TAYLOR Alf Taylor Remembers

Alf Taylor can trace his family connections with Rowville back almost 130 years to his great-grandfather, Michael Sutton, who arrived here from Lincolnshire, England in the early 1860s with his wife Martha and two year old daughter Sarah. Many years later Sarah was to become Alf's grandmother.

In 1863 Michael Sutton took up 44 acres at the south-east corner of Stud and Kelletts Roads - the site of the present Lakes Estate - and gained the reputation of being a very good farmer. From time to time he also worked at Stamford Park for the Row family after whom Rowville is named. Michael is recorded as having the task of going into Melbourne to collect consignments of sparrows and hares imported from England by Frederick Row for release at Stamford Park.

During the spring racing season and at Christmas, Frederick Row entertained lavishly with up to 20 guests staying at Stamford House. On these occasions Martha Sutton was employed to assist with the cooking.

Sarah becomes Mrs Taylor

When Sarah grew up she married John Taylor, a young man who had come from England to work at Stamford Park, the Taylor and Row families having been friends in the old country. John and Sarah made their home on a 40 acre farm immediately north of what is now the Twin Views Estate. The track that ran past their farm was named Taylors Lane in their honour.

One of Alf's most vivid recollections of his grandparents was the contrast in their heights: John was a very tall man while Sarah was tiny. Although small, Sarah could speak her mind and Alf remembered her "with her hands on her hips going mad at us" when one day as a small boy he and a mate played "tin hares"with her cat, that is, they took Granny's pet down to the paddock then set the dogs to chase it. However, his strongest memories were of her great kindness to him and they had a very close relationship. She used to tell him stories including one about an old retired policeman who had lived near them in Taylors Lane. One night he went out to investigate noises in his yard and found a strange white horse there so he put it out on the road. Next day he found that his black horse was missing and eventually discovered that the horse he'd put out was his own. Some of the local lads had white-washed it.

Granny was a very hard working woman and there was nothing she couldn't turn her hand to. She and John mainly raised calves and pigs and Granny could slaughter the animals and prepare them for sale. She would then take the carcasses by horse and cart to butchers in Windsor and Elsternwick, leaving home at 2.30am.

Alf well remembers washing days at Granny's farm. She would make a stand of bricks, set a fire between them, put kerosene tins of water on iron bars placed across the bricks, then in would go the washing.

The old house is now completely gone but the oak and pine trees that once surrounded it can still be seen at numbers 30, 32 and 34 Taylors Lane.

John and Sarah had three daughters and an only son who became Alf's father.

Granny Taylor was a much loved figure in Rowville and when she died in 1954 at the age of 93 she was honoured with a very large attendance at her funeral.

Alfred Taylor Senior

Alf's father, also Alfred Taylor, married a Tasmanian girl, Elizabeth Smith. They took up market gardening on two blocks of land: forty acres on the south side of Wellington Road opposite Le John Street (their home was on this block) and twenty acres on the north side, immediately to the west of the present site of the Stamford Hotel. Don McIntyre had a market garden where the hotel's buildings and car parks now are.

There was no dam on either farm and Alf's father had to cart water from Corhanwarrabul Creek at the north end of Taylors Lane when the weather turned dry.

Sadly, Alf had little memory of his father as he died in 1923, five days before Alf's fifth birthday. His mother decided to move to Dandenong where she gained employment as a tailoress with Mr Pockney in Lonsdale Street. She rented the farm.

Alf started school at Dandenong State School but soon afterwards moved to the newly opened Dandenong West State School. School was pretty hard in those days but Alf did quite well and passed his Merit Certificate at the age of 13. He was also the school's outstanding athlete and in 1930 won the Dandenong and district under 13 sprint at the annual Axeman's Carnival held at the old Dandenong Showgrounds which is now the site of the present market and Municipal Offices in Clow Street.

Back to the Farm at Rowville

Alf would have liked to have gone on to Dandenong High School but the Great Depression was at its peak and times were very hard. Alf's mother had remarried and her new husband, William Dawson, lost his job so they decided to go back to the farm and take up dairying. As an only son, Alf's labour would be needed, so he had no option. Thus throughout his teenage years he was required to help with the hand-milking of 25 cows, twice a day, seven days a week. He enjoyed bike riding but the demands of the milking routine meant he was never permitted to join a club to take up the sport competitively.

