GEORGE GILL REMEMBERS

George Gill was born at Murray House, Dandenong on 22 November 1934 during the time of the biggest flood that Victoria has ever experienced. In fact, the yet to be born George and his parents were lucky to survive the rushed trip from Rowville to Dandenong in the family jinker and the story of their brush with death has become part of the Gill family folklore. As Tess the pony, pulled the jinker along into deeper and deeper water while crossing the flats towards Dandenong Creek in the fading twilight, Reg, George's father, lost sight of the road and shortly afterwards he couldn't even make out the tops of the submerged fence posts. When they reached the dip just before the bridge the jinker started to float and it was only Tess's strength and surefootedness that saved them from being swept away in the torrent of floodwater.
George was the second child of Reg and Winifred Gill; his sister, Elaine, was four years his senior. George was given the name of his great-grandfather, one of Rowville's earliest pioneers, who took up land along the south side of Wellington Road in 1863.
George grew up in the little white weatherboard family home on the south side of Wellington Road, about where it is now intersected by Westminster Drive. The house was so small that George slept on the verandah, a very chilly place for a bedroom during Rowville's cold winters. He grew up happily in the midst of an extended family - his grandparents, Tom and Sophie Gill, lived about two hundred metres to the east along Wellington Road and three families of aunts, uncles and cousins lived further along. As well, his mother's family, the Baileys, lived at Lysterfield and as a boy George loved going up to their farm to help his grandfather, Bert Bailey, go around setting the rabbit traps. George remembered often going up to Lysterfield with his mother, she walking while he rode his tricycle. She'd sometimes jump on the back of the tricycle on the downhill slopes but not down the steep drop of Cornish Road when George, much to her consternation, would take his feet off the pedals and let the trike fly down the hill.
His other grandparents, Tom and Sophie Gill, lived in a house south of the intersection of Wellington Road and Taylors Lane. The oak trees that they planted are still growing at the corner there. George was fascinated by the great open fire where Sophie cooked the meals in pots suspended by hooks above the coals.
Sophie had a terrible fear of thunderstorms. One day as she was bringing lunch down into the paddock to Reg and George a sudden storm blew up and they had to quickly take cover to escape the downpour. As the lightning flashed
Sophie cursed and swore with fright. George laughed to hear his gran using bad language but his amusement earned him the rebuke: "Georgie, it's not bloody funny!"
Tom Gill was a noted horseman and was alwavs breaking in young horses. He took lots of tumbles and as George said, "Uncle Leo had a limp but grandfather had lots of limps." When George travelled to Dandenong in the jinker with Tom they would sometimes come up alongside another jinker. Grandfather couldn't resist the challenge and would urge: "Give her the whip, Georgie, give her the whip," and they would sweep past much to Tom's delight.
Tom's enthusiastic driving brought him undone one day when the wheel of his jinker caught the side of the bridge over Dandenong Creek and he was thrown into the stream. Fortunately for George he was not with his grandfather on that occasion.

Reg Gill at the Quarry
George's father Reg worked at the Lysterfield quarry owned by Doug and George Bladin. Reg used his own draught horse and dray to cart rocks that had been blasted from the cliff sides by his brother-in-law "Snowy" Bailey who worked there as a powder monkey. George loved to go up to the quarries on Saturday mornings and marvelled at the size of the rocks that his father and the other men manhandled onto their drays. The drays were backed to the edge of a chute where the loads were tipped into the crusher. One Saturday George saw one of the drays slide back into the crusher dragging the horse in with it. A vet had to be called from Dandenong to sedate the distressed animal before it could be safely removed.
Reg drove his old draught horse to and from the quarry each day but occasionally got a lift home with one of the truck drivers. On those days he just turned the horse out onto Wellington Road knowing that it would make its own way home to the feed box awaiting it. On one such day the horse didn't return - it had been hit and killed by a truck near Gearons Lane. George remembered his father being very upset by this incident.

