DOBSON (nee TAYLOR) Growing up with Anne Dobson

Born Annie Taylor, Anne Dobson spent a great part of her childhood in Lysterfield together with her younger sisters Ina (now deceased), Joyce, Gwen, Jessie and brother Frank. Her parents Orwell (Ossie) and Laura Taylor were married in 1918 and after their marriage lived in Whittlesea. They were no relation to the Taylor family who lived in Rowville and gave Taylors Lane its name.

Anne was born in 1919 and for a time stayed with her maternal grandmother Annie Elizabeth Trainor after whom she was named. At the age of six she arrived with her parents in Lysterfield and Annie Trainor came to live with them. They lived at "Bamfield", a large property off Kelletts Road where the clump of trees are on the Aarunga property north of Karoo Road. "Built ahead of its time," Anne said. "Although it had been neglected and was run down it was beautiful. And big! All the rooms were big. There were two huge rooms like ballrooms and bay windows and French doors opening onto the five verandahs which ran around the house." She recalled roses in the garden and tall date palms which seemed out of character with the surrounding countryside. There was even a windmill. "There was a water tank under the house and you could get to it by lifting up a big trapdoor in the kitchen. Dad used to hang buckets of milk so they dangled in the water or just over it to keep them cool." (Ossie Taylor ran a dairy herd at this stage although later he turned to market gardening.)

To Lysterfield State School

Anne was seven before she went to school. She had to wait until the next sister was old enough to go too. Ossie would drive them in a rubber-tyred jinker to the corner of Wellington and Kelletts Roads then they would walk up the hill the rest of the way to Lysterfield School. One day something happened to cause the jinker to bounce rather more than usual and Anne bounced right out onto the ground and a wheel ran over her. She picked herself up, ran after the cart, climbed back on and continued with her school day as usual. When she arrived home that afternoon, she found her mother frantic with worry. Laura hadn't believed Ossie's version of the incident and had convinced herself her daughter had broken bones at the very least.

As each one of Anne's sisters and her brother became old enough, they joined the others at school. They would walk the three miles home together with Anne responsible for their safety. An open drain ran through the property and was crossed by a small footbridge. It flooded every time it rained. Coming home one day, Gwen lost her footing crossing the bridge when the drain was running full. In imminent danger of being swept away and drowned she was saved by the quick action of Anne who caught hold of Gwen's schoolbag and hauled her to safety.

When her brother Frank started school he was all of four and must have been a feisty little fellow. Anne remembered his first day well. "He got into a big fight with Marty Alberni over a tree-house he felt was not being built the right way." The Taylor children often called in on their way home to have milk and biscuits at their paternal grandparents' farm where the pine trees are in the middle of the Lakesfield Estate.

Francis (Frank) and Martha Taylor were the parents of nine: Ida, who married Ted Wiseman and lived until she was almost one hundred years old; Florrie, who married her cousin Reg Taylor; Annie, Nina, Margaret, Renee, Bill, Jack and Anne's father, Orwell. Obscurely, Orwell was named after an English racehorse. Frank had come from England so no doubt the connection lay there. Martha came from the Western District.

As well as running the farm, Frank and Martha boarded the Lysterfield schoolteacher. When Anne first went to school, Mr Scanlon was schoolmaster and he lived in what she described as "a little white hut" at the Taylor farm. The school was the focal point for many activities. There were sports days with inter-school competition, parents' days when they joined in the sports as well and the schoolhouse doubled as a church at the weekend, holding Sunday school classes as well as services, "Methodist one day and Presbyterian the other," said Anne.

Gwen's 'Surprise' Birthday Party

One day Gwen asked everyone at school to come to her birthday party at home later that afternoon. This meant a number of parents would come too and stay because distances between homes in the area were considerable. There was only one flaw in her plan; her mother knew nothing about the party. Neither did Anne. It would seem Gwen was very careful about that.

All was fine until Mrs Alberni turned up with Marty in tow. She didn't speak English very well but haltingly told of her pleasure at being invited. She lived some miles away and had walked all the way to "Bamfield". Laura Taylor didn't have the heart to tell her it was a mistake and turn her away. Soon after, the other guests arrived.

With a muttered, "Why didn't you stop Gwen asking everyone?" to Anne, whose protestations of ignorance were ignored, Laura rose to the occasion by pouring homemade cordial, putting out peppermints and Milk Arrowroot biscuits with pink icing which she sprinkled with desiccated coconut. Anne said that she got into the most frightful row after everybody had gone home. When you were the eldest, bad things had a habit of turning out to be your fault whether you deserved it or not.

The time came when Mr Scanlon was replaced by Mr Mephen at the school. The young Taylors were all agog to see what the new teacher would be like and gathered at their grandparents' home to greet him. His arrival made a lasting impression on Anne who remembered him coming in an old car with probably everything he possessed not only crammed inside the vehicle but tied on the outside and on the roof as well.

