
200 ByWays DoncasterMirror
YESTERYEAR
Slice of home-grown history evokes sweet memories
[Image] A 1930s label for tinned export fruit.
MANY fruits with names which became household words originated in Doncaster.
Two names still well known, the Cling peach and the Packham pear, were both developed by Frederick Thiele — the Cling in 1897.
Inscribed
A 1930s label for tinned export fruit (one bushel, fancy pre-cooled pears) has inscribed across it: ‘Orchard to home — Doncaster grown’.
It pictures an orchard with post and rail fence. Encircled, and topped by a map of Australia, a family sits by a fireside.
A young girl is showing a basket of fruit to her father, saying ‘They are quality, Dad’.
Lorrimer, by J E Lorrimer of Hurstbridge in 1906 and featured by Doncaster growers.
Millicent, by F Morrison of Williamsons Rd, Doncaster in 1905 and named for Mrs Millicent Petty, wife of Mr Don Petty.
Noonan, by D Noonan of Doncaster in 1910.
Pickering, by A Pickering of Warrandyte Rd, Templestowe in 1910.
Pump, by August Pump of Manningham Rd, Doncaster in 1902.
Smith’s chance seedling. This was self-sown on an island in the Yarra River, Templestowe, and it was first noticed by G Smith of Templestowe in 1900.
Another member of the family, T Smith of Serpell’s Rd, Templestowe propagated it; R Smith of Tindall’s Rd, Warrandyte popularised it and it became the most widely planted dessert peach.
Sweet seventeen, by August Zerbe in 1914.
Webb’s, by WA Webb on Main Rd, Doncaster in 1901.
Whitten’s palmerston, by J Whitten of Whitten’s Lane, Doncaster in 1900.
Wiggin’s by J Hudson of High St, Doncaster, in 1910.
Zerbe. There is more than one strain of this peach developed by August Zerbe in 1896.
Thiele’s
This label graced tins of Thiele’s Fireside Fruits, one of the many locally grown brands which became household words both here and abroad.
Other well known varieties developed in Doncaster were:
Anzac, by August Zerbe of Blackburn Rd, East Doncaster about 1915.
Beale, by L Beale of Serpell’s Rd, Templestowe in 1913.
Bob John, by John Smith of Manningham Rd, Templestowe in 1901.
Catherine Anne, by J Hudson of West Doncaster in 1900.
Chapman. This was discovered in a garden at Brighton by P Aumann of Park Rd, Mitcham, and it was named after the owner of the property on which he found it.
Doncaster Crawford. There are two strains of this variety. J Petty and E Wilson produced seedlings from a Late Crawford which became superior in size and cropping habit, and developed them in 1906.
Hooker, by E Aumann of George St, East Doncaster, in 1912. It was named after an Elizabeth St, Melbourne fruiterer.
Ireland, by AE Ireland of Beverley St, East Doncaster in 1912.
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YESTERYEAR
German teenager became ‘pear king’
By JOAN WEBSTER
IN 1854, in the full flush of Victoria’s gold rush, a teenage boy arrived from Bresleau, Germany, to seek his fortune.
Whether he did win gold we do not know, but he did win a crown.
Seventeen-year-old Reinold Denhert worked hard clearing virgin bush from his north-facing land.
It sloped up from what is now George St towards, and nearly up to, Doncaster Rd, in a line opposite the Jackson Court, East Doncaster shopping centre.
Reinold felled trees, grubbed or burned out their stumps, sold their hard stringybark logs for firewood, and planted in their place quick-bearing crops, such as gooseberries to tide him over until the fruit trees he had also planted became marketable.
He planted vines and eventually had a large vineyard of 50 acres.
Nearly all Doncaster’s vineyards were wiped out in the 1890s when a root pest called Phylloxera attacked them.
So like his neighbors, Reinold turned his talents more to larger fruits and his speciality became pears.
Reinold Denhert became known as ‘the pear king’.
The boy from Bresleau had a second claim to fame, and that was his age.
Born in 1837, he lived until 1940, to the age of 103.
In those times, aged persons lived their lives on in an extended family situation in the home of one of their children.
For many, it did become necessary to have to end their days in hospital, or a ‘hospice for the dying’.
But all had a horror of such places because in their young days conditions at hospitals and other institutions had been unsanitary and provided no skilled care.
