AV0026M

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE COX – 20TH SEPTEMBER 2023
Interviewer: Margaret Graham & Peter Mc Phee
Recording Studio Owner: Dr Ian Alexander
Margaret: George, how did you become involved with Schwerkolt Cottage?
George: Originally, I was asked by the Council to join a small Committee to develop the cottage.
The cottage came under the interest of the council because it had been dedicated (declared) by the Housing Commission to be unsuitable for human habitation and it was, and they recommended it to be pulled down. And Keith Atwell, who was a Councillor at that time, suggested that it was an interesting building and it should be looked at for being saved. And that's why after they'd done the renovations outside and painted the interior, they asked me as well as other people to join this committee.
Margaret: Interesting. And what date was that, George?
George: I think it would have been the early 60s because the Governor opened it, I think, in 64 (actually October 1965)
Margaret: And how did you get other people involved in the project? That's the interesting thing to me because you're an obviously starter. But getting other people involved is hard.
George: Well, the Council also selected other people other than myself. And Jean Field was one of those and Jean was a self-starter. And she'd been a wartime nurse. So, she knew her stuff and she was able to do a lot of work for the committee in making contacts.
The Council were able to run a program in the local papers seeking furniture and various oddments for the cottage. And it started at that time when we had our first meeting and we each took a different or a separate identity. Jean Field became the secretary.
There was, as well, Pat Fargetter, who was recruited to assist with the garden because of the background in traditional gardens. And Ann Creber, who was involved in cooking, so that in fact she was recruited for that area of research, if you like. And there was Keith Patterson, who did a lot of the research for the group.
Margaret: Interesting. Was it hard getting people to be involved or easy?
George: It was very easy, actually, because it took on that flavour of saving something from the past.
And so that we got a lot of other people who helped who weren't necessary on the committee.
Margaret: Yeah, so, and how did the City of Nunawading get involved at that level after the initial committee?
George: Well, how they got involved originally was with, as I said, the Housing Commission issued a demolition order on the cottage. Keith Satchel, as a City Council at the time in, suggested to the rest of the Council. Many of them were people involved in business activities and not necessarily orientated towards preservation of history. So, he was able to convince them that they should look at the possibility of being able to acquire the cottage.
And that took place because the cottage and the surrounding land belonged to one of the descendants of the Schwerkolt family. And she was in the United States. And so that there had to be a lot of discussions go on between her and the Council to be able to resolve it. The good thing about it was that there was potential of an area of renovation and also for subdivision.
And that potential was there and I think it was about five acres of land which would have provided a lot of houses where the cottage is now.
Margaret: And how long did it take, George, roughly, the negotiations between the owner and the Council?
George: I think it was some months with some months because the history goes back with the Schwerkolt descendant. They went to Germany on an excursion and they were on their way home to North and through North America. And war was declared so that they ended up staying in North America.
Margaret: Yes, I remember when it had agistment land there. So, I guess this is about that time. You were very hands-on in getting the establishment and restoration of the outbuildings. Was that hard to organise?
George: We had Apex's service group give a hand on the development of the barn.
Keith Satchwell, had a property in the Dandenongs which was next door to the Ansell family. And that's where the cottage (referring to the barn) came from, that property in the hills.
Keith Satchwell suggested to them that it would be better at Schwerkolt's. And that's how it began and we recruited the service club, took three trucks up to the Ansell property and demolished it, marked all the slabs, put them on the trucks and brought them down.
And then once again the service club gave a hand to be able to re-establish or redevelop the cottage, the barn.
Margaret: Yeah, so that was largely the barn and then the smithy at the same time?
George: No, that was later. I'm not sure how they saw these slabs lying in the paddock and up in the lower Dandenongs.
And I recognised them as a bit for what they were, you know, they had been split and trimmed with an adze so that they looked as though they would be good for the use at Schwerkolts.
And then we were at the committee decided on that we should have a smithy and we brought the slabs down and a builder in myself developed the smithy. So, we built that and then we had a blacksmith come down from Ballarat and he and I set up the forge and he also made some pieces that were hanging now in the smithy and it was opened as what it is now.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
Is the forge usable?
