Jack Looks Back, with Jack Johnson
IN 1932, as a three-year-old boy, I remember Dandenong as a country town in the middle of the Great Depression.
With the Police Paddocks and Dandenong Ranges to its north, and to its east, the Princes Highway, this quiet little market town was transformed every Tuesday, on market day, into a hive of activity when people from miles around came to town.
The central township was completely surrounded by farmland, with large paddocks still within the heart of Dandenong and its business district. Minor streets were gravel strips with no gutters or footpaths. Many streets were unmade paddocks, defined only as streets by post-and-rail or wire fences.
Others, known only by a few, were still lines on a survey map.
The first home my parents had on coming to Dandenong in about 1926 was in Rodd Street, off Robinson Street. The family was there for less than a year before moving to 29 Fifth Avenue in Dandenong West.
Fifth Avenue was still a paddock at the time and our weatherboard cottage its only house. Our access, both in and out, was across the paddock from Birdwood Avenue, which was still a gravel track.
In the wet of winter to get access to home, and because Fifth Avenue was so boggy, they had to climb through a hole in the back fence of one of the few houses at that end of Potter Street. Luckily the people living there were related to my mother.
Our only neighbour was across the paddock, towards the school on the south side of Birdwood Avenue. These people kept a house cow for their milk and butter, as did a lot of people then. Their means of transport was a beautiful piano-box buggy drawn by a light harness horse.
Our next rented house was at 88 McCrae Street next to the old St Mary’s Primary School and convent. Living in McCrae Street during those years was an unforgettable time of my life. Although we went through poverty during the Depression and the early years of World War II, my brothers and sister all agreed that Dandenong in the 1930s was the perfect place to grow up. Each time you stepped out that gate next to St Mary’s, it was the beginning of an adventure.
If you turned right you were heading for the meandering crystal-clear little creek, the bush and the wildlife that was the central focus of our childhood playground. As children we imagined the creek encircling the little town of Dandenong, like a moat surrounding a castle – the only difference was that we had six bridges, not just the one drawbridge, to play on and explore.
