AV0008Ta - Tape 1

NUNAWADING HISTORICAL SOCIETY 30th ANNIVERSARY 14 Oct 1995

Valda Arrowsmith speaking…..
During these changing times, and as you know, this will probably be the last time that we will meet. I have a feeling that perhaps we have got that Nunawading connection because now that we are all the City of Whitehorse we have to move and shift and change. So we thought it was appropriate just at this time when we are being reviewed and a decision will be made on how the future will unfold, that we did meet and that we did recognize all the work that people have done in the past and right up until the present today.
So I thank you all for coming. There are people here who were foundation members of the Society very, very early in the early years. The work they did was very important.
Our speakers Mrs. Doris Mattingley, Shirley Jones, Mr. George Cox were people who were involved very early in the piece and in fact Doris is still a member and only retired as our Newsletter editor just a few years back.
So it has been very good. Others of you have come and gone and you will know how much you have contributed in the thirty years that has kept the Society going and that we have progressed all the time.
Thank you very much for coming today and we hope it will be a very happy occasion of remembrances.
Now in welcoming you all and each of you are warmly welcomed who have contributed but I would like to introduce to you Commissioner Dimity Fifer. And we do thank her for coming. She is a commissioner for the City of Whitehorse and is very involved in the moving and shaking and reforming of the two municipalities of Nunawading and Box Hill which in our history we know have been together since 1926 anyway so I hope that is going to make the Commissioner’s job just a little bit easier.
Dimity could you just stand and say hello and we do thank you in your busy schedule for coming today.
(She makes an incoherent response)
Now we are not having a formal meeting today with the normal reports but we do have some apologies and because some of the people who would dearly have liked to be here have left a message. I am going to ask our secretary, Mrs. Barbara Gardiner if she would just pass these messages on. Barbara has just assumed this role since our last annual meeting. Thank you Barbara.
Barbara:
The first one is from Ted Faggeter saying he is sorry he can’t be here and would like to pass his kind regards on to George Cox.
Ted Jane our former Town Clerk. He would like to pass on his regards to his many old friends.
Councillor??
Albert and Fran Brown, his wife, (one of our former Mayors and his wife are unable to be here due to a prior commitment.
The Shortlands are very sorry not to be here and they send their regards to George and Shirley.
Ann Creber hopes to be here later, she has a cooking demonstration at David Jones that finishes at 2 o’clock and as soon as that is over she will be here about 4.
Apologies from Marie Walsh and Shirley Randall, Janet Wilson who is on holiday and I think that is about all.
(Other incomprehensible apologies were called out).
Valda:
Keith O’Reilly was President of the Box Hill Historical Society and I think we have six members and we thank you.
Jane Foxwell too. She was one of the foundation members.
There have been many people involved in the Cottage and the Historical Society over the years and we are pleased to have here today Mr. and Mrs. Terry. Mr. Terry was the Mayor when the Cottage was opened and it’s really nice that they have both been able to come.
And Mr. Keith Satchwell was also very involved and has travelled down from the Hunter Valley, so thank you for coming and your contribution and Keith is going to share some of his memories of that time with us after we have had our speakers.
We hope that after our speakers that those of you who would like to contribute your memories will have an opportunity for questions and comments.
So now if I could introduce our speakers. As I mentioned before that Mrs. Doris Mattingley was a foundation member and they have worked for the Society for over thirty years and she is about to share her memories with us.
Mrs. Shirley Jones that was very involved with the Museum; perhaps a little later on with some others and certainly her parents too were very involved here.
And Mr. George Cox who was very involved in the Cottage and the establishment of the Society and they will tell us of their endeavours of that time and I hope they will be pleased with the way we have proceeded and for all of you that have come in and contributed and that we have moved on to the position that we are in at the moment. So I would ask Doris if she would come and speak to us now and just want to remind you to keep your questions and comments and we can all share in that after.
So Doris, we hope everyone is hearing quite clearly and we are recording this too and perhaps people meeting in thirty years time and fifty years time they will be able to know where we are at.
Doris Mattingley:
I hope my voice does not get too croaky.
This is just a very brief story of what we have been doing.
To start with on the 27th October 1965 Cr. Keith Satchwell convened a meeting of interested people to consider the foundation of the local history group so we can think of Keith as being our founder.
In November our Society was officially launched.
We began our regular monthly meetings in March 1966 in the Uniting Church Hall in Nunawading.
When after some months we went to the meeting room at the Old Orchard Shopping Centre, then we moved to the coffee shop at the new Civic Centre and what a delight that was to us.
We certainly needed some enthusiasm and patience in those early years. We had a very small membership and at first our only finance was what we put in ourselves.
At a later date the City Council began a very generous annual financial grant to us and we are very grateful that that has continued right up to today.
We received help from several councillors. The late Graham Walsh, George Cox, MLC for Mitcham and Dr. Gavin Oakley. Among the earliest members I would like to mention who did a lot of work was Jean Field, is she here yet? She is supposed to be coming.
Valda: No, unfortunately not yet.
Doris: I hope she turns up.
The late Pat Faggeter, the late Keith Patterson and the late Nancy Leach.
Later still, thanks to the efforts of Murray Webster we achieved our much longed for museum. This building being designed by John Armstrong. And Jean Webster also contributed much.
Harold Bakes and Wally Spooner provided our corner displays in the museum. A valuable addition.