New Year's Day was a time when the entire Taylor clan went to the Ferntree Gully National Park for a gigantic picnic. Frank and Martha had a big buggy and there were horse-drawn gigs and jinkers full of aunts and uncles and cousins. In later years, everyone piled on a truck and headed for the beach at Aspendale. "They were great days." The pleasure Anne felt then was still evident. "My grandmother used to make a Christmas cake and she'd put coloured jubes on top of the icing. We kids loved that cake and everyone wanted a bit with a jube on it."

The Depression of the thirties came and with it the loss of "Bamfield" and a move to Boronia. Anne was fifteen. Ossie obtained a job at a foundry in Richmond and Anne travelled to Melbourne each day to become a milliner. During her train journeys she made friends with other young travellers and, in the course of events, was invited to go with a couple to the pictures and accompany the cousin of one of them. She didn't feel it was a blind date at the time, as she was under the impression the cousin was a girl. The cousin was Doug Dobson.

The Dobson's were a well-known family in the district. Doug's cousin ran the Post Office in Scoresby at one stage and Doug's parents had a dairy in Stud Road, almost opposite Seebeck Road. They rented 40 acres next to the Police Paddocks to run dairy cattle and cleared it themselves. Snakes abounded and as they were caught and killed, were hung on the fences like washing hung out to dry.

While World War Two was in progress, Dobson's dairy delivered milk to the military camp on the corner of Wellington and Stud Roads every morning and night.

Doug Goes to War

Anne and Doug were married in August 1940, one week before he went to war in the transport division of the Army. They were the first couple to be married in the Boronia Presbyterian Church.

Doug sailed from Sydney in the Queen Mary which had been turned into a troopship. He fought in Crete and later in North Africa where he became one of the 'Rats of Tobruk', trapped there for five months.

There being little call for milliners in the war years, Anne went to work for the Watson family at 'The Leasowes' in Lysterfield Road. 'The Leasowes' was a dairy farm, so the owner Alec Watson was exempt from military service and share-farmed it with the help of a manager, Mr Pearson. Anne was employed as a live-in nurse/housemaid to the family.

She also occupied many an evening attending functions held to assist the War Effort at the Lysterfield Hall which had been built on the corner of Wellington and Kelletts Roads. The hall was host to a number of balls as well, for the quality of the dance floor was renowned. Years after, it became home to the 1812 Theatre but sadly was destroyed by fire in the early 1970s.

A telegram was delivered to Anne one day in 1942 from Fremantle. Doug was coming home on leave. Seven days later he was on his way back to war to fight the Japanese in New Guinea where, like so many others, he caught malaria which remained an unpleasant reminder of the war fought in tropical jungles.

When the war was over, Anne and Doug settled in a new house in Stud Road where Stegbar now has its factory, and it became the family home for 35 years.

Raising a Large Family

Although Doug's peacetime occupation had been a farmer, he went to work for W.G. Hicks of Pinehill as a cartage contractor. Anne stayed home looking after their family of eight. "They were hard times," she recalled. Although Stud Road was always busy with traffic, theirs was the only house for some distance and the bus she took to shop in Dandenong only ran three times a day. "If you missed your bus, you were gone! I always had at least three of the children with me when I went shopping," she continued, "I'd pile things under the mattress of the pram and the bus driver could hardly lift the thing into the bus!" The family had time for entertainment however and went to the Rowville Drive-In Theatre regularly.

Doug and Anne were involved in many community activities while the children were growing up: Scouting and Girl Guides, the Red Cross (she was a regular blood donor), church committees, the Scoresby Football Club and the Rowville Junior Football Club. Doug was the first treasurer of the latter when a committee was formed in 1970. The first team had been fielded the year before. Son Andrew was voted best and fairest in the under 15s the same year.

Both Anne and Doug were enthusiastic in joining with other parents and friends to raise funds for the fledgling club. House parties used to be held at a different home once every month and something like a hundred people attended each time. Anne grinned, "they were great parties". In 1972, Ossie Taylor died after suffering a stroke. Then in 1975 Doug was involved in an accident with a tip-truck which left him a paraplegic. He spent twelve months in the spinal unit of the Austin Hospital after which he went to a nursing home, coming to his own home for weekends. Despite excellent care, he never quite came to terms with his disability and died in 1977, twenty months after the accident. This was not a good year for Anne as three months later Laura Taylor died peacefully at her home aged 83.

By now Anne's children had grown up and left home but she continued living alone in Stud Road until they persuaded her to move. She moved to a unit in Dandenong and has lived there for the past fifteen years.

Several times since 1986 the family has hired the Rowville Hall at the football ground to celebrate Christmas Day with her children: Murray, Elizabeth, Raymond, Charles, Rosemary, Lloyd, Andrew and Noel and their children and their children's children. There have been gatherings reminiscent of the days at the National Park when Anne was a child. In 1995 she had 28 grandchildren and one plus four 'on the way' great-grandchildren. Having overcome a number of major health problems including blindness for some 18 months (an implant with an in-built bi-focal lens has returned almost full vision in one eye) Anne considered herself lucky. Legacy, Red Cross, War Widows, Blind Craft and her favourite - Save the Children Fund - together with an abundance of baby-sitting, occupy all her time.

Anne Dobson is still lunging at life full tilt.

Interviewed by Pat Hatherley.

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