George: Yes. Well, yes, we used to have display days when he came down from Ballarat, actually, more than once and worked the smithy and I think other people later on have used the smithy for demonstrating blacksmithing. And after my time of involvement, someone stole the bellows.
Margaret: Oh.
George: And it's a huge bellows and I'm not sure how they got it out.
But anyway, we've got a replacement set of bellows.
Margaret: Mm-hmm. Great.
Peter: There are two bellows in there too. There's a pair of driven ones and there's a... Bellows, you know, bellows and there's also a fan, rather than...
George: Well, I know I've worked on the bellows for the smithy before today.
Margaret: Yeah. Great fun. Yeah, lots of lovely memories about Schwerkolt Cottage. In particular, the hinges on the barn. My kids used to love those hinges.
George: Yeah.
Margaret: Which are horseshoes, interlocking horseshoes. I believe you've got some connection with the contents of the cottage as well.
George: Oh, yeah.
Margaret: There's a couple of your family things in that cottage, George.
George: Yeah. Well, we collected a lot of material, surprisingly, from the eastern suburbs.
Margaret: Mm-hmm.
George: And one house that was demolished for the development of the Forest Hill shopping centre, I was able to find some cedar furniture in that house. And I took it home on the trailer and did some reworking of it, et cetera.
And in the child's bedroom, there is a foldable cot, cast iron cot and the word is that my great-grandmother brought it out from Northern Ireland with her. And my grandmother sept in it, my mother slipped in it and I did as well up on the farm.
Margaret: Wonderful.
George: Yeah. So, it's an interesting family piece, actually.
Margaret: Mm. Well, as well as being involved with Schwerkolt cottage, you've been a great contributor to the people of Victoria. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that?
George: Well, going back into that period, Dorothy Goble was the local member of Parliament
She was the local member of Parliament for the state, for the state.
And there was a meeting at Schwerkolt's cottage because the then Department of the Roads were going to run the freeway through the open area of Schwerkolt's cottage and it would have been within touching distance from the cottage itself. So, there was a big protest meeting up there.
Dorothy Goble stood on a stump up there and said, over my dead body, so that Ray Meagher was
the Minister and with the representation from the local community and myself, we were fortunate then in fact that the Government decided they'd put it on the other side of the creek. and the pressure came up for a tunnel and that's how it eventually ended up.
But I knew Dorothy Goble reasonably well, and I used to do some voluntary work for her in that Dorothy was an older lady and spent most of her life as a now dismissed housewife and so that she didn't have a lot of sorts of background on community affairs.
So, I used to write a lot of her press releases for her because I can remember saying to her once was well, that's a good press release. She said, oh, do you think so? So, I was doing a lot of work with her. And consequently, I was a city Councillor at one stage.
And at that time, the Council never paid their Councillors, not the price of a postage stamp or a phone call. Well, they much more looked after now.
And I thought, well, Dorothy's spending a lot of time with Dorothy as a Councillor and when she was retiring, she said to me well why don’t you join one of the Branches which I did, and stood for pre-selection, and I won it.
So, I became the member for Mitcham up until 82. And with the change in Government, if you're in the marginal seat, you don't survive. But I went out in 82, but then I still spent time within the party machine.
I re=stood for pre-selection in 88, and I was elected to the upper house, and I spent eight
years there. So, in all, about 14 years in parliament.
Margaret: Yeah. And could you tell me a little bit about your cycling career, because you've got two cyclists here. And as I said, the last time I saw George was over at Eltham on his bike.
George: Well, I used to ride competition as an amateur cyclist and there were people going backwards and forwards to Europe to race, and we talked to them, those that had come back, and it was a pretty ambitious thing to do and we thought, well, myself and one of the other cyclists said, well, go.
And at the age of 20, which I reflect on and think, you know, really didn't know much about what was abroad. And I had my 21st birthday in Belgium. And we went to Belgium, and we lived there for three years. Well, only in the summer time, in the winter time, we went back to London and worked in London because there was nothing happening for roadside me at that time, or during the winter.
So, I worked in the winter time, and then in the summer time we raced in Belgium. But mainly we were doing 100- kilometre stuff, and you could look at the local paper. We lived in Ghent and looked at the local paper, and you could find the closest village, and you'd ride out of the village, and they'd give you a number, and you'd start in the bike race. So, the good thing about it was that the local traders were the ones that provided the money for the prize money.
