GILLIGAN Irene Gilligan Remembers

Scalded Cream

It could almost be said that Rowville's first shop came about because of Irene Gilligan's boredom. Always an active woman, she was frustrated to find on her arrival in Rowville that the house she and Bon had rented had no electricity supply so she was unable to use her sewing machine. (She described herself as a "mad sewer" in those days).

As an outlet for her energies she was happy to help her aunt, Mrs Kitty Finn, prepare scalded cream for sale through the kiosk of a friend in Ferntree Gully. It wasn't long before Irene was helping in the kiosk as well and enjoyed it so much that she decided to see how a stall would go in front of their house beside Stud Road. So one Sunday afternoon in mid 1951 she glued labels on some jars of her home-made jam and put brown paper covers on the tops of a few jars of scalded cream and set them all on a table by the roadside. They all sold in half an hour.

Irene and Lawrie, her eldest son, were delighted and thought that eventually they might "make a fiver" ($10.00). Bon was not so confident. "You might take a fiver, not make one" he suggested.

For the following Sunday Irene prepared a bigger stock of jam and cream which again sold quickly. Within a few weeks they were, indeed, "making a fiver" - and more - each Sunday. The business was on its way.

Sunbury

Irene's family background was not in business. She was born in Sunbury where her father, David Finn, was a male nurse at the psychiatric hospital. He was devoted to his profession and studied hard in his off-duty hours to improve his skill and knowledge. He never hesitated to move to another hospital to gain wider experience and to take promotion and Irene remembers being at Ararat, Kew, Mont Park and Beechworth.

She remembers too how calmly her mother Louise accepted this wandering existence. Louise became so proficient at moving house that she could pack up completely within 24 hours.

When Irene was in her early teens the family returned to Sunbury. As she grew older she became a keen ballroom dancer and met Bon at a dance in nearby Bulla. After a five year courtship they were married in 1935 and went to live in Moonee Ponds where Bon worked as a milkman and where their oldest children, Lawrie, Irene and Ray were born.

Ray unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately as things worked out) suffered from bronchitis as a young child and their doctor advised that he should be moved out of the city into the countryside. They were anxious to follow this advice, of course, but where could they go? The answer came in a suggestion from Irene's uncle and aunt, Jack and Kitty Finn, who had a farm in Bergins Road, Rowville. The Finns also owned a vacant house down by Stud Road (on the site of the present Mobil Service Station). The family could rent this house and Bon could work for Jack in a new venture he had started - the manufacture of cement tiles.

1950 in Rowville

Bon and Irene decided to accept these offers - for six months - and hoped by then for an improvement in Ray's health.

"Rowville was a culture shock for me", said Irene. "There was no electricity, no running water, no sewerage, no phone, no public transport and the roads were terrible." Aunt Kitty took Irene to do her shopping in Dandenong by jinker and she remembers how tricky it was negotiating the S-bend in Stud Road (near the Police Road corner). Aunt Kitty had to drive partly off the bitumen to prevent the horse and jinker sliding completely off the slippery, high crowned road.

Within a fortnight of their arrival in Rowville there was a tremendous deluge and the creek flooded and soon water was rushing in through the front door and out the back. Ray and Lawrie thought it was great fun and paddled about on planks of timber. Mercifully this catastrophe didn't bring on a bronchitis attack. Not long after getting over this trauma, Irene watched in horror as the prop holding up her clothes line slipped and a long line of washing fell into the muddy back yard. To make matters worse, at that instant a kookaburra laughed. "If I'd had a gun and could shoot I would have got that kookaburra, for sure," Irene laughed.

Despite these experiences and lack of amenities they all grew to love living in Rowville. Ray's health improved and there was no thought of returning to Moonee Ponds. However, to make life less hazardous, they moved the house away from the creek bank to the block on which the shop now stands.

From Stall to Kiosk to Shop

It was not long before Aunt Kitty could not provide enough cream for the stall and Irene had to seek supplies from other farmers in Rowville. By now they were looking for an all-weather shelter for the stall and remembered an unused bungalow in the back yard of their Moonee Ponds home. Bon soon had that on site and fitted out as a kiosk. By now lollies and eggs had been added to the stock and customers were driving in every day. The time had come for a major decision: to remain as they were or to expand - and despite the fact that Irene was pregnant with her fourth child - they took the brave step: they decided to build a shop.