There were no trained nurses in Australia until 1868 when Lucy Osburn sent sparks from the Nightingale lamp racing through the colony of New South Wales.
The profession did not begin in Victoria until one of Miss Osburn’s protege’s became lady superintendent of the Alfred Hospital in 1880, when Reinold would have been 43.
(Florence Nightingale only commenced her nursing school in England in 1860).
So the pioneer senior citizens, who were still just called ‘old people’, depended very much on their family and friends for care, comfort and company.
As old Reinold Denhert sat in the sun on his veranda overlooking his orchards, the Yarra Valley and the hills of the Great Dividing Range, he could never have imagined that near his land, in the street that bears his name, the elderly would have a club house.
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DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, March 11, 1982 — Page 15
YESTERYEAR
The first people who settled in city
By JOAN WEBSTER
THIS city’s first settlers (as distinct from the first orchardists) were: Doncaster — Joseph Pickering near Blackburn Rd, 1851; Templestowe — the brothers J. and W. Wood, on a sheep station at Bulleen, 1838; and Warrandyte — James Anderson, also on a sheep station, 1839.
It was in the decade following the first “gardeners” — Petty and Thiele — that the growing settlement set the pattern of the district as we know it.
James Read, who had farmed for a while at Gardiner’s Creek (Hawthorn), carried from there precious fruit-tree seedlings on his back to plant the first of Templestowe’s fruit trees.
W. Sydney Williams landed from Wales as a 19-year-old lad with four shillings and sixpence (45 cents) in his pocket and saved enough from wages to buy land on Wetherby Rd.
John Clay, three years out from Devonshire with his wife Agnes and family of eight, settled just west of the crest of the Doncaster hill, on the south side of the road.
Their son Richard, a shy and retiring boy of 11, would grow to have a keen interest in local affairs and four-year-old Eliza would marry Thomas Petty’s son Tom and build their home ‘Bingley’ on Doncaster Rd opposite what is now Schramm’s Reserve.
John Whitten had met and fallen in love with Margaret Harvey during their six-month trip from Ireland. When they parted at Geelong Harbour, they agreed to marry in 12 months. Margaret took up housework there and John went to try his luck on the land at west Doncaster. Almost a year to the day they made their home near where the lane meandering southward from Doncaster Rd bears their name.
George Bullen and his wife walked on farther east. On their same ship had been John Ireland, his wife and three children, John, Eliza and Elijah. The Irelands bought 30 acres from a man who owned a square mile on the eastern side of what is now Beverley St, East Doncaster, and gave his name to nearby Ireland Ave.
Eliza Ireland married the Bullens’ son George Jr and farmed land upon which was later built Doncaster’s first supermarket: Woolworths of Jackson’s Court on Doncaster Rd, now Safeway. Elijah Ireland’s son, Arthur, was a Doncaster councillor for 37 years and for five a member of State Parliament.
Mays, Hislops, Bullocks and Sintons came and settled in the ‘Never-Never’ land further out east.
David Williamson, from a Scottish saw-milling family, arrived in Victoria in 1854 and first settled on the flat near the Doncaster Rd-Koonung-Koonung Creek crossing. For 15 years he held the office of Crown Bailiff of the Carlton Estate before taking up 500 hectares on what is now Manningham Rd.
He became a Justice of the Peace, member of the Templestowe Roads Board, councillor for 27 years of the latter Shire of Bulleen, an elder of the fruit industry, and gave his name to the road which, with Doncaster Rd, forms the city’s main intersection.
John Robert Wilson came in 1854 as landlord of Doncaster’s first hotel — the Doncaster Arms Inn at the Doncaster and Wetherby roads and Victoria St corner — now the pink Doncaster Inn Hotel.
Doncaster, in the West Riding of Yorkshire on the river Don had been his home town. Old Doncaster had been the chief halt, since Roman times, on the route from Lincoln to York and Wilson intended his inn to be the chief halt of thirsty gold seekers on route from Melbourne to Warrandyte diggings.
The ‘Argus’ newspaper of January 1, 1855, reported three gold nuggets having been picked up near the hotel, but Doncaster’s ‘gardiners’ prophesised (correctly) that more gold would grow above the ground than ever came out of it.