Youth Club at Lysterfield
Dan Rhall and his wife Joyce were two very community-minded people at Lysterfield. They lived on the corner of Napoleon and Kelletts Roads, diagonally opposite the Albernis. They started up a youth club in the Lysterfield hall on Wednesday nights between 7.00 and 9.00 pm and about twenty youngsters turned up each week to play games and enjoy various activities including ballroom dancing. George and his cousins, Keith and Jim Allen, rode their bikes up to Lysterfield but were happy to accept a lift with Uncle Leo when he took his daughter Gwenda along. Other children George remembered attending the Youth Club were Laurie and Joan Rhall, Max Hobbs, David Whitehead, Margaret, Valma and Graham McIntyre, the two Bennett boys, Ron Dobson and Stan and Brian Boyle.
The Rhalls were also instrumental in establishing the Lysterfield Cricket Club and George was only 14 when he played his first game. Their home games were played in a paddock owned by Boyd Bolton; it was located on the north side of Kelletts Road about half way between Wellington Road and Napoleon Road and on the western side of Ron Stewart's trotting track. A stile was built over the fence and the locals would come along with sandwiches and cakes to share for afternoon tea. The pitch was a flattened area topped with sand on which the matting was rolled out. The club played against teams in the Ferntree Gully area with some success. The Boyles were good players and Brian Boyle was the captain while Dan Rhall was the wicketkeeper. After a couple of years George transferred to Scoresby where he eventually became captain of the second eleven.

Childhood Fun
George and his cousin Gwenda were great mates and they often played together as she was always happy to join in games of football and cricket. They also created their own racing club, the Rowville Midget Bike Club, and raced their trikes around a track they had made at Gwenda's home. George and Gwenda were great mushroom pickers and made good pocket money selling their pickings for a shilling a plateful to passers by in Wellington Road.
People often came into their paddocks to pick mushrooms but left when George explained that the paddocks were his "patch". However, one day a man ignored George's request and when Reg came up the man took a swing at him. Unfortunately for the interloper he hadn't noticed that the family's blue heeler 'Toby' had also taken an interest and in a flash he had ripped the man's trousers to the thigh. After that indignity the would be mushroomer departed the paddock very rapidly.
They never kept a gun on the property but sometimes friends of Reg would come to shoot rabbits as well as the quail that lived in the undergrowth beside the dam. George and his cousins caught eels in the drain at the back of their property. Blackberrying was popular too but one day they were bailed up by Finn's big black jersey bull. They were all yelling out for help while cowering behind a big tree as the bull approached, pawing the ground. Fortunately old Jack Finn heard their cries and rode down on his horse to drive the bull away.
George and Keith Allen had a billy cart they enjoyed racing down a hill that existed before the cutting was put through the section of Wellington Road east of the present kindergarten. One day George was flying down the hill towards the road when he caught sight of Jack Finn coming along in his truck. Luckily Jack saw the flying billy cart with its terrified driver in the nick of time and was able to slam on the brakes, missing George by a whisker. Jack was heading towards his piggery with a load of full milk cans that crashed over, splashing milk in all directions and giving him every reason to direct a tirade of abuse in the boys' direction as they scampered off home.
Another frightening incident occurred when George was sent down the paddock one day to bring up a cow. He stumbled upon a very large copperhead - about two metres long - but was rescued by his father who dispatched it with a length of fencing wire.
Heany Park lake was a popular place in hot weather and George recalled the swimming carnivals held there. Claude Quist, a well known printer in Dandenong, always acted as the lifeguard. George and the other Rowville kids competed in the children's races but they were never good enough to beat the swimming school boys and girls from Dandenong.
The Rowville Lysterfield Gymkhana Club ran popular events at 'Wakool', a property owned by Sir William Angliss on the site of the present Pioneer Quarry. Besides the horse riding competitions there were fun events such as catching the greasy pig but George always most enjoyed entering the slow bicycle race.
The old Rowville post office was run by Elizabeth Bergin (but everybody called her Auntie Lil). Dan Gibson harnessed up his horse each day to collect the mail and newspapers from Dobson's store in Scoresby and on Saturday mornings the kids would gather at the post office waiting for Dan to arrive back. When he did there would be a rush to open the comics section of the Sun to read the latest adventure of Ginger Meggs.
George also waited for the Saturday bus to come through from Dandenong and he collected the parcels consigned to Rowville. Among them were the packages of meat sent by Whitneys the Dandenong butcher to Aimee Seebeck, their neighbour across Wellington Road, and George made sure that the meat was delivered safely to her.
During school holidays he worked from morning to night helping to bring in the grass hay at Seebecks. He also helped them to collect, wash and pack the eggs produced in their poultry sheds.
George helped to bring in the crops on the Gill properties too. Once he was high up on the hay wagon with his cousin Keith, packing the stooks tossed up by the men. When they were told to take the load up to the shed Keith gave the horses a whack - and they bolted! The horses and wagon were charging towards the drain with the two boys bouncing on top of the load but luckily the horses pulled up in time before disaster struck.
George recalled cutting chaff at his grandfather's place with a chaff cutter which was powered by a whim - a capstan turned by a tethered horse walking round and around in a circle.

