I will go back to when my mother was left in Glengarry with Auntie and Uncle Ted.
| In those days ‘farm houses’ were just that, a collection of small houses. The main house, of our farm, consisted of three bedrooms and the main living room, which was only used when visitors came. A second building consisted of the kitchen with an eating or breakfast room attached. Separate again was the wash house where there was a copper and wooden troughs to wash the clothes and a bathtub to wash yourself. Then separate again was the lavatory. Some distance away from the houses, on the path to the milking sheds was the smoke house where all the meat was cured. |
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At what stage our farm was able to boast a wash house I don’t know, for I remember Auntie telling me how she and Uncle Ted with Mr and Mrs. Healy (Moira Hourigan’s grandparents) would go for the day to the Latrobe River to do their washing. They would cart everything down there in a dray. The two men would set up the troughs, light fires under them and cart the water from the river, while the women would set out the eats and sort out the clothes. As the clothes were washed they were thrown over bushes to dry.
The children, if not at school, would be able to play about the river
bank. Some of those children would
have been my mother, Moira’s father, whom I always called Uncle Billy and
Uncle Billy’s sister Maggie. I remember Auntie Maggie as a well liked, very forthright lady.
Once she was visiting Auntie when I arrived home for lunch from
the Exchange. I can’t remember
what I was eating, but Auntie Maggie did not approve of it. I had to wait while she cooked me a ‘more nourishing meal’.
Back again to Glengarry at the turn of the century. The third Marstin brother, Charlie, never married and from what I can make out never lived anywhere else except on the farm. I don’t know where he was when Barbara and Walter lived there, but Auntie always spoke of him as living with them. Auntie and Ted also had Ted’s father Walter Marstin Snr. living with them for a few years. I don’t have a copy of his death certificate but I do have a receipt dated 23 Dec 1915 from the Toongabbie Cemetery for a grave, and the name of the deceased is Walter Marstin Snr.
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I have my mother’s diaries for 1919 and 1920. It is very interesting reading the day to day events of those years. Uncle Fred got married in early 1919, and bought a block of land in Packenham. Influenza ( brought back to Australia by soldiers returning from the war) was so bad for a while that Mass was said in the open air. On Wednesday 7 May 1919 my mother wrote ‘I met Mr. Dunbar to-day. There are 13 influenza cases in the town.’ I don’t know if she meant the small township of Glengarry or the bigger town of Traralgon. |
On Friday 12 September 1919, Auntie went in to Traralgon
to meet Uncle Harold and Auntie Joh Pank and their children who were arriving
from Adelaide. They stayed for a month returning on Friday 17 Oct taking Auntie
with them. She spent a month there
returning to Glengarry on Friday 21 November.
Artillery Man won the Cup that year.
Visiting relations or friends seemed to be the main
social life, and playing cards was a great way of spending the night. They sometimes went to the races at Sale, Traralgon or Morwell, and
followed Traralgon in the football. It
was in 1919 that my mother with the help of Uncle (Ted Marstin), Uncle Fred (Hower)
and Will (Uncle Bill Hower) built the tennis court beside the house. The lines of the court were still visible years later when I was little.
On Monday 21 April my mother wrote ‘I started to chip the tennis court
but Mrs. Cahill and the girls came, so I had to leave it.’ They would have been the grandmother and aunts of the Margaret Cahill I
still write to and whom I saw when down for Uncle Steve’s funeral.
Friday 19 December 1919 my mother wrote, ‘A Mrs. Boyd
from Carlton sent me the prayer book I gave Ted (twin brother) when he was going
to the war. Her son picked it up on
Gallipoli on April 27 1915 the day Ted was wounded.’
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All travelling to nearby friends and relations seemed to
be mainly done by either horse or horse and jinker, although the train was often used for trips
between towns. In those days there was a short rail link between Traralgon and
Maffra which went through Glengarry and Toongabbie. |
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| Home from Traralgon Auntie, Dorrie and Uncle Bill 20-10-1922 (above) |
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Dorrie on Maud 27-12-1918 (left) |
March 1920 saw Dr. Mannix, Archbishop of Melbourne,
visiting Sale so people went from far and near to see him.
On Friday 5 March my mother wrote, ‘There is no special train running
to Sale to-morrow, so we are going down by motor.
George King is taking Mr. and Mrs. Charlie O’Mara, Tom Bermingham, Uncle and
I. We are leaving at 9.30am.’
The next day my mother continued, ‘Arrived in Sale about 11 30am.’
If they got away on time that took them 2hrs.
We can now do the same trip in about 30mins.
They all stayed in Sale over the weekend. On Monday 8 March my mother continued, ‘Jack Bermingham took a motor
load of us to see the aeroplanes this afternoon.’
Three days later, back in Glengarry, they were out watching the planes
flying from Sale to Traralgon. They
must have been such a novelty then.
My mother often mentions, during these two years, visits
from and visits to Grandfather and Grandmother. Monday 16 August 1920 there is this entry, ‘Auntie came
back by train this morning. Grandfather
is much about the same. He is very
weak, and the doctor says he must give up work.
Auntie has gone back again by train tonight.’ These grandparents must have been George Hower and his
second wife Annie, who in later years lived in Toongabbie. George would have been 78 in 1920. It would be interesting to know what sort of work he was
still doing. On 9 September 1926 Dr.
T A McLean, who nine years later was present at my birth, signed my great
grandfather’s death certificate. He
was 84.
Ted died in 1924. He
had a ruptured appendix. Auntie
told me that he was taken to the Sale Hospital and operated on but they could
not save him. The household, on the
farm, then consisted of Uncle Charlie, Auntie and my mother. It was not considered proper for Auntie and my mother to be living in the
house with the unmarried Uncle Charlie so the two women rented a house in the
main street of Glengarry, and my mother got a job as a Telephonist there. The Glengarry Exchange was just a room at the back of the General Store
which was only about 50 yards from the house they rented.