The next outstanding event was the opening of our archival ? where we are at now, thanks to the efforts of Valda Arrowsmith and Ken Barelli.
Joan Roczniok manages the archives nowadays and Shirley and Ian Barker, the only long term members still here in Nunawading, managed our finances for about 26 years and did it very well too.
Fortunately we have become more established and more members have joined and are assisting in several new planned projects.
Eleanor Ronaldson did our first short history, and later there were two council funded publications.
I just wanted to say no-one in our group could ever have visualized being here still working after 40 years. There were so many times in the early days when we very nearly gave up and it is incredible that we are here today and especially exciting that we have Keith Satchwell with us. That’s all.
Valda:
We’ve got to wait to get the little gadget on.
Are we wired for sound? Yes.
We are wired for sound? Yes.
Just a little background; Shirley had lived in Mitcham most of her life. Her father was the station master at Mitcham and I think that there were not too many people in Mitcham who did not know Barbara’s family. They were very very well thought of and contributed so much all around.
Shirley:
Thank you so much for the introduction Valda.
Valda and I met at the Baby Health Centre with our children around us and actually Denise Moorhouse. Is Denise coming today?
Valda:
No. We are hoping in February.
Shirley:
Denise and I came to look at the cottage. I came here in 1946. My father was transferred to Mitcham and we lived in Thomas Street and our Sunday walks were all around this area, so we saw the cottage in those days when it was a broken down, well it was just a place to live in and that was all. And then it was condemned.
Denise and I came down here and we looked it and that was at the time when Denise was commissioned to write a history of Nunawading. She left and I left. Our husbands took us away and I never heard of Denise again.
But anyway today, I did take an interest in the Historical Society when it opened and I was always interested in the cottage from that day on.
Valda asked me if I would speak about the museum.
Well I joined the Historical Society in the days when it was in the coffee shop, I don’t know the area. Things have happened, but Noel Webster the Councillor, at that time became Mayor, but he and his wife Jean (who was president of our Historical Society for a while) were the prime movers in getting the museum started and I always think it was wonderful that the architect was a sympathetic person who designed it such a way to fit with the landscape.
I think in retrospect I think it probably was rather early for its day in that respect and the material was quarried here on the spot and when it came to the smokehouse the same thing was done. So all being in keeping.
The displays in the interior, by the time we were given all this wonderful empty space, we thought how were we going to fill it?
There was a lot of the material donated by various people. I really don’t know where it was stored.
I suppose under the Council Chambers, and in people’s homes and under people’s houses and under people’s beds. I know George had quite a bit at his place.
Anyway, we got the museum and we went to the Upper Yarra Historical Society on one particular weekend to some function and I had a look at these cabinets and here are these cabinets that we thought would be just right for the museum. Harold Bakes is a great man with a hammer and nails and I said, “Do you think you could do that?” And he said, “Yes.” And he got together with another person in the Society and put up the corner cabinets which really were the beginning of our display.
We had several members, Keith Patterson was a great worker in cataloguing things. He was a very early member and he and Clyde Tilson who was another wonderful person with the Historical Society in the photographic side. They both worked in government departments probably in the Museum or the State Library, I am not quite sure. When the library was doing restorations, these cabinets that you see around the wall came up and they put in bids and I think they carried the stuff back and all of that work was set in place.
Then we had to fill it. So as you see it today, the people who work today have improved it and designed it and it looks wonderful,
Nancy Leach was a great worker, but someone has already mentioned her and Doris has talked about her. One of the things that was difficult was that my father was Assistant Station Master, not Station Master, but everyone called him Station Master because we had one Station Master and two Assistant Station Masters and they all worked different shifts but the residence of the Station Master was next to the station and it was a lovely old building and the railway said they were getting rid of everything and everybody had to look after themselves and buy their own home.
So Harold said we can’t let that residence go without taking something from it because Harold was an old railway man too.
So Harold got to work with a few others, I am not quite sure who they were but they got a block and tackle and they cut the ceiling rose from the dining room out and had to lower it. Is that right Harold?
Harold: It was your idea.
Shirley:
Oh well, anyway, Harold. They got it on a train and got it back here and it filled up the kitchen and here was this thing and Harold said, Right O, there you are, it’s got to be mended now because we have broken bits out of it. So we had bags of Plaster of Paris and we were up to our elbows in Plaster of Paris restoring the roses and the flowers and things on it. So that was finished and we had to try and get the Plaster of Paris off the tiles on the floor and here we were scrubbing and you would come back the next week and it was white powder on there again. It would just come back. Eventually we got the other artefacts from the station with the number which is very important to railway people that you lived in residence 5064 or whatever it was and all the other bits and pieces.
Are you mentioning the cellar George?
Oh, I won’t talk about the cellar.
The Nunawading Council were extremely generous to us. We had our allowance that they gave us and we tried to spend it as quickly as we could, so that we had money that we could go on next year.
They also provided manpower. If we said we needed men to help us do this or that, they would send men down and duly it would be done.
My father, Mr. Bawden and Jan Shortland were the first two attendants who were appointed here. I always smile when I think Jan was in the Historical Society and my father was in it too. They were the ones who were chosen and they were very good. Even though he was my Dad, he was a really good person to do the job because he could talk the leg off an iron pot like me.
