PIKE (nee WILLIAMS) Alma Pike Remembers

Alma Pike (nee Williams) remembered her years at Lysterfield State School with great affection. "I really loved my schooling and was always happy there. The teacher, Mr Harry Mepham, was very good. He was strict and efficient - he had to do everything. I remember once Dad made me stay home from school to pack tomatoes. I've never forgotten it to this day. I just hated missing school."

Alma came to Lysterfield in 1939 at the age of seven when her family moved from Greensborough where her father, William Williams had run the local Post Office and store. However, the onset of the Depression and the deterioration of his hearing forced William to lease out the business and try his hand at farming. His brother Fred who was a carpenter already had a farm with frontages to Kelletts Road and Major Road (Major Crescent) and Fred helped William build a weatherboard home on a seven acre block he had purchased in Major Road. Their father, Henry Williams, had a ten acre block in Major Crescent too on which he had built a holiday home. William's block was across the road from his father's land. William loved a garden and put in a square of lawn surrounded by roses. He started off his farming career by developing a piggery and later added poultry and vegetable growing to his farming pursuits. He established quite a reputation for the fine quality of his South Australian dwarf tomatoes and supplied several fruit shops in the Edithvale and Mordialloc areas.

William had an old Chrysler car and converted it to a truck to transport the tomatoes. Alma remembered how much she and her sisters enjoyed sitting on the back of the truck while coming home at night after visiting their grandparents at Moonee Ponds, watching the twinkling lights of the city recede as they grew closer to Lysterfield.

When they arrived at Lysterfield in 1930, Alma was in Grade 2 while her older sister Joyce went into Grade 7. There were about 28 pupils at the school and Mr Mepham had an assistant teacher for a couple of years who taught the lower grades who sat in desks at the porch end of the room.

Alma also attended church services held in the school before the new Progress Association Hall was completed. Her grandfather would sometimes preach at these services and would become very emotional, the tears running down his cheeks.

The "Little Man"

Alma's grandfather Henry had come from Truro in Cornwall, England to make his fortune in Australia but fell on hard times in the Depression of the early 1890s. Through good fortune he was introduced to Mr E.W. Cole, the owner of the famous Cole's Book Arcade in Bourke Street, who gave him a job. Henry worked hard and eventually became head of the book department. He was known as the "Little Man" because of his tiny stature. He was a dapper man, always careful with his appearance, and sported a flower in his suit lapel every day. Over the years of their association, Edward Cole and Henry became great friends: when Cole died Henry gave the eulogy at his funeral service.

Henry married Annie Liversidge and they had six children. As times grew better, he bought a large home in Moonee Ponds and later built the holiday home at Lysterfield. Alma remembered it as a lovely home surrounded by a white picket fence.

Henry often showed them interesting things he had brought home from the Arcade. One Alma particular remembered was a gadget that dispensed threepences and sixpences which Henry gave to his grandchildren. They used the coins to buy lollies from Mr Hobbs when he came around in his truck from the Lysterfield store on Saturday afternoons.

Henry's eldest child Fred became a very involved member of the community and was for years the Lysterfield correspondent for the Dandenong Journal. He was also one of the driving forces behind the building of the Lysterfield Progress Association Hall. Many years late, as an old man and the last survivor of the Hall's trustees, Fred handed the Hall over to the care of the Sherbrooke Council.

School Days at Lysterfield

Alma had many memories of life at Lysterfield - of heating the bath water in the laundry copper, of her mother coming home from Dandenong market with seven loaves of bread (a week's supply), of always having to keep a careful lookout for snakes, of keeping a wary eye on the bulls when they went mushrooming in Selman's paddock - but no happier ones than of her time at Lysterfield Primary School. Mr Mepham was a great encourager of all the pupils. When Alma showed some artistic talent he bought her a special packet of pastels and another time took her to see a Shakespearian film in Dandenong. He started a Young Farmers' Club at the school and one of their activities was growing chrysanthemums. She remembered a picture of a sailing ship that was bought for the classroom with the proceeds of the sale of the flowers. He also encouraged them to sing and Alma still demonstrates this love of music developed at Lysterfield by her continuing membership of a chorale group. She recalled giggling one day when Mr Mepham played a wrong note on his recorder and for that misdemeanour she had to stay in after class. She was one of the pupils who swept the school every day and in return received four pence a week from Mr Mepham. This was during the hard years of the Great Depression and Alma banked those few pennies every week. When it came time for her to leave school she had saved enough money to buy a bike.

The school could not afford much sports equipment so the girls played rounders with a big stick. "If it connected, it went over the school."

Two memorable occasions from her school days were the sports day at Emerald when the girls did very well and Lysterfield almost won the shield, and an excursion to Ferntree Gully National Park when the Lysterfield pupils played hosts to a group of city children.

In Grade 8, her final year at school, there were four others studying with her for their Merit Certificates - Thelma Selman, Winnie Coggins, Audrey Newton and Marty Alberni.

Leaving Lysterfield

After they left school Alma and Winnie Coggins went to business college in the city. Each day they rode their bikes the four miles to and from Ferntree Gully railway station; on wet days her father would take them as far as possible in the Chrysler but they would have to unload their bikes as soon as the truck came to water across the road because the old truck's engine would stop as soon as it became wet.

After graduating from college Alma worked as a shorthand typist for a couple of years in the city but when World War II broke out she enlisted in the WAAAFs (the Women's Australian Auxiliary Air Force). William had sold the farm at Lysterfield in 1939 and the family moved to Parkdale where he became the manager of a dried fruits Co-operative. He had been a conscientious objector during WW1 but was very proud of Alma's decision to enlist.

She was assigned as a medical clerk to the 300 bed hospital set up at the Melbourne Show Grounds and her sleeping quarters were in the Hall of Manufacturers. There was also an engineering school and embarkation depot there so the show grounds were a bustling, busy place at that time. From there she received postings to Sale and Heidelberg. In later years, her daughters proudly wore her service medals at school Anzac Day ceremonies.

Alma and her husband Stan (who is a former City Engineer of the City of Melbourne) have four daughters and ten grandchildren. Alma and Stan now live in retirement at Sunbury.

Interviewed by Bryan Power

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