By 1860, Joseph Pickering had moved to Doncaster Rd and established a major sign of civilisation: a shop and post office.
[Image] LOOKING east along Doncaster Rd in the 1860s. From left: Schramm’s Cottage, Schramm’s second school-house and Church of Christ (right).
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Page 30 — DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, March 18, 1992
YESTERYEAR
Life in a new land
By JOAN WEBSTER
THE “bounty system” of migration in the middle of the 19th century gave assisted passages to much needed agricultural laborers.
But some Prussian ships chartered by unscrupulous private speculators didn’t inform their emigrating nationals of any bounty restriction and these simple folk were horrified on landing here to be required to pay full fare.
A bitter legal wrangle ensued between the Government and the German immigrants.
This sidelight to the rigors of our early immigration is described in The Thiele Family of Doncaster, by cousins Eric Collyer and David Thiele, great-grandsons of Doncaster pioneers Phillipe and Gottlieb Thiele.
It has won second prize in the prestigious Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies Alexander Horden Award for family histories.
It is the story of the descendants of the two Thiele brothers, Johann Gottlieb and Johann Gottfried, who arrived from Germany in 1849 on the ship Wappus in these inopportune circumstances, Gottlieb becoming a leader in a campaign to expose the emigration racket.
The Thiele Family of Doncaster* is also the history of commercial fruit growing in Victoria. Ten Thiele families had orchards in this district, their pioneering successes and failures developing new and improved techniques.
The book records many other significant contributions made to society by members of the family, such as that of Edmund Oswald, son of Christianna and Oswald Thiele, Doncaster State School’s first teacher. Edmund changed his name and became Sir Edmund Teale, knighted in 1936 for his services to mining and geological development in Africa.
Once, in 1905 while fishing in Hobsons Bay Edmund discovered tiny luminous creatures in the water — a new species, named after him Cypridina thielei.
Reunion
The book covers seven Australian generations. A family reunion in April last year saw a gathering of 400 relatives.
School Principal Eric, who still lives in the original family homestead, Friedensruh, spent seven years working on the research and writing.
The forebears of David, a teacher of history at a Barossa Valley secondary school, moved to SA to orchard.
David travelled interstate for weekends so he and Eric could work on the book together.
“We asked a key person in each family to write an account of their history, and for photographs, and were lucky to still have contact with three members of the third generation, grandchildren of Gottlieb, now aged in their 80s and 90s,” said Eric.
The Thiele Family of Doncaster is richly illustrated with 300 photographs reproduced by Irving Green, former President of the Doncaster and Templestowe Historical Society.
This beautiful hard cover book of 350 pages contains much general as well as local history and would be a worthwhile addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in Australian history.
Copies can be obtained from Eric Collyer, 10 Waldau Crt, Doncaster 3108, phone 848 8182.
[Image] THE THIELE FAMILY OF DONCASTER
1849-1989
Eric Collyer and David Thiele
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April 8, 1992
YESTERYEAR
The first trams
By JOAN WEBSTER
IT IS well-known that the first electric tram in the Southern Hemisphere ran in Doncaster, down the hill from where Shoppingtown is now to Box Hill post office.
Less known is an even earlier attempt to get the populace rolling.
For 60 years the only public transport to and from Doncaster since its beginnings had been the mail coach which came through Kew. This did not run every day, so if one did not have private horse transport, “shank’s pony” (leg power) was the only way of travelling to Melbourne or visiting neighbors.
Since the 1880s, cabs had been run every day “in the good season”, for city dwellers wanting to picnic in the wooded paddocks of Doncaster.
“Good pedestrians will find the distance (five or six miles) a pleasant and exhilarating walk through the grassy, undulating country about,” advised
The Australian Sketcher*
1880.
In 1885, the year cable passenger trams began running in Melbourne, the shire councillors of Bulleen (the then title of the municipality) were set to launch an electric tram — the Smedley’s Cutting Tramway — eastwards on Doncaster Rd to the Koonung-Koonung Creek.
The cutting for the steep Doncaster Rd was often called Smedley’s Cutting, after John Smedley’s forge at its Koonung-Koonung Creek end.
Had that scheme got off the ground — or rather, on the ground — it would have made two “firsts”: not only the first electric tram in the Southern Hemisphere, but — keeping in mind that tramways were used for mining and other industrial purposes — first tramway of any kind in the colony of Victoria to have been put on so steep a gradient.