And as it happened, you know, racing as an amateur here, if you took money, you'd be declared pro and you'd be kicked out of the amateurs but in Belgium, for the first 20 places, they gave you a white envelope, which had Belgian francs in it and that was helpful in that kept us afloat when we were racing in Belgium. But I also rode in Lugano, in Switzerland, in the Wills Championships, and again in Cologne, in Germany.
They were a long way in front of what was happening here at the time, because we used to race mainly handicap racing, and this was mass start so it took us a while to get used to that type of racing.
But generally, it was a great experience, and of course, one of the things is that it gave you a background on other parts of the world, which, you know, living in Australia and that age, you never thought too much about how Europe was happening.
The other aspect of being able to survive in the winter time in London, I joined a group, a contractor, who had a contract for French polishing on the big ships when they tied up so I worked on both the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth when they were in dry dock and that was an enlightening time.
One of the things is that it was suited me fine, because we used to work a 75-hour week and if we worked on Sunday as well, it was an 84-hour week so it was an opportunity of being able to save money for racing again in the coming summer. So that's how.
And then also, because I was working in the docks, I was recruited for crew on the Queen Elizabeth. I did several runs across the New York from South Hampton on the Queen Elizabeth.
Yeah. But it was terrible conditions for the British sailors. I mean, we knew that the Scandinavians, their sailors, had a cabin to themselves whereas with the Brits, there were eight to a cabin, there was only one blower and we were below the waterline.
But it was terrible condition because, you know, those conditions weren’t all that good but then it was four hours on and four hours off and you're four hours off, the bloke would be coming around, shaking you, just go back to work and of course, the boiler rooms where I worked, you had to go through a pressurized door and it would be probably about only about two pounds, but you could feel it pound in your ears. And also, the temperature in the boiler room was about 125 Fahrenheit and so that it wasn't all that good and I didn't do it for very long.
Margaret: What an adventure for a young guy. Yeah, it's a bit like Oppy's story, really, isn't it?
George: Yeah.
Margaret: Going to Europe to race was a bit like Oppy's story. And can you give us a little bit of your own personal life story, where you were born, where you grew up, where you went to school, please?
George: Oh, it's very complex.
Well, I was born in Forbes in New South Wales. My father was a shearer and then because of the shearers back, he became a general worker on the stations and my mother would be working in the houses, with the housekeeper and he'd be working on the farm.
So that I was born in 1931 and economics in Australia weren't all that good at that time so that's why they were up there, mainly working on the stations.
We came back from there to Shepparton and my father got a job with a sewerage contractor who was doing sewage installation in country towns and Shepparton was one where we lived.
My first day at school was in Shepparton and the other town we lived in was Warracknabeal and my father used to go out, I think he worked on several country towns but we were mainly based in those two country cities.
And then we came to Melbourne, just as the war started and it was difficult times.
There was no, if any, assistance at the time financially from the government and there was a period of time before my father got working in Melbourne because when the war started there was a lot of things that were available. And so, we, at that time, it was nothing special.
I went to Lee Street State School in Carlton and then when they cut the two top classes out, the seventh and eighth class, mostly in theory, you could go to technical school and the only technical school available was Collingwood and it was probably a good thing that I didn't get in because they had 90 places available and there were 300 kids sat an exam to go to technical school.
So, because that I never got in, I went to Lee Street State School which still had the seventh and eighth class. Fortunately, there was a man that had been away to the war and he was getting a, they gave the return service and the opportunity of furthering their education and he was going to Swinburne Senior School and he was able to get me a place in the technical school and I went on there and did some more development in the technical school.
And subsequently, I joined the trade shall we say, I became a French polisher and I spent a lot of time around Melbourne, French polishing and that's one of the jobs that I, that's the job that I had when I was in Southampton and in London.
The opportunity arose because the contractor was doing reworking a lot of the hotels around London so I got the opportunity of being able to move all over London if you like, redoing these hotels which had enormous amount of panelling in them and because of smoking the day, they really needed reworking.
So that was the development up until the opportunity arose and I moved to Blackburn in 1958.
