Davison Clare

CLARE DAVISON (nee WRIGHT) Remembers (Part One)

“They were wonderful days. If I had my life to live over, I’d love to do it all again.” Thus spoke Clare Davison as she recalled her childhood days of growing up in Lysterfield.

Clare is the fifth child of James and Edith Wright. She was born in Willaura, 32 kilometres south of Ararat in Western Victoria in 1918, and came with her family to Lysterfield in 1920. Clare was named after one of her mother’s sisters. Another sister, Aunt Elizabeth, was married to Josiah Hobbs. Elizabeth and Josiah had also met in Willaura but they left that area to go first to a farm at Scoresby in 1914 and later, in 1916, to Lysterfield. Elizabeth and Josiah’s story was recorded in “Hedley Hobbs Remembers” in the Dec 1997 and February 1998 editions of the R-LC News.

Edith and Elizabeth’s widowed mother, Mrs Jenny Whitehead, lived in Dandenong and it was she who bought a tiny house on 5 acres in Brae Road, Lysterfield for Edith and James. They repaid her loan with payments of five shillings a week. In 1932 James and Edith were able to buy the 10 acres adjoining the property for 112 pounds with a loan from Gus Powell of “Sweet Hills”. They agreed to repay that loan at one pound a week – a very large commitment in those dark days of the Great Depression.

The little house had only two rooms. In the front room there were two double beds, one for their parents and the other for the four girls – Edna, Ruth, Clare and Clarice – who slept “head and toe”, that is, two at either end of the bed. The boys – Wes, Jack and Archie – were no more comfortable – they slept outside in a tent. The second room was the kitchen/living room. Later James added two more rooms to the house.

They had 12 dairy cows and hand milked them twice a day. They separated the cream by turning the handle of the separator and it was Clare’s job to churn the cream to make butter that they sold to neighbours for one shilling a pound. The farm provided them with milk, cream and butter as well as eggs, fruit and vegetables. Edith was a very good cook and baked bread three times a week. They didn’t eat meat much – they couldn’t afford to. James had been a wheat lumper at Willaura but worked with his horse and dray for State Rivers at Lysterfield. He had to work terribly hard and Clare remembers him coming home with cracked and bleeding hands. The children, too, had to do their share and they all had their chores. Clare loved helping her mother and recalled the two big weekly tasks, scrubbing the kitchen floor with sandsoap and the weekly wash that was done outside in big tubs. Washdays started at eight in the morning with the lighting of the fire under the copper and went till six o’clock at night. The ironing was done with flat irons heated on the kitchen stove.

The weekly bath water was also heated in the outdoor copper and one of the big washing tubs was carried inside to serve as the bath. They only had one water tank so had to be economical with their use of water. If they ran out James went with his Furphy tank to the water point in Kelletts Road to replenish their supply.

AT LYSTERFIELD STATE SCHOOL

Despite all their chores the children found time for games and Clare remembers that they enjoyed playing rounders and quoits. They all had pets too: dogs, cats and canaries plus a rabbit and a corella. Edna and Clarice were keen riders and they rode their horse, Darkie, every day. Edna was a “real trick”. She’d get them to dress up in old clothes and blacken their faces and then go off to visit the neighbours, pretending to be old swaggies. All of the neighbours played along with the game and enjoyed the joke – there was precious little other entertainment in those days. They had a crystal set (a kind of wireless) and Edith enjoyed listening to the wrestling broadcasts on Friday nights. She’d listen attentively with the headphones on and when she exclaimed at exciting moments in the bouts the children would ask excitedly: “What’s happening? What’s happening?”

They loved it too when their father played the mouth organ and they’d gather around him and sing along to the old hymns that he played.

Clare remembers starting school in the old church hall on the corner of Wellington and Powell Roads. Later the children moved to the newly built school. Clare wasn’t impressed with Robert Scanlon as a teacher but thought that Harry Mepham was “wonderful”. She particularly recalled Arbour Days when the parents came to school and everyone planted trees. One of those trees was a beautiful Cootamundra wattle that Clare can “see” to this day. Harry had an old burgundy car and one night took a group of them to the pictures to see a film called “Africa Speaks”. He later made a great fuss of Clare when she referred to some of the incidents from the film in an essay she wrote. She loved everything about school except algebra. Two of her favourite activities were using the copybook for writing exercises and doing long division sums.

Clare couldn’t recall them ever having birthday parties as children or receiving presents at home at Christmas time. They did, however, get Christmas presents at the Sunday School that was held in the state school. The Sunday School was run on alternate weeks by the Methodists (Mr and Mrs Taylor) and the Presbyterians (Mr and Mrs Nicholls). Clare remembered that her mother once bought her a toy from old Mr Tew, the storekeeper in Ferntree Gully. It was a red beetle that flapped its wings after being wound up. Unfortunately Clare left it outside one day and Bess the draught horse stood on it so that was the end of the beetle.

One of the pleasantest memories from Clare’s childhood was going home from school to share a lunch of sago pudding with currants and cream with her mother.