The municipal representatives were determined, despite strong opposition from ratepayers, that the tramline would be laid from the home of Dr Fitzgerald — now the Eastern Golf Clubhouse — to the Morning Star Hotel at the western foot of the steep hill where Doncaster Rd meets High St. The experimental nature of this new form of transport and fears for the safety of those who might use it were very vocally aired at a public meeting at the Athenaeum Hall.
Council was called upon to resign. The shire president refused to meet a deputation of “ir-ratepayers” led, ironically, by two men later to become leading shareholders in the Box Hill to Doncaster tramway enterprise: Richard Serpell and estate agent William Meader.
The Smedley’s Cutting Tramway proposal was passed by motion of the council during 1885. But in a wait for skilled overseas’ engineering advice its plans lapsed. Had the Smedley’s Cutting tram eventuated, it could have later joined the present terminus of the Melbourne-Balwyn tram route.
And later multiple controversies over freeway routes, arterial road extensions and railway lines light and heavy may not have had to happen.
Local public opinion about tramways changed late in the decade, by which time a building boom had set off the Melbourne suburban sprawl.
Speculators saw that a tramway could stimulate land buying, as well as bring day trippers to the Doncaster lookout tower. Residents lost their fear and came to favor the facility of a quick trip to the newly extended Box Hill railway, and so to Melbourne.
But both these factors also competed negatively, so that getting this new enterprise on the rails was hindered by protests and public violence. That will have to be another story.
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Wednesday, April 15, 1992
YESTERYEAR
From humble beginnings
By JOAN WEBSTER
PARENTS’ involvement in the education of their children was very different 120 years ago.
They could choose for their children whether or not to be formally educated.
Most believed that educating a child for life’s responsibilities, duties and career was most thoroughly achieved in the home or a work situation.
The apprenticeship system thrived. Children of eight or even younger could be apprenticed to a trade, a physician or a chimney sweep. They were expected to help with home duties, as automatic education for a necessary part of their future lives.
The only learning available to children of early settlers was that provided in their own homes or churches.
Slotted in between house, farm, orchard or cottage chores, parents who believed in “book learning” and were able themselves to read, taught what they knew of reading, writing and arithmetic, literature, classics or a particular talent or skill.
To set up as a school teacher required but two qualifications: a knowledge of the ‘three Rs’ (reading, writing and ’rithmetic) and an enthusiasm to impart this knowledge.
Later, women or men of learning set up school in their homes. Male teachers’ wives helped with the little ones and taught what were considered girls’ subjects, such as sewing.
Educated women and men without the financial means of ladies and gentlemen hired themselves out as governesses and tutors to well-off families who did not want to send their children away to board at church schools, nor to have them walk miles through paddocks, puddles, bog and bush to local ‘home’ schools.
A 20-pupil school was run in Bulleen in 1847 by Thomas Paynter near the bridge to Heidelberg. Schooling for the children of gold diggers at Anderson’s Creek (Warrandyte) was only to be found in a tent, from 1851, until a Mr and Mrs Pretty began teaching in their wattle and daub hut.
Doncaster’s German settlement of Waldau unsuccessfully tried to organise classes in a private home and until 1860 their education reverted to individual families.
Children whose parents could afford to pay the teacher’s salary walked up and down the switchback tracks and cut through paddocks in mud or dust, depending on the season, to classes.
From Templestowe they tramped to John Ferguson, who from 1855, for 20 years, ran a small school started by others in a barn owned by Mr Tom Hicks, situated where Serpells and Williamsons roads now meet. Mrs Ferguson taught the beginners.
The Misses Finch taught for a while in 1858 at their High Street home. In 1859 the Misses Ann and Robina Wilson were teaching in a log cabin just west of Wilsons Lane (see Log School Rd), by which year small classes were dotted all over the district.
The year 1860 was a turning point in Doncaster’s educational history. That year a German immigrant then in Melbourne was begged by pioneer orchardist Gottlieb Thiele to come to Doncaster to teach the small Lutherans. Maximilian von Schramm became the best known, most revered and longest serving of all early school teachers.
He held classes first in the tiny Lutheran Church and then in his cottage on Doncaster Rd, which now stands on the site of that first church, core of the historical complex in Victoria St.