Gosh, it would have been a bit different in 1958.
George: Yeah, it was, well the block of land that I bought where I live now in the bush area. The creek ran through the front of the block, it was a difficult block so I dug the creek across the road and the border works are great, they agree that I do that. So, then I had access to the block because it was used to run through the front of the block and then I sub-contract the house and I'm still living there. Sixty-three years.
Yeah, wonderful.
Back again to your connection to Schwerkolt. Now is the chance to spill the beans on something memorable that happened in your work with Schwerkolt Cottage and the project.
Any silly things or any stupid things or people being difficult or...
George: Well, one of the things that did stand out and it comes back to the loyalty to the cottage. Graham Walsh, who was the Councillor who was dubbed to be the chairman of the committee.
Graham, we hardly ever saw him if we did so we were left to work and I, which was our own because Graham knew nothing whatsoever about the historical stuff.
That happens with Chairmen.
George: Yeah, but he did come one night and the committee used to meet in the cottage.
And when we got there, Graham had to identify himself because there was a neighbour who
was there with a shovel. He had bailed him up because he couldn't get his key into the alarm to turn the alarm off and so he was standing there with the plate for the shovel and we had to identify him.
But look, many things.
Jean Field was a real sort of a goer and she used to harangue the engineers at Nunawading council about things that weren't being done and I can remember the engineers said to me, she thinks she's the only person that's got a connection with the cottage you know, we worked like hell for it, which they did.
I was down there one day because they'd found, we'd found the cellar, it was just a pit.
And under the Red Scheme that the Federal Government was running, they made money available to councils to employ people so we employed some young blokes there to clean it out and it was just full of rubbish. And we found that in fact that the walls were still in very good condition as well as that they found a live hand-grenade that you probably know about.
Margaret: That's right.
George: And so, once it was cleared out, the council were able to put the logs across the top. And with the logs, there was earth put over the top. But what they'd used was treated pine logs and with the earth on top, it started to sag. I was there one day because I had a bit to do with the cellar.
And I walked in there and it was sagging. The logs were sagging, so I spoke to the engineer who came up and then immediately that's why that there's a row of posts down the middle because they were able to prop it up before it collapsed completely.
So that's why it's there now.
The other thing is that lots of the barrels there are from Wynns. And I went to Wynns several times with my trailer and picked up barrels that are now in the cellar.
And the grape crusher near the door came from one of the fellows I worked with at Dulux in the laboratories, which I didn't mention.
And he was Italian and I bought a new one, and we didn't really want to put a new one in the front of the cellar. So, I swapped the brand new one for one that he'd been using for a period of time, which looked a lot more authentic if you like.
But I also have been working in, you know, I transferred to the laboratories at Dulux so that I had a fair bit of background and I was able to do quite a bit of what was called foreigners during lunchtime and other times.
And Dulux was a very good in relation to that because it gave you a hands-on feel for the products that they were producing.
Peter: Wynns would have been in Rooks Road at the time.
George: They were, yeah, winds were in Rooks Road and they were very good and supplying material because I think some of those barrels came over from South Australia.
One of the, which was probably not in relation to the cottage, but one of the things that happened at Wynns in being a sort of a hands-on local member, I found out that the Premier was coming over from South Australia, Don Dunstan, and he was going to launch a new wine for Wynns.
And I got to hear about it so I rang them up and I said, I haven't been invited and because what had happened was that just about half the Labor Party was there and also the Labor candidate.
So, I, when I rang them up, 20 minutes later, I said, you were invited.
I went around and I talked to the press people and said, I was here, you know, and the rest of the people here went along through the Labor Party. And I thought, now how can I get myself involved? And one of the other members said, I've got a Don Dunstan cookbook so I took the cookbook up to Don Dunstan after he'd spoken and I have a photograph of myself with Don signing this book and me smiling like a Cheshire cat.
Margaret: You schmoozer
George: And that night I got TV. I got all the TV.
Margaret: I bet you did. Wonderful. Wonderful. And he would have had an on his safari suit, wouldn't he?
George: No, he didn't.
Margaret: He didn't have his safari suit.
George: Yeah, that's so that, yeah, that's one of the incidents can happen when you're in Parliament.