Anyway, one little story I will tell you before I finish. Dad was standing out the front late in the day waiting to lock up and this man of I suppose 60 or 70 came up to him shouldering a huge pinch bar, like a big crow bar. Anyway this fellow came up and he said, “Look, years and years ago my father borrowed this from the Schwerkolt’s and I am returning it”. So it is out in the implement shed.
I can’t tell you much else but just to say that we had a lot of wonderful helpers and we always appreciated what the council did for us and we have been left a priceless heritage and I thank those people who had the foresight to buy the cottage when it was up for sale and to chase after Mrs. (oh I can’t think of her name now) Jackschowsky, yes, we were fascinated with the name, and it is wonderful and the thing I find most wonderful is that it is one of the very few metropolitan cottages that are left standing today on their original site and with some area left around them that was the original. Well this is the home paddock and from 1936 when I came here, that was the little farm that we knew as Schwerkolt’s.
So thank you very much. I hope you all enjoy yourselves and I have left people out I am sure. My cousin Phyllis? she was great too and worked very hard. So thank you very much indeed.
Valda:
Thank you very much Shirley. It is really great to hear these first-hand accounts of how people were working over that time. So now I would like to introduce to you Mr. George Cox who probably needs little introduction as Doris said George is presently a Member of the Upper House of the State Government and was a Councillor for a time with the former City of Nunawading and has been, I know, particularly involved with the establishment of the cottage and the area here. So thank you George.
George:
Well thank you indeed Valda and I am pleased to be here today and there are so many familiar faces here today. It is great to see Keith here today as well as George Terry and his wife coming today because these are the people who were actually involved in the very early stages of making things happen. When I was asked by the council to join a committee of people to do some work on the cottage, I was flattered at the time to think that I had been asked. But of course it went back beyond that and the saving of the cottage and Keith will tell you himself. I did not know that Keith was coming down today but I would still like to acknowledge that it was in the main Keith’s foresight that enabled us to acquire the cottage because the cottage had a demolition notice on it from the then Chairman of the Housing Commission and as a matter of courtesy they used to send a copy of that, the notice of demolition to council and then Keith subsequently followed it up from there and I am sure he can tell you an anecdote about that.
Graham Walsh was the City Councillor who had been allocated as Chairman of the cottage committee and the council, when I got involved had already spent some considerable time and work on the cottage itself and virtually had restored the outside and painted the interior and the fences had been put up by a building contractor and I am not sure but I think that John Armstrong was involved in that early time, I think he was commissioned by the council to assist with that restoration.
John Armstrong certainly had a lot to do with the cottage over a period of time, and we did consult with him regularly on historic opinions. One thing with history is that it can be interpretation and that sometimes it can be accurate and sometimes not so accurate.
Now I just want to refer for future consideration by the Society of a plaque that was put in the garden of Schwerkolt’s Cottage over here and it was probably done originally by the head of the Parks and Gardens, what was his name?, John Brandenburg decided that he was going to put a plaque in the garden to recognize the efforts of Jean Field and Pat Faggeter and of course we all came along and we were very interested and intrigued to see Jean Field, Pat Faggeter and others. The others were Ann Creber, Pat Faggeter as you know, Keith Patterson and myself as I said Graham was the Chairman. And we set about as a committee to furnish and refurbish the interior of the cottage. We had nothing. We started with nothing. Advertisements were placed in the paper and there were sort of repositories for these things. I think Keith was one of them. I can recall picking up material from Keith’s place. I was one, Jean Field was one and Ann Creber and so forth.
We did acquire a lot of furniture that was fairly well broken down and I can recall going to a house and just before the final demolition took place, and getting the cedar safe in there which was considered at that time, even then of no value. I did most of the restorations to the furniture because that is an area where I have been skilled and I spent probably six months at home and up here working on the furniture and refurbishing it. In the children’s room there was a fold-down cot, a collapsible cot and it came out on a sailing ship with my great grandmother as a matter of fact and my mother slept in it and I slept in it so I have slept in it.
There are quite a number of other things in the cottage that belonged to my family. The bonnet on the door is one of those and quite a few other things in the cottage came from my family.
All of this work was done before, done in about ’63 or ’64 before the opening so we sort of pre-dating this celebration in that respect. I will just come back to the plaque again and I think that is something that may need reviewing, taking into consideration that it did say that Jean, not here?, I can speak freely, Jean and I worked with over a long period of time and she was probably the activist who used to go up and harangue Ted Jane, Bill Phillip and Don Wilson about what they weren’t doing for the cottage. But I must say that they responded well. They were very tolerant. Jean, as those of you who know Jean and most of you do, had a very direct manner, so consequently Don Wilson used to be very philosophical about the approaches to the council. The council, as Don Wilson said to me, “Jean seems to think that nobody on the council thinks anything about the cottage”, but in fact everybody had this affinity with the cottage site. Incidentally we are very lucky because they could not find this lady in North America at the time, because we would have had a school on this site. The school in Whitehorse Road was going to be down here. The only saving grace was that they could not find the owner to acquire the land and put the school on it. So it had a reprieve on it from that time.
