Dandy Pig brings bacon home
As my first husband, Ron Stork, was a third generation of his family – grandfather, father and brother – to work at the Dandenong Bacon Factory and my late father owned shares in the company, I became fully conversant with the influence the factory’s symbolic pig had as an historical icon.
Today the Dandy Pig has pride of place at the Dandenong Market but for years the symbol welcomed visitors to Dandenong from near the hotel just up from the Foster Street corner and the then the Eastern Metropolitan branch of the State Electricty Commission.
Recently in the mail I received a booklet featuring a selection from the hundreds of memories, articles and photos of the Dandy Pig illuminated sign and Dandenong Ham and Bacon factory as shared by past employees’ families, friends and the City of Greater Dandenong and community.
Former employees held a reunion in February.
According to the booklet, in its inaugural year, the factory handled 8772 pigs and employed 30 people.
In 1922, the factory employed about 40 men and handled 18,623 pigs.
The South Bourke and Mornington Journal noted on 1 June 1922 that “the farmers of Gippsland may be congratulated upon having such a fine industry, owned by themselves, and run in the interests of pig-raisers and graziers, who, helping along their factory, are helping themselves and the district”.
By 1938 the factory had increased its operations to handle more than 38,000 pigs.
Scales of time
As I was flicking through a faded and aged copy of the Dandenong Journal from the evening of 24 January 1951, I came across this little gem on the front page.
Headed Cranbourne Man Put Hand On Snake! it read: “While Mr Jim Gardiner, of Cranbourne, was out measuring some land with Mr Lou Collison, the other day, he put his hand on the ground – and pulled it back with a jerk when he found he’d touched a snake!
“The reptile reared up and objected to being so “caressed”, but it didn’t take Jim’s fellow “snake charmer” long to grab a stick and despatch it.”
Although I wandered at will as a youngster through the low grass in the extensive orchards my parents had on our farm Rycroft at Lyndhurst, I can only recall on one occasion a blue tongued lizard slithering across my feet after I had been gathering berries from the mulberry tree.
Never once did I see a snake, although my parents were always warning me of the dangers of being bitten.
I do remember seeing slippery eels crossing the back low lying paddocks from one dam to another.