Margaret: Yeah, wonderful. You got any other questions, Peter?
I'm out of my questions
Peter: No, I'm just fascinated because I grew up two doors from bike rider called Sid Patterson
George: Oh, did you, I knew him well
Peter: and his brother Dave.
George: Oh, I didn't know him well. But I knew Sid
Peter: His parents ran the local dairy.
George: Oh, did they?
Peter: Yeah, you’d go up there to get your... take your can up and get your cream and then...
George: Yeah, that's a... well, Sid was racing in Europe when I was there. And we stayed at the same house.
Margaret: Yeah.
George: There was a woman in Herne Hill and she made rooms available for bikies and Sid used when he came over from the continent. He used to stay there as well. So, I knew Sid quite well. Yeah, he did. Sid, I think he'd won the... He'd won a world title on the track. And I was just coming back from Europe. We'd raced in Lagano and the Italians put up a copy against Sid to do a time trial.
So, we went round to the entrance for the members and Sid said, yeah, come in. He said to the fellow there, or what, they were with me. So, we were in there and we thought, that's great we're going to be in the middle of the track and we can see it all.
But what happened was that they broke the doors down and the whole centre filled up
with people and all you could see was just going past, you know, on the track. With it with that sort of an event, they have won on either side of the track. And I said to Sid later, I said, you let him beat you. And he said, what do you think you'd do with that 10,000 Italians there?
Margaret: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yes, well, having done a bit of cycle touring in Europe, one of the wonderful things is people our age and whatever, still on their bicycles in Europe. Absolutely wonderful.
George: Well, particularly in Holland.
Margaret: Holland and France and Germany. We encounter a lot of that.
Peter: Well, I haven't ridden the bike since 1996 when I did 800 k's for road trip to raise money for transplant education in five days.
Margaret: That was the end of your cycling career.
Peter: Yes.
Margaret: George, is there anything else you'd like to add to the story? Please do.
George: I'll just add.
Margaret: We'd be most grateful and happy to listen to whatever you'd like to put on.
George: Talk about the cellar. The other thing that I didn't mention was that the smokehouse.
Margaret: Yes.
George: Now, that was something that once again, Jean Field took that on and she was able to get some photographs, et cetera, of a smokehouse. We know there was a smokehouse there.
Margaret: Yes.
And I think it was built by the fellow who did the Yaw premises. He died not very long after.
But, yes, he built the smokehouse. We had a ceremony there, smoking something.
Margaret: No, good. Well, there are now some papier-mâché, legs of ham and bacon inside.
The smokehouse made by the old art teacher, which was me, which was great fun.
Did that during COVID. A balloon and then putting paper around a balloon can make a great leg of ham.
Peter: There's also a photo of one of the Schwerkolt kids in front of the old smokehouse
George: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's probably where Jean got that.
Margaret: Probably would have. Yes. So, anything else you'd like to add, George?
George: I think I've covered most of the things that I...
Well, what I've said here, that my grandmother, if they lived in Toolern Vale, which is a sort of subsistence farm, my great-grandmother on my mother's side, she came out from Northern Ireland.
And my grandmother was obviously one of her daughters and it was, at that time, you could get land from the government, but you had to clear it. And of course, it was a fairly bushed area up there, and it was sort of subsistence land very stony.
And they lived on this small farm, and they were able to sort of cater for themselves, etc. And I used to go up there on holidays, you’d catch the train that Spencer Street, get out at Melton, the local mailman who did all the mail distributions, you’d give him two shillings, and he'd drop you at the gate.
Margaret: Oh, school holidays.
George: So that I used to spend holidays up there.
Margaret: Yes.
George: So, having seen what it was like on a subsistence farm, then in fact gave me a sort of background to the feeling for the development of the cottage.
Margaret: And I'm going to add, till that to the young people of today.
Peter: Ken Twenny was also from Warracknabeal; did you have much to do with the Doctor Ken Twenny?
George: No.
Peter: Local, maybe?
Peter: Local doctor?
George: No. I was in the third class when I was in Warracknabeal.
Peter: So, was he, probably?
Margaret: Well, Ian here, of course, had a practice in Shepparton.
George: Oh, yeah?