The Rowville Army Camp
George remembered going in the trucks with two of the drivers from the quarry - Barry Pendlebury and Dick Collins - when they delivered and spread the road metal to form the roads of the army camp when it was established in 1942. After the war the roads were used occasionally for motorbike races that drew good crowds. Motorbike hill climbs were also held on the steep slopes at the back of ‘Wakool’.
The soldiers made a big impact on Rowville and were good customers for all of the local families who produced eggs and butter. On Sunday mornings George's parents would heat separated milk in two preserving pans on the stove in their dairy and make coffee for the troops. Win made batches of scones too and so a very pleasant Sunday morning was enjoyed by the thirty or so soldiers who gathered each week under the gum trees at the front of their home. George became a favourite with the troops and one night he was awakened when his father came out to confront two soldiers who'd had a few too many drinks and who were sitting on the end of George's bed. They sheepishly explained that, "We've only come to see the little boy."
One very cold, wet night Reg was awakened by voices at the back of the house. He went out to find a group of soldiers up to their knees in mud behind the dairy. They were on an exercise where they were supposed to find their way to designated spots with the aid of a map and compass but had become hopelessly lost. Reg led them through the property to Wellington Road and pointed them towards the camp. They were so grateful that they gave Reg the compass and it is still in the possession of the family.
Combat exercises provided some amusing moments too. If a soldier was "shot" he had to retire from the exercise for five minutes and several of them would use that time to scamper over to the Gill dairy for a drink.
It wasn't all fun and games, however. One day a crew drove their bren gun carrier - a kind of light, open-topped tank - up the side of a large pile of road metal beside Wellington Road in front of the Gill home. To the crew's horror the bren gun carrier flipped over backwards but luckily the soldiers were thrown clear and suffered only minor injuries.
Keith Allen was lucky to escape with his life in another incident. Keith liked to poke about the army firing range down towards Dandenong Creek looking for bullet shells. One day he found an unfired bullet and made the bad mistake of taking it home, putting it in the workshop vice and striking the firing pin with a hammer and punch "to see what would happen". What happened was that the round exploded and the bullet grazed his knee and buried itself in his calf. The injury was a terrible one but fortunately Keith survived.

The Rowville Army Camp
George remembered the different styles of movement of the Australian and American soldiers on the roads. The Australia s marched impressively in squads down the middle of the roads whereas the Americans ambled along in two single columns, one on each side of the road. When he rode his bike between the two columns the Americans would say: "Like some gum, boy?" Of course, George always answered yes.
About this time Auntie Lil had the old blacksmith's shed next to the post office demolished and replaced by a large room measuring about 10 metres by 5 metres. She used this as a shop and did a good trade with the Australian and, later, the American troops. However the coming of the Italian POWs ended this period of small prosperity for the locals because the prisoners, although not confined to the camp, were not supposed to go near any of the homes. Furthermore they were issued with an allowance of specially minted
"internment camps" coins that could only be used in the camp canteen.
After the war regular euchre nights were held in Auntie Lil's shop and George recalled being very nervous when he had her for a playing partner because Auntie Lil would severely tick off any partner who made the mistake of leading the wrong card.
The war ended on 15 August 1945 and George recalled his father planting a gum tree that day to commemorate the occasion. The tree is still there on the Wellington Road side of the timber fence just to the east of Westminster Drive.