One day when the shop was going up, a customer who had driven in to buy cream wandered over to the building site where Bon was labouring for the bricklayer. "Who's the mug who's building this out here in the sticks?" he asked. "I'll introduce you to him, here he is," the brickie replied, pointing his trowel at Bon.

Lawrie was then an apprentice cabinet maker and made all the shop fittings. Then he, Ray and Bon tried their hands at baking and their efforts literally sold like hot cakes. From scones they advanced to fairy cakes, sponges and then to apple pies, the latter proving to be tremendously popular with sales growing quickly to over 300 a week. By now they had installed a large combustion oven and it was kept going constantly.

Groceries, vegetables and drinks had been added to the stock and the shop was so busy that Lawrie resigned from his carpentry job to work full time in the business. He reorganised the layout of the shop to make it into a self-service, one of the first such shops for miles around.

The Rowville Postmistress

The shop had attracted the attention of the postal authorities and a representative of the Herald. When the family arrived in Rowville in 1950, Miss Lil Bergin was running the tiny post office on the south side of Wellington Road. When she became ill in her old age, her niece Kath Manley took over and later, Kath's daughter Marlene Manley. Marlene decided to give up the position and Mr Mannix, the postal inspector from Dandenong, asked Irene to take on the job in the shop. She agreed to this and after extensive study, became the new Rowville Postmistress.

Meanwhile, the Herald wanted them to supply newspapers to the newly opened Stamford Hotel and before long they were also delivering papers around Rowville and in the process became a full newsagency.

Bring on the Birds!

While all this was going on another new line was proving a great success - dressed table birds. Soon Lawrie couldn't obtain enough poultry from the Dandenong sale yards and sought supplies from Bill Bickerton, Mrs Coral Golding and especially Ted Gearon. They bought live birds which were kept in sheds built by Lawrie behind the shop. Bon by now was killing, plucking and cleaning over 300 chickens and drakelings a week.

A rep told Lawrie of a new American machine - the rotisserie - which was about to come onto the market. Lawrie was very keen about it and with some trepidation (because of its high cost) they decided to buy one. Irene will never forget the day when it first went into operation. Lawrie had set the rotisserie up behind the front window of the shop and all day long it attracted crowds of viewers to watch the 20 roasting chickens rotating. (It was the first rotisserie to go into operation in Victoria). No sooner was a batch finished cooking than they were eagerly bought. The demand for cooked and dressed poultry became tremendous especially at Christmas time when Lawrie had to drive for miles to obtain sufficient birds. In one Christmas week, Bon prepared a huge number of birds; by Christmas Eve he was absolutely exhausted and his hands were red raw. Still, of course, the shop was open on Christmas Day to provide all those things forgotten by shoppers in the mad pre-Christmas shopping scramble.

So, for many years the pattern was sustained. Lawrie would be at the shop every morning by 6.30 to organise the newspapers. Irene would come in at 7.30 and would often be there when the shop closed at 9 o'clock at night, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Of course, it was not just hard work. There were dramas too - and plenty of laughs. The dramas included two floodings, two burglaries, and having the SEC supply wires torn out of the wall twice by high trucks passing in Bergins Road. On the second occasion, a sizeable section of the north wall was pulled down with the wires. Fortunately nobody was injured.

One of the most worrying but also most amusing times was when a group of gypsies came to stay in Rowville. They went around the district offering to do the work of tinkers and were frequently in the shop. They were friendly people and Irene got on very well with them but soon found them to be very clever shoplifters. "They had silver tongues", said Irene. "They could talk their way out of anything." So Irene struck a truce with them by arranging to escort them around while they did their shopping. They accepted this arrangement quite cheerfully and parted on good terms when they moved on.

Irene recalled that the shop was a great meeting place for the people of the district and modestly acknowledged her role in making people feel welcome in Rowville by introducing newcomers to the older residents. Irene, however, stressed that the shop was a total family commitment - and that included almost all of her grandchildren who at one time or another, worked in the shop. "I was the one up front but they were all involved".

Her final day in the business was a tearful one as many customers came to say thanks and wish her and her family well. "The Rowville people must have been the nicest lot of people that ever was", recalls Irene.

The feelings of the Rowville people about Irene were well summed up in the words of the inimitable Connie Fordham, "Irene Gilligan is a great little Rowvillian!"

Interviewed by Bryan Power

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