His classes grew within one year to 50 pupils, English as well as German, so that he had to built a bigger school-house. This in 1864 became our first state subsidised common school, later becoming the ES&A bank, now demolished.
When the Education Act of 1872 made education “free, secular and compulsory”, and teachers’ salaries were paid by the state instead of parents, they and their pupils faced fresh financial pressures.
A teacher’s salary was calculated according to pupils’ exam results!
In 1876 head teacher of the Doncaster National School, Oswald Thiele, was paid 59.1 per cent of his possible salary — because 59.1 per cent was the average of his pupils’ examination marks!
[Image 1] DONCASTER Primary School nestles beneath the famed tower in 1900. In the foreground is its predecessor which became the ES&A Bank.
[Image 2] PUPILS of the first Doncaster State School in 1885. Pictures courtesy of Eric Collyer.
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Page 10 — DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, April 22, 1992
YESTERYEAR
Fruits of hard toil
By JOAN WEBSTER
BY THE 1860s, peaches and other fruits were bearing well in Doncaster’s infant orchards.
Tom Petty shared Frederick Thiele’s enthusiasm for fruit trees. When others said too much was grown to be sold profitably, he planted more and encouraged sceptics to do likewise.
If Tom hadn’t been a farmer, he would have been a time and motion man. To save the long haul by hand from berry bush to packing shed he invented a sled.
He’d been thought ‘uppish’ when he drove the first spring cart to market, but not until he could save the back-breaking heave to get the load aboard it was he satisfied.
A lower axle, lower shafts and Tom set a new fashion for Doncaster’s marketing with his low-slung ‘jingle’ which held 20 cases of fruit.
Heavy loads were still carted with bullocks. The formation of the Department of Agriculture in 1870, and the fruit, flower and vegetable shows in the Melbourne Town Hall helped along the infant industry.
In 1873, wax models of Victorian fruits were sent to the Vienna Exhibition and fresh Doncaster fruits later had considerable success at the Botanical Conference at Florence, Italy. Commercial export now seemed an exciting possibility.
Lemons and thick-skinned oranges, difficult to grow elsewhere, began to appear on the hillsides. Cherries, peaches, pears and plums sold well.
Apples, taking 10 years to bear, came later. The new stone fruits, ripening in sequence, had to be sent to market quickly. To avoid losses, cool holes were dug in the hillsides and in them fruits were stored in straw. Grapes and gooseberries were still the main products.
Mending gooseberry pickers’ gloves was an inescapable chore for the women. Even on her wedding night, John Petty’s bride sat up late mending the day’s holes ready for the next morning’s work.
By the 1880s the Doncaster district headed all Victoria in output of fruit.
In 1882 Tom Petty, Frederick Thiele and Richard Serpell became the first fruit growers in Australia to successfully export pears to England.
In 1887 the shire, then called Bulleen, had 3500 hectares of orchard, 227 hectares of garden and 112 hectares of vines. Land prices had risen five-fold.
But outsiders who came to admire the countryside and speculate on its future trampled all over the carefully tended land and helped themselves to fruit.
Disease
Diseases came, too. Diphtheria became prevalent. It wiped out whole families. Weeping families returned from digging the grave of one child to find another dead in bed.
Because of the habit of city dwellers dumping their nightsoil in the district, typhoid took many lives. From 1859 until it was closed in 1888, 44 adults and 72 children were buried in the little Lutheran cemetery on the hill.
In contrast, around the turn of the century Doncaster was said to have “lived on manure”.
Its collection in Doncaster became an obsession when the value of manure to the soil was realised and its use pioneered by Doncaster fruit growers.
No one who took wood or produce to market came home with an empty dray: it was loaded with manure dropped by the horses of other traders.
The Australasian of March 2, 1904, announced: “Mr F.W. Pickering went to Mildura and carried out some interesting and valuable experiments. One of these was in regard to manuring for vines and citrus, from which striking results have been obtained.”
It added: “Mr Pickering is a great believer in irrigation.”
Doncaster’s ideas were spreading.
[Image] THE Petty ‘low-slung jingle’. Photograph courtesy of the Whitten family.
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DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, May 27, 1992 — Page 19
YESTERYEAR
The dam in Renshaw St
AS YOU travel down the big dip in Renshaw St, East Doncaster, you descend into what was once the biggest dam in Victoria.