The Dairy
George recounted how hard his parents had to work to make a living. During the war they decided to set up a dairy to bring in some extra income and Reg negotiated a contract with Taggart's Dairy at Elwood. George Grenda, who later started Grenda's Busline, collected the cans of milk each day. George helped his mother to hand-milk about twenty jersey cows for about a year before the family could afford to buy a secondhand "bucket" milking system from Ron Pearson who lived in the house that is still on the rise just east of the Dandenong Creek in Wellington Road. Reg dug a well with the assistance of his brother in law, Tom Harding, to supply water for the cooling tank and then every day George had to hand pump sufficient water to fill it. The herd was then increased to about 38 cows. Milking started at 5 o'clock in the morning and the cows were usually up at the dairy ready to go into the bails. However, George dreaded the frosty mornings when the herd remained in the comparative warmth of a clump of trees at the bottom of the paddock and he'd have to ride his bike down through the frost to round them up.
The milking machine was started with petrol and then switched over to power kerosene. On the frosty mornings, of course, the machine could be very difficult to start. A chip heater had to be lit and kept burning to provide boiling water to clean out the milking equipment. The milk inspector called in often so everything had to be spick and span at all times. The worst job was having to scrupulously clean every filter in the cream separator. All the work involved kept George and his mother extremely busy every day of the week.
By 1947 George had commenced secondary education at Dandenong High School but always had difficulty finding the time to do his homework. As well, this was still the time of kerosene lamps so having to read and write by that sort of light was not easy. Electricity came to Roivville in 1948 and George to this day associates the switching on with the delicious smell of hot apple dumplings cooked by Win on that special day.

Scoresby Football Club
At the end of the war regular sporting competitions got underway again and Reg and his brother Leo became heavily involved with the Scoresby Football Club. Leo acted as a trainer for many years while Reg was the boot studder. When George grew older he played with the club for many years until a bad head injury made him decide him to end his playing days in 1961. He went out on a high note as he won the club's Best and Fairest award that year and was made a Life Member to acknowledge his service to the club.
In the following year George took up umpiring with the VFL and thoroughly enjoyed this new "career" that took him all over the state and into NSW, Tasmania and South Australia, umpiring in the major country leagues. He was promoted to the position of emergency umpire for the VFL city matches on a number of occasions and almost took to the field at Kardinia Park for the match of the day between Ceelong and Hawthorn but at the last minute the late arriving designated umpire Peter Sheales rushed in, thwarting George's chance of glory.

Career and Family
George left Dandenong High at the end of Year 11 and commenced work as a draftsman with International Harvester. He served his time in National Service at Puckapunyal in 1953 and at the end of that Aimee Seebeck's father, Ernie Sneddon, found him a job with the Royal Exchange Insurance Company. The following year he moved to Mercantile Mutual and worked for them until his retirement in December 2000.
George's father Reg had finished his working life as an employee of the Ordish Fire Brick Company in Dandenong. Reg passed away in 1974 and Win in 1990.
The old home in Wellington Road was abandoned after Reg's death and it gradually fell into disrepair until demolished by the developers who bought the Gill farms. Most of the old dairy equipment was bulldozed into the well as the developer cleared up the site.
While at Dandenong High School George had met the love of his life, Elaine Waters, and they were married in Oakleigh in 1957. George and Elaine have three children: Michelle, Andrew and Rodney and five grandchildren: Ashlee, Daniel, Tom, Tiffany and Kieran. George and Elaine live in Mount Waverley with the company of a giant gum tree in their front garden to remind them of old Rowville days.

Comments

From Ian Woods (15 Mar 2005)

From Bryan Power (29 Mar 2005)

From Denise Rhall (20 Jul 2005)

From Lucy Hall (14 Aug 2005)

From David Spiby (25 Sep 2005)