The cellar itself was another interesting part of it and we looked at the cellar which was just an indentation in the ground. We knew it had been the cellar. We thought wow, we don’t think we can do that ourselves and we talked to the council about it and no they did not have any money and all of a sudden this magic scheme came up where money was being made available by the Federal Government to employ people in the community and the money was to be handled through the Municipal Councils. That was one of the things that we shot a request in to the council for and the money was made available and they employed some people there and they started digging and they found the walls on either side and so forth and they also found a hand grenade which they evacuated very quickly. I am told it was a live grenade as well. Probably WW1 stuff that people brought back, but that was subsequently dug out and again with council work the walls were rebuilt and some pine logs put over the top and then a skin of water-proofing material, then the clay was consolidated on top and that was great. They grew the grass over it and it was terrific.
I was able to acquire the wine press from an Italian friend that I knew. We bought him a new press because we wanted the old one. So we bought him a new press and he thought that was all right too. And then we had Wynn’s wines up here providing all of the other barrels and other accessories within the cellar and it was very successfully set up and we used to come down and clean the cottage occasionally and go down and clean things out down there and I was down there one day and I looked at the ceiling and gee that has a bow in it. So I mentioned it to Don Wilson and he said he would come down and have a look at it. He said it was about to collapse because the weight of the clay that they had put on the top out-weighed the strength of the pine logs which don’t have a great deal of strength. That is why there is a big central post holding up the beam. That was not there originally for that very reason.
The barn was a barn that we acquired from the Ansell property which was an adjoining property to James Satchwell’s family and Keith yet again located this and so we went up and had a look and sure enough it looked attractive and then we sought some help from one of the Service clubs and I am not sure whether it was Apex; no it was not Lions. It was either Apex or one of the other ones. Was it Apex? Thank you. The Apex club and they came up and we have got photographs somewhere I think. There were people up there with council trucks tearing the barn down and we numbered it all but like other things and brought it all down on the trucks and so forth. Of course it rained and the numbers went off. We put the jigsaw back together and Apex certainly helped for quite a while but like other things the dropping off of enthusiasm and people had family commitments and holidays and so forth so we ended up with a hard core of three or four of us who eventually finished the barn and then they filled it with the various pieces of equipment that you see in there now.
The jinker, (buggy) I am not sure where it came from but we acquired that. That was also installed in there.
The smokehouse was something oh I suppose it was a major project of Jean’s at the time. She was directly involved in it as was the Historical Society. It was taken from a photograph of two people standing in front of the smokehouse and you have probably got the photograph somewhere. It was just to the south of where we are now outside the museum where it originally stood because of pieces of terracotta and bricks out there. So that was a faithful reproduction of the original smokehouse.
The blacksmith shop was constructed out of bits and pieces and slabs that we found out in a paddock. I think it was an old milking shed at one stage and we brought that down from the hills and again started on the blacksmith shop and I think that was mainly myself and a guy that we hired. I think it was John Hill who was a builder who put that up and we were able to have the opening of the blacksmith shop and was, I think his name was Collins from Ballarat. He was a blacksmith himself and he came down and we had the forge going and he was doing work there on the day we opened the blacksmith shop but it was a great day and it was just magic to see what he could do with the forge. I think we lost the bellows at one stage. Someone nicked the bellows and we had to get another set of bellows.
The other interesting aspect as well is the famous or infamous freeway and the reservation to the freeway which is now being constructed down to Springvale Road and I think we all might live long enough to see it go right through to Ringwood. I am not seeking an opinion on that matter. Except to say that at one stage the reservation actually ran right through the cellar and through the middle of the block and of course I was working on the committee at the time and I had sort of contact with Dorothy Goble who was the then Member for Mitcham and I sought her assistance on the matter and we brought her down here and we showed her where it was going to be and I think I made a statement that made the front pages of the local papers that the road will go through here over my dead body. From that time we set about discussing it with the Minister of Transport through Dorothy as well as the Country Roads Board about the reservation itself. Subsequently the reservation was taken to the other side of the creek which sort of protected Yarran Dheran as well as the Schwerkolt Cottage site so that we were able then to sort of continue on with that assurance that we were not going to have the fight of a freeway going through the centre of the site which would have ruined the site completely. I think that the people who were involved on the council at the time, Bill Phillip? and Don Wilson certainly deserve the recognition of what they did as officers as well and going beyond their sort of duty if you like as officers of the council to make sure that we did end up with what we have now because at the time I was on the Cottage Committee, this was before the Society was formed and also afterwards about the placing of this museum and it was suggested to us by the council that we wanted a museum on site. “Well we don’t know about that”. Where it should go because of the atmosphere that we already had there, the persona of the cottage as to whether a building like this could be fitted into the site. But with extended discussions and so forth with John Armstrong as mentioned before, it’s ideally situated now within the precinct that gives it a great sort of effect and extension of the cottage itself. There are just so many other things that you could talk about in relation to the cottage but again I think that when I now have not been involved in the committee for a number of years now but we saw our role as being if you like caretakers or watchdogs of making sure that we kept the original atmosphere of the cottage because early on people used to say, “Is somebody still living here?” And that is the sort of thing that we wanted to achieve and I must say as a dedication to the early committee, where the furniture is now placed and maybe it was just obvious anyway, it hasn’t been moved and in fact it is still very much like it was when we opened it up thirty years ago. That was one of the reasons why the museum was created because we did not want to turn the cottage into a museum. That was one of the themes we set out with. We are not going to have a Schwerkolt’s Museum we are going to have a living identity and of course my family were sort of farmers if you like and lived on this very marginal farm up at Toolern Vale and they never used to throw anything away, but saved everything and for those of you who can go back far enough can remember the pot menders that you used to stick in aluminium saucepans. A lot of people are laughing up there. And so forth and they just took everything and there are some of those original things in the cottage. So that was our theme to be able to keep that and of course we had so much material come in and as Shirley said people had it stored everywhere. We had too much material. What are you going to do with it so that is part of the pressure that was on the Council to be able to form this museum.
