GILL Nellie Gill Remembers

"Sweet Nell of Old Drury"

Nellie Gill was born in the old Gill homestead that stood behind the oak trees at the foot of Taylors Lane on 5th February 1904. She was baptised Helene Sophie Gill but when Mrs Ted Row of Stamford Park came to see the baby she exclaimed 'She's Sweet Nell of Old Drury', a reference to the famous actress and singer of the time, Nellie Stewart, who had married her husband's brother Richard Row. When Nellie Gill was a small child she was given a plain gold bangle (known as a Nellie Stewart bangle) which were very fashionable at the time.

Nellie's parents were Thomas and Sophie Gill. Thomas had inherited 80 of the 155 acres of Somerset Farm on the death of his father George. The other 75 acres were to be sold and the proceeds distributed among Thomas's four sisters. His wife Sophie bought the 75 acres thus retaining the 155 acres in the Gill name.

Thomas and Sophie continued to run the dairy herd, selling the cream to the Elmore Butter Factory in Stud Road, Dandenong but Thomas's real interests were in horses and he worked for Ted Row at Stamford Park preparing horses for sale as remounts for the Indian Army. Thomas and Sophie had met at Stamford Park where she was working as a nursemaid for the Row children.

Sophie was an experienced nursemaid and had travelled widely in that occupation. She had spent some years in India with two Australian families, the Bells and the Dodds, who were shareholders in an Indian railway. (Many years later she named the 75 acres she bought in Rowville "Egatpuri" after a particularly beautiful place she had visited in India). From India she went to New Zealand and then the families wanted to go to Hong Kong but by that time Sophie wanted to return to Australia and obtained the position at Stamford Park through a registry in Melbourne.

Nellie was the third of Thomas and Sophie's five children. The others were Mollie born in 1901, Reg in 1902, Vera in 1905 and Leo in 1906.

School Days

Nellie first went to school in a one roomed weatherboard building located near the present Major Crescent on a property named Hynam Park owned by the Sealy family. The teacher was Miss Hales and the school was known as Lysterfield State School No. 3573. It ran from 1907 until it burnt down in 1912. Apart from herself and her sister Mollie and brother Reg, Nellie remembered some of the other pupils being Daisy and Hugh Clyne, Daisy Roberts and her brother and the three Sealy children with the unusual names of Vosper, Honor and Dell.

The destruction of the little school meant that they had to make the long walk each day along Wellington Road to Mulgrave State School beside Dandenong Creek. When the creek flooded they had to take off their shoes and socks before wading through.

Every morning as they went past Nick Bergin's blacksmith's forge they'd call out to Nick's tiny assistant, "What's the time, Paddy?" and he always replied no matter what the time, "Eight o'clock. Hurry up or you'll be late". Paddy Fogarty had a little white pony called Silver and on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays he rode Silver to Scoresby to collect the mail. On the way home from school the kids would collect the mail for their families and neighbours; they also picked up sticks and bark along the road for mornings wood. Wellington Road was a very quiet track in those days and they hardly ever met anyone on their walks to and from school. Occasionally rocks from Ferntree Gully quarry were dropped in piles beside the road and a gang of men would break the stones with sledge hammers and then spread the chips on the road. If the children were lucky, Doughy Miller, an aborigine who lived in Lysterfield, would be driving by in his truck. Doughy always stopped and gave them a ride. He drove for Stewarts who had a firewood business.

The teachers at Mulgrave in Nellie's time were Mr Williams, Mr Row, Miss McKay, Mr Bastow, Mr Allison and Mr Jones. They were all nice teachers except Miss McKay who was very stern.

After she left Mulgrave Nellie was one of the first students to attend, in 1919, the newly opened Dandenong High School. The first classes were actually held in the Temperance Hall and the Fire Brigade building in Robinson Street and at recess and lunch times the kids had to play in the streets. On Dandenong market day on Tuesdays, the boys playing football or cricket would have to scatter when the drovers moved their herds of cattle between the railway station and the market. (Nellie was one of only four of the inaugural students who attended Dandenong High School's 75th Anniversary celebrations in 1994.)

During the week Nellie boarded with a Mrs Albury opposite the State School in Foster Street. The girls went to the State School for cookery classes until the new High School buildings were finished. She went home to Rowville for the weekends in the jinker with her mother who drove into Dandenong on Friday afternoons to do her shopping.

Nellie recalled a dramatic time during that year was the arrival in Australia of the world wide epidemic of Spanish flu. Everybody lined up at the Town Hall for vaccinations and then had to wear masks in public. The school was closed for six weeks; many people became sick and there were several deaths.

Dances at Stamford Park

The Row family left Stamford Park in 1910 and then there were a succession of families living there. When Nellie was about 14 a family named Crow had a dairy herd there. They were friendly people and held dances on the verandah of the homestead. Hurricane lamps provided light and a neighbour, Ehrenfried Exner, played the piano accordion. Families that came to those dances were the Bergins, Allens, Hills, Armstrongs, Taylors, Tampes and Gills. However, there were some wowsers who didn't believe in dancing at that time. Later Ehrenfried Exner built a large barn on his property (where Stud Park Shopping Centre now is) and dances were held there. On the day of the dance they shaved candles on to the wooden floor and then one of them would sit on a hessian bag while the others pushed them about; in that way the wax was spread into the floor to make it 'fast' for dancing.

Mr Exner introduced market gardening to Rowville and he needed plenty of workers at harvest time. Nellie and the other Rowville youngsters were expert pea pickers: "We could really crawl along those furrows." They were paid two shillings and sixpence a hundred weight which was five kerosene tins full. They also picked strawberries for Allens whose farm was on the south-east corner of Stud and Ferntree Gully Roads. "We picked them for a penny a punnet."

After finishing Intermediate at Dandenong High, Nellie was appointed as a supplementary teacher back at her old school in Mulgrave at a salary of nineteen shillings and two pence a week. Nellie's older sister Mollie also taught at the school. When she was 19 Nellie left teaching and went to work for the "Australian Women's Journal" in Swanston Street, Melbourne. She later went into domestic service, working for families in the Malvern area. She was, however, constantly being called home to Rowville when someone was sick or something went wrong. One of the biggest chores was the weekly wash on Mondays. She remembered the five separate tubs outside the back of the house for soaking, washing, rinsing, blueing and starching. Nellie's mother Sophie was a strict woman but she was very kind too. If anyone in the district was sick, she would kill a chook, make chicken broth and take it to them. There was an old man named Bill Fisher living in a hut on what is now the Silkwood Rise Estate. He had a growth that was getting bigger and bigger and Sophie went to the Ferntree Gully Police and badgered them until they finally came and took him away for treatment.

Nellie would go visiting with her mother around the district. She was a good friend of Mrs Kellett whose property was "The Dell" in McRae's Lane. The lane had been named for an earlier settler Duncan McRae but later on its name was changed to Kelletts Road. Once Nellie and her mother visited Mrs Tampe and found her and her son Albert washing their pigs in a tub of hot water so that they would be clean for the Tuesday market in Dandenong.

Nellie eventually worked in hospitals, first at St Benedicts (later Cabrini) and then at the Mercy where she worked throughout World War Two. She then went to the old Children's Hospital in Carlton and from there to the Children's Convalescent Hostel in Sherbrooke Forest. She moved to Berwick to retire but joined the Council Home Help service assisting sick mothers. She established such a good reputation that there was a great demand for her services and it was not until 1981 and at the age of 77 that she finally retired.

She now (1995) lives in the Old Pioneers Retirement Village at Berwick and at the great age of 91 is still alert and active and still able to tell a very good story.

Interviewed by Bryan Power

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