Here's the first part of some notes about all the places
I've lived in over the years. Click on the photos to make them larger.
1. 97 Owen St,
Woodville Nth, SA
I was born in Adelaide and lived my first fourteen years in
Woodville North, to the north-west of the city. 97 Owen Street is on the corner of Owen Street and Thirteenth
Avenue. The house was in a large estate
of identical rental houses built of fibro-cement sheet and tiled roofs, to
house workers at the adjacent Finsbury Munitions Factory which opened in 1941
to build mainly shell casings for the war effort. Dad moved there with Mum from Perth to work as an engineer in the
factory, which had a foundry and rolling mill.
The first photo shows the house soon after it was built but
not completed (the window awnings had not been added). Mum is standing at the front with Auntie
Hazel, visiting from Perth.
This photo was taken in about 1953 when the yard was
established with hedges, fruit trees and chooks' yard. The house had three small bedrooms, a dining
table in the kitchen, and lounge room.
The bathroom contained the toilet and had a chip heater above the bath,
and there was a wood-heated copper and cement trough in the laundry. Dad built a back verandah and then enclosed
it to form a sleep-out when there were five boys needing space. He also built two sheds in the back, one to
hold the car, workbench, etc, and a new car entrance in the side fence.
This house still stands, with an extra room or two added on
the Thirteenth Ave side.
2. 26 Kipling
Ave, Glengowrie, SA
In 1959, we moved to a new house that Mum and Dad designed
and had built. It was large and
solid. All the walls were brick-
double-brick cavity walls on the outside, single inside, built on foundations
and the floors filled in with concrete, so it was very quiet, designed to
accommodate teenage boys.
The photo was taken
soon after we moved in, with five boys and one dog- I'm with the dog, Mickey.
While the next door block remained vacant for several years,
Dad used it to grow vegetables.
Most of the living
space was across the back of the house (north side). The laundry, kitchen and dining room were only separated by
benches or half-height wall, making a huge space. The living room could be closed off and ran from front to back of
the house (next to the carport). Four
bedrooms were in the front wing of the L-shape. There were both a bathroom and shower room, each with a
toilet. Luxury!
This photo, taken
recently when it had new owners, comes from Google streetview, showing the
front garden with lilly-pilly and lots of shrubs removed, and was taken not
long before the house was demolished and replaced with a two-storey McMansion!!
3. Muloorina
Station, SA
My first teaching job, in 1965, was at Muloorina, north-west
of Marree, on the bank of the Frome River just before it runs into Lake
Eyre. My accommodation for two years
was a self-contained flat built onto the north-west corner of the main
homestead.
The door to the flat is to the left of the green tank, with
my kitchen window beside it. (The door
further left is to the laundry). There
was a bedroom, and a living area that included kitchen and a toilet and shower
walled-off in one corner. A passage
joined the front door to the back door.
I wasn't flash with housework, and when the green lino turned to red
after dust storms, I used to make clean tracks one broom wide from front door
to kitchen sink, to bedroom and then to back door so I could walk bare-footed
without getting my sweaty feet covered with red mud.
The flat is still there but the school building has been
removed, bought by some community group.
4. Hesso Pump
Station
In 1967 I spent
twelve months at Hesso, 60km north of Port Augusta. The school and my caravan were at the pump booster station
several kilometres west of the Stuart Highway (which serviced the water
pipeline from the Murray River to Woomera and Whyalla), but most students were
bussed from the railway siding next to the highway.
My accommodation
was a "silver bullet", a caravan clad with polished metal
(aluminium?), the walls all vertical and all edges rounded. This polaroid photo is the only one I have
showing the set up. The caravan was
completely conventional except for the outside cladding (unlike the NT
"silver bullets" which were huge, high off the ground and built for
hot weather with lots of louvres). I
made the additions to help keep the car cool and provide for a camp stretcher
outside when required.
This photo, taken
from an 8mm movie, shows the "carport" construction. I stood railway sleepers on end, part
buried, to provide structure, and the roof is mostly an old corrugated water
tank cut into pieces.
In 1968, when I
was gone, they appointed two teachers to do the work I had been doing on my
own, and built a house for them! (I had
30 kids, grades Prep to 7, including 5 new kids aged 5!) Now all the infrastructure has returned to
bush except for an unmanned pump and a couple of houses which look fairly
derelict.
5. Moline, NT
I was at Moline
for 12 months in 1968, about 60km east of Pine Creek in what is now Kakadu
NP. Moline was a mining town owned by
United Uranium that produced silver, lead and zinc from the Mt Evelyn mine when
it became uneconomic to mine uranium at the El Sherana mine. The town had 180 miners housed in single
quarters and a handful of management couples with kids, hence the school.
This is the only picture I have of my quarters, known
locally as a donga, (rhymes with "longer"), a single-roomed
hut that measured about 4 metres by 3 and contained a bed, cupboard and my
record player on a little table. It had
metal louvres on all sides to allow the breeze to penetrate - the only
concession to the tropical climate.
I had my meals at the miners' mess and was provided with a
"cut lunch" (sandwiches).
Recreation was provided by the "wet canteen" (open-air pub) or
on pay nights by card games in the mess - these usually finished on Saturday
mornings when breakfast became available.
There were no shops or any other facilities normally taken for granted.
Not only the school and my donga are now gone but the whole
Moline site is a large water-filled hole as large as the blue lake at Mt
Gambier with nothing left to see of habitation.
6. Parap,
Berrimah, Milner, NT
In 1969 I worked at Nightcliff Primary in Darwin and lived
in three different places. The first
was provided by the Commonwealth government at the Ross Smith Hostel on Parap
Road. This complex was former RAAF
quarters handed over for use by public servants. Again I had a donga, but this time not detached as at Moline -
the side and rear walls had neighbours behind them. Ventilation was restricted to the front wall so I was glad that
an overhead fan was provided, given that I arrived at the height of the wet
season.