We had a coup at the time. I think it was partly through Keith actually, Keith Satchwell, which I don’t think that the Doncaster Historical Society have ever forgiven us for, because we went out to some of the orchards out there that were being demolished, the houses were being demolished for housing development and in the cottage now are quite a number of German books and bibles and so forth from over in Doncaster where of course there was a very strong German settlement and I think that they have gnashed their gums a bit over the later period of time, I think we did give some of the things back to them. I had better be careful I know. Yeah, that’s right. It was just that time. I don’t think you were formed at that stage. It wasn’t a matter of rivalry. I think what has happened up to date is excellent and that now with the work that you people are putting in, not only in the beginning but also through the years, the theme and the direction it has been running in being able to keep what we’ve got in perpetuity because it is fascinating to be here and see the school children come and see what it used to be like and I will just close on an interesting anecdote about the development and the wrong sort of development.
One of the Service clubs and I won’t tell you which one, one of the Service Clubs contacted our council at the time wanting to make a contribution and they said we would like to provide some children’s play equipment. “Oh that sounds like it would be nice, we could put it down the hill a bit.” “Oh no we want to put it up near the fence and we want to put a plaque on it to recognize that our particular service club gave it to the cottage. “We said we are not keen on putting it right there. What did you have in mind?” They had in mind tubular steel, multi-coloured which you would probably see outside a swimming pool. We were able to successfully negotiate with them to donate to a place where there would be more children.
I think the whole site is now in very good hands with the Historical Society now taking a direct role involved in the cottage itself so that many people who are no longer with us; Graham Walsh who was the Chairman of the committee and had an ongoing interest in the cottage and did a lot of good work in this sort of area of conservation, preservation. George Terry and Keith of course and other councillors who came after have all made a contribution to what we have now and ordinary people as well other than councillors have made this contribution over this long period of time and I think it is set very well for the future and I am very pleased to be here today with all of you and certainly would like to have a discussion later on about other things.
Valda:
Thank you very much George. That was most interesting and I think we all learned something new we didn’t know before. I can just imagine you in that folding cot actually.
Now, we will ask Keith if he would like to share with us. His name has been mentioned so many times of what an important part he played and why we are all here today. Thank you Keith.
Keith:
Thank you. Valda, I am delighted to be here today and it is a great thrill to see so many people present and so many familiar faces. I think it all reflects the magic of Schwerkolt’s Cottage and then historical interest generated from this spontaneous project in this area which wouldn’t have occurred if it hadn’t been for the officers of the council and probably more importantly the enthusiasm of the voluntary workers who rallied round to preserve part of the heritage of the area.
As George mentioned, the Housing Commission decided that this was a derelict building unfit for human habitation and decided that it should be demolished and the council were advised accordingly. I was only vaguely aware of this stone cottage here but thought that I would come down and have a look at it and when I saw it I thought, “Oh really, this is a gem”.
There was a council meeting coming up on the following Monday night. It was outside my boundary. It was George Terry country or Jim Willis country. This was East Ward. So I spoke to Jim Willis. A very amiable long-standing councillor in East Ward and I said, “Jim I’ve had a couple of things to look at in East Ward over the weekend……..?unclear. Something about Quarry Road and Deep Creek Road.
So we went to the quarry and just in passing dropped in here and I said, “ Look Jim there is almost certainly the oldest building in the municipality. What should be done about it?”
“I think council ought to take it over and do it up”.
I said, “That is the best suggestion I have heard for a long time.”
So at the meeting on the Monday night, I said Cr Willis and I had happened to look at this cottage in Deep Creek Road and he suggested it should be done up. And I think that is an excellent idea.
Jim Willis looked at me across the council chamber but he never said a word. The council at the time decided that they firstly would ask the Housing Commission not to continue with the proceedings until some investigations could be carried out and as a result of the contact with the Schwerkolt relatives in the United States and to ask them to offer the property to the council and I think they offered the eight acres for a very reasonable value. Was it eight thousand pounds George? Twelve thousand, five hundred, was it? (In actual fact, it was $7,500).
At the time I thought that we might be able to preserve an acre or two around the house but when that price was mentioned it was in the reach to acquire the whole area which the council did.
Then they said, well what are we going to do with it?
So I went along with a couple of other councillors and saw John Murphy who was the honorary architect to the National Trust. John and Phyllis Murphy in the fifties had been in the forefront of contemporary architecture. They were two of the architects who designed the Olympic Swimming Pool for us. And then their interest started to move to older buildings and they became active in restoring terraces around East Melbourne. So John said, “ I will come out and have a look at the place.”
So he came out and his eyes goggled and he said, “This is the best bit of organic architecture that I have ever seen.” He said he would like to take on the commission of restoring this place authentically and he said he would do it on an honorary basis. So that was the first major voluntary contribution made and then he said, “Well, let’s find a local builder who has got a feeling for the structure”, which was done. He took his men out and he got the bush timber. There is no sawn timber used in the restoration and it was all done very authentically. I think he made a concession at the time, I think there might have been some action taken to prevent termites getting into the veranda posts but that’s about the only bit of modern technology that was used.
