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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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