By CASEY NEILL
THE Tharle family and the Journal have been intertwined throughout their time in Dandenong.
Both arrived 150 years ago and Dandenong and District Historical Society member Rodney Edwin Tharle remains a regular reader today.
His great grandfather Barton Barnaby Tharle and his wife Louisa Jane Bradley migrated to Australia shortly after they wed in the Isle of White in 1863.
They settled on land in Dandenong-Frankston Road, Dandenong, in early 1864 and later moved to McCrae Street.
They had nine children, including Barton Barnaby junior, who became a farmer and auctioneer.
He had seven children with wife Emily Jane Hunt and ran slaughter yards in Power Road, Doveton, and a butcher’s business in Dandenong.
In 1919 they brought their home in Macpherson Street from Jeffrey Macpherson.
It had housed the private Dandenong Grammar School, which Mr Macpherson ran.
Their eldest child, Barton, known as Bart, married Alva Sayers who played with the Dandenong Croquet Club for 40 years.
Bart started in the meat trade at the age of 14 and with brothers Frank and Victor (Vic) ran a butchery business in Foster Street after their father and uncles sold their butcher’s business in Lonsdale Street.
When Frank and Vic decided to leave the business, Bart carried on and at one stage operated four shops.
He bought meat for them until he was 79. He died aged 80.
Vic served on the Dandenong Council for several years.
Frank helped his son Bill run a butcher’s shop in Kirkham Road and their brother Leslie (Les) also worked at the butcher’s shop in Foster Street.
Their sister Mabel Louise (Mabe) was an enthusiastic knitter and made baby clothes for Wallara’s opportunity shop.
In her early life Florence (Floss) was employed at Alf Owen’s Hardware Store in Lonsdale Street and as a cashier at the family butcher’s shop in Foster Street.
She cared for her mother in their Macpherson Street home until she died.
Brother Brad Tharle ran a taxi service and delivered the first patient to the new hospital on the corner of Cleeland and David streets.
Edwin (Ted) was a keen footballer with the early Dandenong KSP football team and became an apprentice carpenter with Bob Boote when he left school, building many homes in the district.
He married Elva and settled in Hammond Road a few doors away from Frank before moving to Macpherson Street and building a home on the block next to Floss.
At one stage there were five Tharle family homes in a row in Macpherson Street.
All the Tharles were great gardeners and Macpherson Street won Best Garden Street on 27 March 1940.
Ted later became a butcher with his brothers. Elva was made a Wallara life member for her knitting efforts for the charity and managing its opportunity shop.
Rodney (Rod) was their only child. He attended Dandenong East State School and Dandenong High School.
Ted’s uncle Walter Bradley Tharle donated the high school’s gates in 1930.
Rod used to shoot rats at the tip across the road from school with an air rifle, learnt to swim at the Dandenong Baths and on some sports days wagged school and swam in the Dandenong Creek.
He learned to dance at the Hemmingway in Dandenong West and met his wife Judith at a dance at Dandenong Town Hall.
They married at the Presbyterian Church in Dandenong in 1962 and set up in Cornelius Street, Dandenong.