The council funded the restoration and then we had to think of furnishing it. The council had said enough is enough. We have got this far and it is up to the committee to carry it on. George brought the truth to the surface. I have to say that I thought well there are a lot of descendants of German families in Doncaster so I went to two services of the Lutheran Church. I got to know the pastor and after the second morning’s service, he introduced me to a Mr. Aumann. Mr. Aumann was a man in his eighties, well known to the Lutheran families of German extraction. He was very circumspect but he phoned me about three o’clock that afternoon. He said, “ I’ve been thinking about this. I think we could help you find some items to put in that cottage. Can you be over at three o’clock?” So I did not hesitate. I went around and he took me round and introduced me to a few people. And we found a treasure trove really because these families like George’s ancestors had never thrown anything out. On one property there were three separate houses. The original was a hut, a house that they had built later on and a more modern place that they were living in, and they were all brimming full of chattels.
George and I spent many hours sorting through the material and I think we should say that we showed a sense of responsibility in not taking items that were of particular importance to the families, but we did find in Doncaster three orders signed by Gov. La Trobe issued to the Supreme Court requiring the Court to take an Oath of Allegiance from these German settlers to declare them British Subjects. And that was to enable them to purchase land. The government encouraged immigration to the fruit growers in the area and they couldn’t acquire land unless they were British Subjects. So these Orders were in excellent condition fortunately. We drew them to the attention of the families and we said, “Well you know you should look after these.” In any case they have a lot of intrinsic value. And any personal material we made sure went back to the families. Any items that were removed were moved with their consent.
The every day things that we were looking for weren’t we George.. the things that you would find on shelves around the house and we acquired a number of those. Graham Morris became interested and Graham of course was very good. He had a journalistic flair, sort of giving the matters promotion. He put photographs in The Sun News Pictorial of the material we had obtained for the cottage and we got a mass of material coming from as far as Gippsland. We had to be a bit selective because a lot of people thought that this is a good chance to clear out the shed. But I think enough has been said about that so I won’t go any further.
Shortly afterwards, Rocla Pipes were clearing the site of the Australian
Tesselated Tile Company in Mitcham preparing it for sale. The Tesselated Tile Company was one of the original industries in Mitcham. They had sample rooms there. They preserved samples of every tile they produced. Wall tiles and floor tiles and they met imported competition. If something was imported from Britain or Germany, they could produce something equivalent and I think probably it was one of the factors that put an economic strain on the company and their product range became very wide indeed. They had the smartest collection of tiles. Unfortunately, most of those went into the quarry. I think we only found a few fragments. I got permission from Rocla to look through the office building looking for material and I found a collection of photographic plates. One of the employees had been a photographer and he climbed up the top of the stacks to obtain panoramic views around the place and we found one of Schwerkolt’s Cottage with the roof partly destroyed and that solved a mystery that John Murphy raised. He said, “It is a funny thing, some of these roof timbers are heavily charred.” It had been caught up in a bushfire. One of the documents we found at the Tesselated Tile Company was an early wages book and that recorded when men were out fighting fires and were paid for the services they rendered. They released them from work to fight the fires. We found some of the old Board Minutes where the Board would consider whether the horse that had been bought to pull a particular dray was a good worker or not and that was strange because I don’t think there are many Boards now that ask whether the diesel truck that they have purchased is doing its job adequately enough. These records were placed in the Municipal Archives and presumably we have access to them now, but if not I think we should follow it up. Rocla did come back, strangely enough there was some litigation followed and the early Board records we had were important. If it hadn’t been for the activities here, I think those records would have been lost.
There was just one little anecdote concerning the local clergy. It concerns the priest at St. John’s,
Mitcham. A photograph taken from on top of the stacks showed this little wooden church of
St. John’s surrounded by a small graveyard. So I went along and said, “Father, I’ve got a photograph
of the old church and the headstones around it. What had happened to the headstones because if
there are some of them about, maybe we could put them into a little cairn as a memorial to the
pioneers.”
“Oh Begorrah,” he said, “I didn’t think anyone would have noticed. The tennis courts are there.”
Unfortunately the headstones were all removed and I think they are out in the Quarry Road tip
somewhere. That is just one of the little stories.
Well, I think that covers my recollection of the early days. The Historical Society decided that in view
of the material that we had got from then Tesselated Tile Company, it was time to perhaps start
recording some oral history and a group was formed to set up the present Nunawading and District
Historical Society. The first President was Les Gray who was doing some public relation’s work at the
Council at the time. And I interested Les into being the first President. I had been active in
encouraging the formation of the library service here and the Arts Society and Arts Festival and then
the Schwerkolt’s Cottage and I thought it was time I did not get too heavily involved in the Historical
Society or we might have found it more difficult to get the cooperation of the Council because
certainly they had been very cooperative and it certainly wasn’t a one man band by any means.
There were volunteers being mobilized right across the board and I would just like to conclude by re-
iterating that the magic of Schwerkolt’s Cottage and the Historical Society that really grew out of it is
due to the efforts of the people on a voluntary basis.

Valda:
Thank you very much Keith
Time for comments and questions.
