Finn Frank

Frank and Kath Finn Remember

Frank is the second son of the late Jack and Tina Finn. He was born at Ormond in 1925 but sadly never knew his mother as she died when he was only a year old. Both he and his brother Bill were cared for by his mother’s parents in Mackinnon until their father found a house on 22 acres of land in Bergins Road (opposite the present site of the Waverley Golf Club) that he negotiated to buy from Jack Gearon. The weatherboard house had originally been located further down Bergins Road but Jack Gearon had moved it to its final site on a wagon drawn by a bullock team.

To Rowville in 1930

Jack Finn and his second wife and the two boys moved there in 1930 at the height of the Great Depression with barely a pound in their pockets. Jack’s second wife was Kitty Stewart and she was one of three members of the Stewart family to marry Finns. Kitty gave birth to Stewart in 1931 and the task of providing for their three young sons was a daunting one for Jack and Kitty.

When Frank and Bill arrived in Rowville their father enrolled them at St Mary’s Parish School in Dandenong and they had to walk to and from there every day. Frank recalled that it would take them almost to lunchtime to reach Dandenong and the long walk made them so hungry that they ate their lunches before they arrived at school. Frank remembered their father coming to pick them up on his bike as they straggled home one day. He dinked one for half a mile or so then returned for the other. While taking his turn at walking, Frank heard Bill yell with pain from up ahead and saw the bike, Bill and his father go over in a cloud of dust – Bill’s foot had been caught in the spokes of the front wheel.

Frank Transfers to Mulgrave State School

Not long after that the old Parish Priest came out to see Jack and suggested that it would be far more reasonable for the boys to go to closer schools, so Bill went to Scoresby and Frank set off alone to Mulgrave with a good deal of trepidation about what the “Proddies” might do to him. In fact he enjoyed school at Mulgrave and made a lot of friends there. Getting to Mulgrave was also easier, so long as he reached Bickerton’s farm in Wellington Road before the milk truck left each morning, because the driver would let all the kids jump aboard for a ride to school.

Jack Finn had been taught the trade of bricklaying by a German “brickie” as a young man and this skill kept him employed during these very tough times although he often had to travel far from home in search of work. It was while he was away working in 1936 that their weatherboard house was burnt out. Frank remembered not being able to open his bedroom door and having to escape through the window. The family had to live in a shed on the property while Jack built a new house which still stands today – surrounded by new homes – in Bergins Road.

When Frank was about twelve his father sent him and Bill back to St Mary’s to be prepared for their confirmation. By then, however, the family finances had improved a little so that the boys were not faced with a return to the long tiring walks they had endured as little boys. Jack had bought a horse and jinker which Bill and Frank proudly drove to and from Dandenong. They often gave kids a lift out along Stud Road after school and one afternoon headed out into the bush with their mates and didn’t notice the time slip away. By the time they headed for home darkness had fallen and half the district was out searching for them. When he finally got home Frank recalled that “my old man started educating me with a tennis racquet; there wasn’t much left of the racquet by the time he was finished.”

After that episode Frank returned to Mulgrave. He remembered two of the teachers clearly: first, Mr Carrol who had lost an arm in WWI but, according to Frank, “all of his strength went into the other arm – could he lay into us!” The other teacher was Leo Fleming who was straight out of college but who established his authority on his first day when he quietly laid a strap “about four feet long” across his desk.

There was No Time to Play

Before they went to school Frank and Bill were up early to bring their herd of 30 cows up to the dairy for milking. Frank hated putting on cold rubber boots and so just ran down the paddock with bare feet. “I’d kick a cow up then stand on the warm spot. I had feet like leather.” The brothers hand milked the cows – by the light of a hurricane lantern in the winter months – and then fed the pigs and chooks. On their way to school they herded the cows out onto the road and drove them up to the corner of Wellington and Stud Roads and then left them. The herd would graze either north up Stud Road or west along Wellington Road. They didn’t go in the other directions because they knew there was no feed there. The Fordhams put their cows out too. The locals called it “getting the milk off the road”. On their way back from school they’d round up the cows and drive them home while collecting the morning’s wood for the stove. Then they would milk the cows again and after that start the long and laborious job of winding the handle on the machine that separated the cream from the milk. “Life was tough – there was no time to play.”

One day the pound-keeper found the cows wandering and took the herd to the Council yards at the corner of Blackburn and Ferntree Gully Roads. Jack was very unhappy about that and it took him quite a while to get them back.

There was a riding school up on Stud Road run by a Miss Little and one day Jack gave Frank threepence to have a ride. Later when the riding school closed down Frank’s mother bought one of the horses for him. Frank named the pony Milky and it was a great companion for him over many years, living to the age of 30. Frank used to take Milky to Nick Bergin’s blacksmith’s forge to have it reshod. Nick was popular with the kids and they thought it was great to be allowed to pump the bellows for him. One of Nick’s jokes was to spit on the anvil and then drop a red hot horse shoe onto it. It would make “a hell of a bang” and the kids would jump with fright.

Milky died in the paddock and Frank buried it where it lay. Its bones are probably under one of the houses along Liberty Avenue.

The Gearon family had a horse named Creamy that was stolen and eventually turned up in the pound at Camberwell. Frank volunteered to collect Creamy and he recalled the long ride home as quite an adventure for a young lad. Unfortunately Creamy was killed when gored by a bull not long afterwards.

To Work at 14 and into the Army at 17

When Frank was 14 he left school and got work in the city on a building site. His job was to fill a barrow with bricks and then lead a horse to whose harness a rope was attached. The rope went over a wheel attached to the scaffolding and connected to a harness around the barrow. When Frank led the horse forward it drew on the rope and the barrow was lifted up to the scaffolding where the bricklayers unloaded the bricks.

After three years of this sort of work Frank was ready for a change. It was now 1942 and the war was coming closer and closer to Australia so Frank put his age up and joined the Army. He trained with an artillery regiment at Puckapunyal and was then posted to Newcastle and later to Cairns. Just when he thought that he would be sent overseas he became ill and was sent to Sydney on a hospital train.. He was so embarrassed being among all of the severely wounded troops who had been flown out of New Guinea that he folded his leg up under himself to make it appear that he had lost a limb. After recovering in Sydney he was sent back to Victoria where he was eventually demobilised at the Army Base at Caulfield Racecourse. He was given two hundred pounds and a suit of clothes and that was the end of the war as far as Frank was concerned.

He returned to Rowville and worked with his father to set up and run a large piggery on the hill close to where Pioneer Quarry is now located.

Frank Meets Kath

Frank first met Kath when she was working in a building on the corner of Swanston and Victoria Street in the city and he was working on a building site across the road. Later they used to see each other at dances at the Railway Institute but Frank was too shy to ask her for a dance. It wasn’t until many years after the war that they met by chance at an orchard in Ringwood – and they’ve been together ever since.

On Jack’s death in 1966 Frank and Stewart were left a half share each of the Caravan Park and Motel (their eldest brother Bill had been killed in 1956 while building a bridge from Phillip Island to Churchill Island). Frank and Kath returned to Rowville in 1968 to run the Caravan Park and eventually bought out Stewart’s share.

Previously Frank had built up a contracting business and continued to work in this area for a while. His last major contracts were for the widening of Stud Road between Bergins Road and Police Road and the sealing of Taylors Lane.

Kath’s children by a previous marriage, Susan and Robert, have long left Rowville: Susan lives near Horsham and Robert in Cockatoo.

Although now in their seventies, Frank and Kath have as yet given no thought to retirement.  PHOTOS

Interviewed by Bryan Power