Margaret: Mm.
George: Where?
I was a radiologist there.
George: Oh, were you
We ran a radiology practice there.
George: Right.
Well, we ran an imaging group for many years, and retired from that five years ago, and did locums for a while. But now I'm an old man, I ride with these guys.
Shepparton comes up quite a bit because when I was on the State Executive of the RSL, I’d get a phone call from the General and he’d say Peter, oh, wrong Peter and Peter McPhee was also the president of Shepparton. We were both chairman of various state committees, and we were both contractors to Vic Roads.
George: All right. Yeah.
Margaret: Six degrees of separation.
George: Well, Shepparton, I rode the Melbourne to Shepparton several times. The used to start out in the Sydney Road.
Margaret: Yeah.
George: And it was a 100 miler.
Margaret: That's right. That was quite a famous road race.
George: Yeah. I used to ride that. And I raced at Shepparton on the track, which was at the time called the wreck. So, you know, how long, when were you there?
Ian: I was there for 20 years from about 1990, I think.
George: Yeah. And I think it was a bit of a wreck, which was a bike track. And it's just down the road from the Terminus Pub.
Ian, I do remember something about that.
George: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we used to race on that. And of course, it was a famous period of time for the bikies. You'd go and race at Shepparton. You'd go to Echuca and race at Echuca and at Ararat, various places, you know, you'd go to race.
Well, you would know probably of one of the guys that - I run a vintage car as well. And one of the fellows that was a member of the club. And he was, I think it was, I don't think he was a radiologist, but he was a specialist in Shepparton.
And he had a bike that was an auto bike, you know, one of the old original ones and he was riding it up to the local museum. He got the wheel caught in the railway line and fell.
Ian: He was one of my partners, Ian Barker.
George: Yeah, that's right. He had a Maserati and a couple of things up there.
Ian: And he was being a philanthropic riding a bike up in the fella in his head.
George: That's right.
Ian: And died.
Margaret: Oh, nasty.
George: Yeah. Well, I knew him reasonably well, you know, with me on rallies and we'd get the chat to him. He'd have made me out of a windcheater, something to pull over your head and keep the sun off.
Ian: He and Tony Coates established the practice.
George: Oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, there you are.
Margaret: So, George, what sort of vintage car have you got?
George: I've got a 1925 Vauxhall.
Margaret: Ah, yes. I know you were away last year and we tried to contact you.
George: That's right. Yeah.
Margaret: You were away doing a rally.
George: It was that was not over. Yeah.
So, the RACV ran a rerun of what they called the Alpine trial that ran in 1921-25. And this was a sort of a centenary of that. And we were going to run it the previous year and it was cancelled.
So, it started here in Dandenong and then we're down to Lakes Entrance and up through the mountains up to Wodonga and back to Healsville and then over to Ballarat. But I did about 1600 Ks in the Vauxhall. Yeah.
Margaret: And from memory, it was pretty wet last year. So, did you get rained out doing it?
George: It was. No, well, they changed the route of it because it's quite a number of country places were flooded out. Yes. And I drive with the hood down and fortunately, I had it down or had it up on the last day when we got, we were up around Whittlesey and you just couldn't see the rain was so heavy.
Yeah.
Peter: Well, on the bike riding, George, did you ever do the Warrnambool to Melbourne?
George: No, no, that's pro race and I used to race amateur.
Yeah, I'm an amateur. Yeah. But the, you know, the amateurs have a lot of classics.
We had a Melbourne to Castlemaine that used to run every year and there were 310 starters.
You can imagine what it would be like on that day on that road. Drove the, uh, motorists mad, you know of course, they, what had happened was they would bunch up, you know, they had kept, you started as a small bunch, but they'd catch up. And the enormous bunches on the road.
Margaret: Yeah. Yeah, amazing. Well, I think that's probably where we should finish, roughly.
Thank you.
Peter: So, thanks very much, George.
Margaret: It's fascinating to hear your story I’ve heard parts of it. It's great to talk to the real man.
George: Well, let's look …, I'm flattered by the fact that you wanted to hear what I have to say.
Margaret: Oh, no. No, no, it's really interesting.





Transcription: Kathy Innes November 2023