EDITH WORKED HARD

Edith was a hard worker but she never complained. On Tuesdays she harnessed up Jimmy the cart horse to the jinker and set off to Dandenong market. On the way she delivered a can of cream to the Dandenong Butter Factory in Stud Road. Next she took the poddy calves to the cattle market which, in those days, was held in the main street of Dandenong. With the proceeds of these sales she was able to buy a good part of the family’s weekly provisions. Edith left Jimmy in the care of a Mr Reid who charged two shillings and sixpence to look after the horses in a small paddock adjacent to the market. There was so much noise and activity that when it was time to drive home, Mr Reid had to hold Jimmy until Edith was ready. When Mr Reid released Jimmy he’d take off at a great pace but Edith was a good driver and could manage him well. If the jinker wheels needed greasing Edith stopped on the way home at Nick Bergin’s blacksmith’s shop in Rowville. Clare remembers that there was an old plum tree beside the blacksmith’s shop for many years.

DIFFICULT TO FIND WORK

When the children finished at Lysterfield State School they had to find work as best they could – none of them could get to Dandenong to attend the high school.

When Jack left school he became a rabbiter. (He must have brought quite a lot of his catch home because Clare asserted: “I couldn’t look at a rabbit now!”)

Wes went to work at De Coite’s, the blacksmiths, in Ferntree Gully and later went by train to Ruwoldt’s in Richmond where he earned seven shillings and sixpence a week. He rode his bike to and from Ferntree Gully Station every day. Eventually, having learnt all aspects of the metal fabrication trade, he returned to set up his own successful business in Ferntree Gully. Although Wes has been dead now for many years the business still operates as “Westy’s”.

Clare wanted to be a dressmaker but had no opportunity to train in that field. Instead she went to work as a housemaid for Violet Lambert at her property, Chandanagore. Violet was a lovely lady, highly thought of in the district where she was the local councillor for many years. Clare remembers her Uncle Josiah Hobbs challenging Violet at one election and him being none too pleased when she outvoted him. Later Clare worked for the Watson family at “The Leasowes” in Lysterfield Road. She helped the share farmers, a Mr and Mrs Smith and their son and daughter, hand milk 90 cows there every day.

Mr Watson’s mother’s maiden name was Young: she was related to the Mr Young who was a partner in the famous Young and Jackson’s hotel in Flinders Street. Clare was paid ten shillings a week and, unless she needed to buy clothes, she gave the wages to her mother.

Edna worked at “The Leasowes” too while Ruth was a housemaid for Mrs Dobson in Ferntree Gully and Clarice was a waitress at a guest house in Sassafrass.

When “Sweet Hills” was sold to Brother Bill Nicholls and the Boy’s Home was set up Edith went there one day a week to do the boys’ washing. She was paid seven shillings and sixpence for that but, as she often used to say, “every little bit helps.” Clare remembers, “Mum loved those boys and they loved her.”

When in the 1950s the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission compulsorily resumed their property as part of the Lysterfield Reservoir catchment area, James and Edith were forced to leave their beloved Lysterfield and move to a house in Ferntree Gully. James then got a job at the tile works in Mitcham and did not retire until he was 75. He was too proud to take the pension before then.

AT THE LYSTERFIELD HALL

The hall was a great boost for the district and Clare has happy memories of attending the dances there. Blain’s four-piece orchestra was her favourite band and they were playing on the night that she met her future husband, Doug Davison.

Clare and Doug married at the Melbourne Registry Office and settled at Boronia and later Ashburton where they raised their four children: Douglas, Lorna, Lillian and Edith. Doug senior, who was a builder on several major projects with LU Simon, died only three years after his retirement.

Clare now lives in Wantirna where her beautiful garden is a testament to her energy and capacity for hard work, qualities that no doubt were passed onto her by her parents. As well, Clare makes sure that she finds time to spend with her 11 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren to whom she is greatly devoted. “I love them all,” said Clare.
Interviewed by Bryan Power.    

Clara Ellen Davison 1918-2002

Clare Davison, who died on 9 November following a short illness, was farewelled by a large congregation of family and friends at Le Pines, Ferntree Gully on Wednesday, 13 November.
Clare was born at Willaura but brought up in Lysterfield where her parents, James and Edith Wright, battled hard to provide for their large family (Clare was the fifth of seven children) on their small farm in Brae Road. For all of us accustomed to current lifestyles, Clare’s childhood circumstances seem primitive. She shared a double bed with her three sisters in a two-roomed house that had a meagre water supply and no electricity. Their food consisted mainly of what could be produced on the farm itself. However, Clare declared that: “They were wonderful days. If I had my life to live over, I’d love to do it all again.”
Such was the positive nature of Clare as attested by the celebrant, two of her grandsons and others at her funeral. Despite losing her beloved husband Doug over twenty years ago, Clare continued as ever to be a very outgoing and energetic person who loved to get on with her life. Most of all she was the loving and caring centre of her large extended family of four children, eleven grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren, all of whom will miss her deeply.
Clare’s story was published in the R LC News in June and July this year and can be read on the Rowville-Lysterfield History Project website, www.rlcnews.org.au