For two years around 1891 every orchardist in Doncaster, working with bullock teams and scoops, helped William Sydney Williams build this 14ha dam.
It flooded the area southwest of Leeds St from just behind Williams’ original homestead (still standing at 88 Leeds St) to what is now Peter St with 100 million litres of water seven metres deep.
Once during the dam building the wall broke, the welled up Koonung-Koonung Creek poured out over the lemon orchard and the men had to start again.
The dam’s bank was so wide it was used as a road. A horse continually walked round and around it cutting chaff while others plodded by transporting lemons.
Local people called it a lake. In the middle was an island with a palm tree; fish were caught in it and on the surface floated water lilies.
One of the first steam pumping-plants in the district forced water up from the lake to a small holding dam at the eastern side of what is now 17 Renshaw St, from where it was siphoned to the Leeds St hill-top to flow on, by a system of pipes and taps devised by Williams himself, to his ‘eastern hill’.
This extended in that direction to Blackburn Rd and north-south between the creek and Cassowary St. Westwards, the 80ha property was bounded by Wetherby Rd.
‘W.S.W.’ was a 19-year-old sailor from St Ansells, Tenby, Pembrokeshire, South Wales, when in 1853 he deserted ship in Melbourne with four shillings and sixpence in his pocket.
He found work with Thomas Toogood just south of the creek in Box Hill, two years later marrying 16-year-old Anne Toogood. They started their dynasty in a log cabin.
Seven of the 14 children Anne had, died. Two were buried around the busy street roundabout by the Leeds/Cassowary St corner store.
Sydney Williams was the first to grow citrus trees in Doncaster with pears, plums, cherries and strawberries as well.
But in the 1920s the Williams family fortunes began to fail and had to ‘go on the bank’.
The eastern hill and part of the land west of Leeds St was sold by the bank for two thousand pounds.
The section of this land, on which the Beverley Hills Primary School was later built, had been worked and lived upon for years by W.S.W.’s eldest daughter Rose and her husband William Elder, whose beautiful brick homestead was demolished in 1959 for the Rosella St shops.
The largest holding, including the lake, was bought by Gedye and the lake became Gedye’s lily pond.
And so a new industry began. The Gedye family marketed the water lilies and from this enterprise grew today’s Gedye Water Gardens and fibreglass pools and the Gedye compost bin.
Gedye St now runs along the site of the famous dam.
The dam was still there in the 1960s when that land was subdivided.
The (then) Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works declared it a danger and health hazard and ordered it destroyed.
Workmen tore the bank apart and just let the water go — and out with the water flowed big 3000 gram eels.
The subdividers had difficulty putting in storm water drains because of the accumulation of 60 years of silt nearly four metres deep.
Whenever we have heavy rain I wonder about all this silt under the modern houses in the dip of Renshaw St.
[Image] ‘BOATING on Gedye’s lily pond 1930s’. Picture courtesy of ERIC COLLYER.
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DONCASTER AND TEMPLESTOWE NEWS, Wednesday, June 17, 1992 — Page 25
YESTERYEAR
From humble beginnings
By JOAN WEBSTER
“TO and from Kew and Warrandyte, by way of Doncaster”. This was the advertised route of Doncaster’s first mail services, three days a week on horseback.
The first post office opened in Doncaster on May 17, 1860, at the small general store of Joseph Pickering on the south side of Doncaster Rd, where an arcade is now opposite the municipal offices.
Pickering had been Doncaster’s first permanent settler in 1851 and lived at the southern end of Blackburn Rd, East Doncaster.
As well as postmaster, he was butcher, grocer, lay preacher for the Church of England, and registrar of birth and deaths until he died in 1871.
His son Freddie, who had a natural talent for healing sick animals, acted as the local vet.
Joseph Pickering’s postmaster pay was based on a percentage of postal business transacted. In the first year he earned 10 pounds.
We know from descriptions in the Victorian Gazette of 1865 how the mail was delivered. Doncaster was described as: “10 miles north-east of Melbourne, with which place it has communication only by dray track to Heidelberg and Kew, and thence by omnibus”.
The locality (it was never gazetted a village) had two shoe manufacturers and one heel manufacturer, the Doncaster Hotel and a population of 200, most of whom were working in agriculture or wood carting.