I think this building, part of the large complex, contains
about 12 dongas, six on each side. It's
the only picture I can find anywhere of the hostel, lifted from Doug
Whitfield's book Call of the Kyeema.
Thanks to Tangee Publishing!
There was a mess that provided morning and evening meals and
a cut lunch, but the meals were awful and because of this no-one stayed at the
hostel for longer than necessary, it being uneconomic to buy food elsewhere as
well as pay the hostel. I probably
stayed there two or three months.
Friends I met while at Hesso, Lyle and Kay Sims, arrived in
Darwin and offered to take me on as a boarder.
They had a caravan and annexe in a caravan park at Berrimah, so I had
the camp stretcher in the annexe (with no overhead fan!) and we all managed to
cope with that for a few weeks!
Finally, I went to board with Murray and Joan Lion in Sabine
Road, Milner, opposite Milner Primary, and spent the rest of the year with
them. Murray was also a teacher at
Nightcliff.
I think this house on the right, taken from Google
Streetview, was the Lion house, but
can't be certain without going to look. Anyway, I include it
to give the flavour - those familiar with Darwin will know the tropical style,
a house on stilts with lots of louvres and good flow-through ventilation, as well
as plenty of greenery to help keep things cool, and there were overhead fans in
all the rooms. The polished wooden
floors always felt cool to bare feet.
The Lions' house was rented furnished from the Government and I do
remember that the Govt issue cane lounge chair cushions were covered with
sticky vinyl!
7. Leitre, West
Sepik, PNG
In 1970 I went to New Guinea to teach in a Catholic school
at Leitre, 50km east of Vanimo on the north coast. Leitre was really just a clearing between the jungle and the
beach. It had an airstrip, a church and
school for the benefit of 3 or 4 villages up and down the coast, and living
quarters for priest, teachers and a few others.
The photo shows
the only non-traditional building at Leitre - it had 3 bedrooms, two of which
were for visitors, and a shower/toilet.
It was made of a steel dexion-angle type of frame which was gradually
rusting away from the salt spray; some steel supports for the verandah had been
repaired with timber and fencing wire.
It was necessary to step around the holes in the timber verandah
floor. The thatched building to the
right was a married teacher's quarters.
Meals and living
space were provided in this high-set thatched building further away from the
beach. Downstairs were kitchen and priest's bedroom and
workshop. Upstairs was a large open
living area with dining table. A cook
was employed to prepare meals for the whitefellas (the priest and me), which is
why I couldn't look at white rice again for years afterwards. After the evening meal there was an hour
when the mosquitoes became vicious and this was when I played darts. It was impossible to sit still but pacing
back and forth to the dartboard kept the mossies at bay somewhat - I like to
think that I became fairly good!
Doortje was living at the Lote mission (near Vanimo) which
is where we met (and fell in love!).
8. Lower Settlement Road, Pearsondale, Vic
When I arrived back in Australia I stayed with Doortje and
her parents on their dairy farm, "Ommel", at Pearsondale near Sale,
until we were married in May, 1971.
This shows the farm more recently, but at that time cows
were still being milked twice a day and the paddocks irrigated from the Latrobe
River, which is off to the right of the swamp on the right. An irrigation ditch runs along the fence
line. I learnt to milk cows and drink
lots of coffee!
We had our wedding
reception on the front lawn as well as in the large front room of the house.
9. 246 York St, Sale, Vic
After we were married, Doortje and I moved into Mrs
Luscombe's house in York Street in Sale.
York Street is also the Princes Highway which doglegs through the town.
The house still exists as this photo shows. We rented a bedroom at the back of the house
and had a toilet and shower as well as a make-do kitchen bench all on the
enclosed back verandah. Our part of the
house was "self-contained".
We were invited to use the front lounge-room to watch TV but never did,
only venturing into the rest of the house when Mrs Luscombe, who lived alone,
asked for help with something. We had
use of the garage as Mrs Luscombe had no car.
I used it for storage and a workshop- I remember building a bookcase
from 12" x 1" pine planks which then stood in the bedroom.
10. 3936 Malay Road,Wagaman, NT
At the beginning
of 1972, I got a job with the Commonwealth Teaching Service which had just been
formed, and Doortje and I headed for Darwin.
We spent a few weeks in a motel in the city until our brand new rental
house in Wagaman was complete and ready for us to move in.
The 3-bedroom
house was standard tropical design supplied by the Commonwealth for public
servants. It had polished dark wooden
floors, floor to ceiling louvres and overhead fans in all main rooms, and was
far superior to the new on-ground brick houses built for public rental by
non-employees. There was a mixture of
the two types in Wagaman, which was a brand new suburb of 90% rental housing.
The yard was bare,
but by the end of the year, we had lawn, thriving banana and paw-paw trees and
plenty of shrubs including the ubiquitous multi-coloured crotons. I recall going outside after rain and
digging holes in the slightly softer ground with a knife-sharpening steel (?)
and then poking pieces of buffalo grass runners into the holes to establish our
front lawn.
Jacqui was born in
May and Doortje remembers that the polished floors showed up all Jac's dribbles
once she was crawling, and that the balconies weren't big enough for playing or
keeping cool without going downstairs.
We moved after twelve months and not long after that
the house was no more. This photo,
taken after Cyclone Tracy, shows that no 3936 was turned into what was known
locally as a "dance floor".
The house was blown away leaving the polished timber floor and the laundry and
storage shed underneath.
To be continued...
This photo was taken in 1989 at the party at Dad's place for John and Sue's 25th anniversary. 