George:
I just want to make a comment on the very important thing that Keith spoke about in regard to the ledger from the Tile Works. I was with Keith that day when we were over there and there were just hundreds and hundreds of pots with various colours. They were just left and we brought some to the cottage and there were just hundreds of them. More than you would ever need but the important thing that the Historical Society should follow up is that ledger because when I left Council in 1969, John Brown was still negotiating with the Melbourne University who had borrowed it as an early example of a Council and so forth then refused to give it back. They said ‘it would be better residing with us rather than in some municipality in the outer suburbs.’ That discussion was still going on then and I don’t know whether we got it back.
The harnesses up in the barn are from there and we got the harnesses from there and also linked into that the fact when they bought the two drays, they bought the two horses and they bought the harnesses and the ledgers tell you how much they paid for them and as Keith said talking about later on how successful the operation was.
Valda:
Good thank you. Now we have had a feast of memories and how it all started and where we are today. So are there any questions or contributions that people would like to make who were involved in that thirty-year period that we are celebrating today…
Jean was at the inaugural meeting to form this Society and was active in the society for quite a number of years along with the Box Hill Society and the Dandenong Society. She is also a local author. So thank you Jean.
Jean Uhl:
A pleasure. Thank you. Some one will start arguing with me.
I am not quite sure what qualifications one has to have to be a founder member but this is the third historical society that I have attended the thirtieth birthday and I feel about ninety.
First of all it was Dandenong which is still going very well and then it was Box Hill and then Nunawading and I do remember at the very first meeting we had was in the old municipal building. Because there are a few wrong things about that. Someone said it was in the Methodist Hall but it was in the municipal place but I can’t for the life of me think. There were George and Keith and I think there was somebody else from Box Hill. I naturally joined in being a Nunawading person then but I was also very much in with Jean Field. I think it is a great pity that she is not here today. But also I was secretary of Box Hill at that time and also on the council……?…..and that was who I was supposed to be representing. I do remember something really, really quite funny of this soft division between Nunawading and Box Hill because when we started it was going to be a Nunawading Historical Society.
Somebody piped up and said, ”I don’t really see why we should have another one. Box Hill is going very well” and somebody else said, “We couldn’t possibly go to Box Hill from over here. It is miles away”. Ever since I have felt that we are going to Box Hill we should be taking our passports to go over Middleborough Road. I have mine already actually.
We had another meeting at Les Gray’s house. I can’t really remember what it was supposed to be about. There weren’t many people there and then I think we met at …….? When you were in Canterbury Road and I was terribly embarrassed that night because they had apparently formed a committee which I wasn’t on and in the middle of the meeting I felt I was absolutely really dirt row. I nearly got up and walked out. I felt I shouldn’t have been there.
Somebody also said the other day that with three thirty ones, I should be jolly pleased that they are all still there. It is not up to me at all really but it is amazing that Dandenong, Box Hill and Nunawading are still very very active and that they have been going with up and down membership of course and the older ones who come in naturally you know and I am awfully sad that she’s not there or he’s not there and they’ve gone and there is nobody else you can ask about certain things of years ago. One of the things I remember when this society was going on, we had an excursion which I think Les Gray organized and the only place I can really remember going to which was of great interest was that old house; was it in Moore Road? Vermont. Off Boronia Road? It was an old house which was of wattle and daub a lot of it.
Valda:
It’s gone now.
Jean:
Was there anyone here who was on that excursion that day? We went by our own cars and we ended up at St. John’s Anglican Church for afternoon tea in the old hall and that old hall went not so very long after and it became a part of St. Alfred’s in North Blackburn, if anybody remembers that. All I remember mostly is doing the washing up after afternoon tea. But it was a really good excursion.
There are two people I think should be mentioned. When I was talking to Doris the other day whom I met in South Parade and there was one name I could not remember who was very very helpful with all the old historical stuff and that was the Boxhalls. And they have never really been mentioned ………………? But I think he died very soon after we formed it.
And also at the meeting we had at the old Methodist Hall, the Chair was then taken by the Hon. Jim Madsen? And he does not seem to have been remembered very much. I myself have had a great admiration for him because that evening I asked him if he would help me from the Parliamentary Library. I was writing something about Dandenong and I wanted to know about the old toll gates. He fished out of his pocket a little match box and he wrote down on this little match box exactly what I wanted to know and I thought oh well, he will forget about it or throw the match box away. But sure enough the following week he rang me and he told me all I wanted to know about the toll gates which I thought was pretty good.
I do think nowadays that the people who are in at the very beginning of things get very much forgotten, even with names you know. People see a name and haven’t the faintest idea. A friend of mine who is still on the Council of the ? Historical Society said I should write my memoirs of the time I was on the Council. I was horrified. I said I couldn’t possibly do that. I would be had up for libel. Every time I see an obituary of one of the people that I knew very well I pass it on to her because the present Council, they have no idea of the people who were around some years ago and the same things happen with Historical Societies because new members join and they don’t know the beginnings of things which I think it is very important.
Valda:
Thank you Jean and I think what you said was very pertinent and that is why we are gathered here today to remember and celebrate that contribution that people have made over the thirty years. And you are quite right, it is difficult to continue names to continue but I think certainly with our history and I have been spending some time reading through minute books and it is just fascinating what is in there and I think people will always be remembered as long as these archives are held and different people at different times have a mind to go into them and just bear in mind there is a record of what people actually did.