The post master after Mr Pickering was Thomas W. Grant, for whom the small Baptist chapel Grant’s Chapel was named.
Grant took over the post office on April 8, 1861 and held the position for the next seven years. In 1872 the postmaster was M. H. Hoare, followed by James Gill. The pay then averaged 20 pounds a year.
The mail service had increased from three to six days a week.
Letter reading nights were a common form of entertainment, with families getting together to read each other’s letters from their homelands.
Mail delivery was quicker than today. The deadline in Melbourne was at 7.30 am and the mail arrived in Doncaster at 9.45am the same day. Outward bound mail closed at Doncaster at 1.30 pm and arrived in Melbourne at 4 pm.
According to Victorian Post Office historian, Mr Eric N. Baker, the 1879 Victorian Gazetteer stated:
“Doncaster itself is the most elevated position within 10 miles of Melbourne.
“From the situation of the post office a splendid view is obtained not only of the surrounding country, which in itself is really grand, but a grand view of the bay is also obtained, and steamers can be seen passing.
“The nearest villages are Templestowe, three miles north of Doncaster; Nunawading, two miles south, and German Town about one mile from Doncaster.”
The only public institution was the Athenaeum Hall: “where public meetings are held in connection with such as a public library reading all”.
Mail was sometimes still delivered on horse back.
And the mail coach via Kew was the only means of delivering the mail between Doncaster and Melbourne.
In 1882 some called the Tower Hotel opposite the Post Office Hotel.
By 1884, when a Mr H. G. Reynolds was postmaster, 6074 letters were handled, and total postal revenue had increased to 50 pounds.
209 ByWays DoncasterMirror
YESTERYEAR
BEFORE the coming of the car, one of the highlights of our year was the local Sunday School picnic.
On the first Thursday of March at 8 am horses and wagons, loaded with children, teachers and a few parents, took off to St Kilda beach from Lauer’s the baker’s corner (now Shoppingtown).
At the end of the three-hour journey, as children scrambled down from the wagons stiff from their bumpy ride, the horses were quickly unharnessed for a luxurious roll in the sand and then tied up for a well-earned feed.
The gaily decorated ice-cream cart, its vendor ringing a hand bell, was a well patronised novelty.
If the day was warm, there was a swim in the nearby St Kilda Baths — sexes strictly segregated — a blue flag fluttering when the girls and women, in their two-piece neck-to-knee swimming costumes, were in and a red flag for the turn of boys and men.
After the feast and the foot races — sprints, egg-and-spoon, siamese-twin, relays and some games, the happy but tired group set off for the equally long and bumpy journey home.
It had been on the suggestion of pioneer Tom Petty in 1881, 18 years after the birth of the Christ of Church in a small timber building on Main Rd, (the brick church was built in 1889) that young John Tully started the first Sunday school with two women assistants and 21 scholars.
He remained Sunday School superintendent for 42 years, served on the church board for 54 years, and started a family tradition of Sunday School teaching that extended into the fifth generation.
Sunday School curriculum was more religious than studies.
It also taught temperance. The Temperance Movement, decrying the effects of alcohol, was very strong in that era.
Creating the need of the church congregation for this education were the four hotels and several wine bars along the road between East Kew and Doncaster, tempting fruit growers and wood carters on their way home from market.
John Tully was born in 1864, four years after his Irish immigrant father Thomas built a modest home north-east of the junction of Doncaster and Williamsons roads.
In 1892, aged only 26, he was elected to the newly-formed Shire of Doncaster, became three times shire president and served on the council for three terms of varying lengths until 1922.
As an orchardist and municipal councillor, John Tully contributed much to the fruit growing industry and to the social development of his community.
He was one of the first local growers to see their economic future in fruit rather than vines, vegetables or berries.
His father’s fruit was in the first refrigerated shipment exported to England in 1882, in company with the produce of refrigeration pioneers Tom Petty, Alfred Thiele and Richard Serpell.
In 1914, orchardists elected John Tully to investigate methods of handling fruit at British and European ports and markets.
His talks with importers and report to growers led to many improvements both for exporters and overseas’ importers.
In 1934, when aged 70, John Tully wrote and published the first history of Doncaster.
J.J. Tully Drive was named after his son, John James Tully.
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