As well as the actual milking, Alf had to take the cans of milk by horse and cart to the corner of Stud and Brady Roads in North Dandenong for collection by George Grenda who was a milk carrier in the days before he started the bus service in Dandenong. Apart from these daily chores, Alf helped with all the farm duties and remembered putting in his first crop of oats after ploughing a paddock behind a two horse plough. He was aged 14.

To make some pocket money, he trapped rabbits and sold them for 1/6d (15 cents) a pair. On Sunday afternoons he and his mates from neighbouring farms, Fred and Jack Living and Dan Gibson, would play cricket or go fishing for eels in the dam of another neighbour, Mrs Gill. Apart from these simple pleasures, life was work, work, work.

The Cottman Colt

By the time he was 21, Alf had managed to save enough money to buy a new motor cycle, a Cottman Colt. He had never ridden a motor bike in his life but after it was delivered, he rode it around the paddock for an hour and a half, then went up to Ferntree Gully Police Station the next day and got his licence. Ferntree Gully was a sleepy town in 1939. "Dandenong too was a very quiet place in those days except on a Tuesdays (market days)," said Alf. "You could shoot a gun down the main street and not hit anyone." It was even quieter in Rowville. Traffic was so infrequent on Wellington Road that "you'd always look out if you heard someone passing".

One night not long after he got his motor bike, Alf was riding along Stud Road towards Dandenong and crossing the bridge over Dandenong Creek when suddenly in the dark he came upon a herd of cattle being driven towards Rowville. One of the cows put its horn through his headlight but amazingly, he didn't come off. Alf explained that it was common for stock to be on the roads in those days. He himself moved his cows between his two blocks at Rowville by driving them (that is, walking them) along Wellington Road up until the early 1960s.

War Time in Rowville

Alf was called up when war came but was exempted because he was a farmer. The arrival of the army at the camp on the corner of Wellington and Stud Roads livened things up in Rowville. Alf's paddock opposite the camp was taken over by the military as a training ground for such activities as trench digging and the building of barbed wire entanglements. Alf could do nothing about this. However, he had the last laugh when one day his mean-tempered Shorthorn bull charged a platoon of marching soldiers and sent them running in all directions. When I asked Alf what the name of the bull was he replied, "it was called lots of names". The troops would occasionally go through Alf's home paddocks too on night manoeuvres. One morning following such an operation, Alf found that one of his cows was dry of milk, indicating that the soldiers had helped themselves to a warm drink on a cold night.

During the war Mrs Violet Lambert of Lysterfield who was a Ferntree Gully Shire Councillor, organised a committee to run gymkhanas to raise funds for Red Cross. Alf won a ribbon and thirty shillings ($3.00) when he was successful in the steer riding championship at one of these carnivals. He also tried his luck again with foot running and ran second to Finnegan, a Bendigo Thousand winner, at a sports meeting held in Dandenong.

Alf's Service to Rowville

Mrs Lambert also gave the lead in the establishment of the Rowville Fire Brigade during the war because of the fear of incendiary bombing attacks. Their first equipment was a water cart with a pump and it was kept on the farm of Alf's next door neighbour, Ted Gearon. On one occasion when they were mopping up a fire in the hills behind Heany Park, the water ran out so the unit and some of the men went back to Heany Park to refill the tank while Alf and a couple of others worked on with knapsack extinguishers. While the crew were topping up the tank at Heany Park, they were invited to join a party of men there enjoying a niner of beer, so needless to say, by the time they got back to the scene of the fire, Alf and his two mates had put it out. Alf was a member of the Rowville Fire Brigade for 37 years and was made one of its few life members. Over the years he also served on committees for Red Cross, Rowville Football Club, the Progress Association and Gymkhana.

Alf's Family

Alf met his future wife, Elva Fear, at an old-time dance at the Mulgrave Hall. They were married in 1952 and have three children and six grandchildren. Their elder daughter Margaret was one of the founders of the Rowville Girl Guides' Company.

Interviewed by Bryan Power

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