I would just like to say welcome to Bruce Atkinson who has come. George is a Member of the Upper House of the State Parliament but was a Councillor of the City of Nunawading for seventeen years and I guess we see him as more important in that role and the contribution he and Bruce made to the ongoing improvement and wellbeing of our complex today.
If there were no more particular points that people would like to make, I would just like to continue to acknowledge the input of some people in the past and particularly our Presidents and Secretaries.
I think it probably augers well that we have not had a lot but people come into these positions and have been prepared to do quite a bit of work and to stay for a while. But we do have here as I have already mentioned earlier, Doris Mattingley who was secretary for a number of years. How many exactly Doris? Don’t remember. It was a lot of years.
Nancy Leach was the first and Doris then. Then I think it was Judith no Jenny Poole? And then Jane Shortland and then………………..? and then Andrew. Where is Andrew. Everyone should be putting their hands up today who made such a contribution then Judith and Judith retired just about the last Annual meeting and Barbara has taken over.
As Presidents we had Mr. Gray being remembered and then Jean Webster who unfortunately could not be here today and then I think we had Jane Rushill and Warwick was here at the time the museum was opened and Keith Patterson. That’s right. And then we had Bill Gray.. no,no, and Bill Gray. So those people have carried the Society and done all that administrative work.
Our finances of course have been mentioned, Ian and Shirley Barker over 26 or so years carried that job and now we have Barbara Rogalski. So I mentioned that you people who are foundation members and early members to assure you that it has continued and I am really pleased to hear George say that he thinks the theme, the idea and the intention that the foundation people and members have really been carried out.
Interestingly we do have in mentioning people, we do have Rosalie Whalen who, where are you? She is a descendent of the Schwerkolt’s, a member of the Society and it was actually her father that the Council would have finally negotiated with as he was Mrs. Jackowsky’s principal person here. So we are really pleased that that history is going on too and that Rosalie is still so interested in the cottage and all that happens there.
Over the time we have had some books printed. Very early in the minutes, Eleanor Ronaldson, now Mrs. Mc Coy printed a short history of Nunawading. And I think when I was reading the minutes there was a committee formed and you ended up being the one person committee and just continued with it and finished it. It’s been a little bit updated but very much I think as she wrote it, so I think that is really good.
Nunawading City Council did commission two histories. The Niall Brennan and the latest one which was The Windows on Nunawading. There are other ones here that some of you might to have a look at.
If this was a cake it would be hot because Jean got this back from her printers at a quarter past one today and it’s the memories of building a house in the fifties and those of us who went through that experience, I am sure are going to relate very well to this book of Jean’s and being an author she kept every piece of paper and documents and wrote as she went, so I am sure are that will be interesting and we will relate to it because it was just a terrible time to be building a house.
We had just these last few weeks put together these papers which were called Extracts from a Review of the first thirty years of the Nunawading Historical Society and the restoration of Schwerkolt Cottage. We had put down here that we are looking for contributions for further articles and memoirs about the Society and the cottage and that is just what it is and we would like to get to a stage where we could put together something that looks more like this. Because as I said earlier, we are moving to a period of time these days with a different future and if we can capture just how we did it and what we did when we were the City of Nunawading would be a really good thing. So there are copies here and any of you feel you would like to take these and to read them and maybe make your own notes or offer to even come with a tape and to chat with you, we would be happy to do that to get all that history. We are so delighted with the memories we have had today of people and it is very much a beginning of that.
Just finally I would just like to tell you that we have begun to catalogue all the items that are in the cottage and then museum. And when I say begun, I am wondering if I am ever going to live to see it all finished but we have some very enthusiastic members that are moving on it. And we had a workshop from the Museums Victoria who have put in a cataloguing system now that will be universal and ultimately will go on computer and worldwide. People who want anything can plug in and find out if we’ve got it here because little museums like this often have little treasures that no-one else does. In fact someone came in here from America a short time ago. They looked at the hinges which are on our barn and I hope that some of you will look at that. And they said that on all their travels they had never seen hinges like that and in fact photographed them and was going to use them in America. These are the things we want to get down on our websheet in our cataloguing and you people who are in at the beginning will be terribly important to us as we move through this project. And I certainly hope you will be happy maybe to meet us up here or to give us the background because there is quite a big space on the sheet to get the history of the people that were involved and how that particular item came about. So I wasn’t going to mention that but having heard how these things that you have said, I think you will be pleased to know that it is going to be an ongoing project that we will have.
So I think now that I will ask our treasurer our local artist and also the daughter of the caterer when the opening of Schwerkolt Cottage took place to give a vote of thanks to our speakers.
Barbara Rogalski:
I would like to say thank you very much to George and Shirley and Doris and Keith. I want you to be assured that we will carry on. I am not one of the younger ones but there are some younger ones joining and it is an ongoing thing. I see us as custodians of this wonderful site and the cottage particularly. The cottage is very dear to me. You probably are aware of last year of certain changes that were going to happen but as custodians you can be rest assured that we will keep on going and the Society will be on- going.
Valda:
Just before we conclude I would like Barbara to make two presentations.
They are retiring committee members. Jean and Joan. Thank you for all you have done Joan from all of us.
Transcribed by Rosalie Whalen 2023

AV000Tb - - The History of Whitehorse (14 Aug 2010 WHS AGM.

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