Carmen Powell is a life member of the Dandenong and District Historical Society. She attended Dandenong East Primary School and Dandenong High School before getting a job at K L Farm Equipment in Gladstone Road. She opened the first art gallery in Dandenong in Vanity Court Arcade. Carmen reminisces about the delivery men who were regular visitors to her family home in New Street, Dandenong.
Two exciting regulars to come down our street were the milkman and the baker.
The milkman was invisible – just a collection of sounds in the night. The first sound you heard was the slow echoey ‘clip clop’ of the milkman’s horse in the silent early morning air.
Sometimes if the horse was too slow he would call aggressively, “camarn”.
Then our turn was recognised by the squeak of the front gate, the rattle of coins being tipped from the empty bottles, the ‘clink-clink’ as empties were exchanged for full followed by the loud rattley crash as he tossed empties into the wire crates on his cart. Quietness was not a skill he bothered with.
The horse would walk slowly the whole way without a driver while the milkman ran behind it from house to house with deliveries.
Often by the time we fetched the milk from the gate in the early mornings, magpies or crows would have pecked holes in the cardboard bottle tops and drunk the first two inches of cream.
Mr Staff was the delivery man for Robert’s Bakery. Mr Staff was a small man with a big sense of humour and I looked forward to his smile and friendly manner. He always wore a short white cotton dustcoat over his shirt and tie.
If you were playing outside you could hear his cheery call and the horse’s metal shoes on the gravel long before he arrived outside our house.
I would always run out the front to meet him if I wasn’t already hanging over the wire gate waiting.
His brightly painted green and yellow wagon had the word ‘Baker’ painted in large burgundy letters on both sides.
There was a padded seat at the front of the cart with a cantilevered roofline projected forward over the driver for protection from the elements.
There was also some kind of wheel brake lever on the right hand side that locked the wheels when the wagon was stopped and the reins were looped around over the front rail.
He called daily and never missed whether it was rain, hail or heat wave.
There was no obligation for you to buy and many times I heard Mum say “Nothing today thanks”.
His horse had leather blinkers each side of his head which narrowed his vision to the road in front. To keep the flies at bay plaited strings hung over his eyes.
I sometimes parted the plaited strings so he could see clearly for a minute or two and I could look into his beautiful big brown eyes. His eyes and wiry eyelashes appealed to me, his twitching velvety nose was so warm to touch and the smell of him was enchanting.
Occasionally he had a feed bag covering his nose and when they stopped he would press it on the road and snort loudly into it.
Having found something to chew he would relax one back leg and his huge rump would sag to one side and that action tilted the wagon forward – wagon and horse moved in rhythmical unison.
Mr Staff carried a huge cane basket full of fresh baked goodies around to your back door calling “ba-ker” as he went.
Inside his basket was an assortment of bread styles – round, rectangular, or oval high tin loaves. He also carried spicy buns, bread rolls – round or long, sesame or plain, wholemeal or white. I guess he soon learned each customer’s preferences.
One day while counting out the dozen iced buns Mum had ordered, Mr Staff added one extra and explained that a baker’s dozen was different to a regular dozen.
On the way back to the kitchen with a new loaf of bread I often pinched out the end of a loaf and ate it. Then I’d hurriedly try to smooth the now concave end by eating more bits off the edge but it never quite worked. If anyone noticed – they never spoke it.
When Mr Staff went off and left the door to the wagon open I would crane my neck and peer into the darkness.
I could see wire racks of enticing wares. I always wanted to climb the couple of steps and make the wagon sway and lurch as Mr Staff did when he either climbed down or aboard.
Each time when he opened the door of his wagon my nostrils flared as the wonderful warm freshly baked aroma hit me and beckoned me into that magical world of gluttony.
After he had moved further down the street I loved the warm familiar smell of the steaming droppings occasionally left behind by his horse.
Tharle’s the butchers
Tharle’s the local butcher shop in Langhorne Street – on the point where it met Lonsdale Street – was always an interesting and fun place to visit after school. I liked the smell of the thick saw dust coating the floor which was raked neatly into tiny rows in the mornings but well-trampled by afternoon.
It was interesting to see the long twisted ropes of sausages hung from thick metal hooks. I could never forget looking at half of an upside-down lamb, or pig, or a massive beef carcass all hung from hooks that were pierced through their naked skinny ankles and the high-pitched sound of metal on metal as the butcher pushed a carcass along the overhead rail which looped around the inside walls of the shop.
I enjoyed the friendly smile and crazy comical banter of Mr Tharle the handsome butcher as he chatted with you while he rolled and sliced meat into matching sizes on the worn-down wooden work table and chopped the connecting bone with a cleaver to create a row of perfect little lamb chops.
His white shirt with its rolled-up sleeves was protected by his thick and bloodied navy and white striped apron.
The thick leather sheath on his hip that hung from the belt around his waist held his sharpened knives that rattled as he walked and I remember the ‘thunk’ when the knife landed back in the sheath and the ‘sliss-sliss’ as he sharpened his long knife on the sharpening steel. His trousers were always tucked into bloodied white gumboots.
Then when your order was filled and wrapped neatly in white paper you took it to the chatty cashier near the door – a pretty grey-haired woman with a bright smile. I knew it as a happy place.
Don’t miss next week’s Journal when Carmen writes about her father Alf Cruickshank and his brother, George, who were Dandenong ice and fuel merchants.
