Doolan Pat

An important era came to an end in Rowville in June 1995 when the last of the Doolan family left the district. Pat Doolan left her home of 31 years in Wellington Road and travelled north to live with her eldest daughter Colleen in Emerald, Queensland.

Pat came to Rowville in 1964 with her husband Denis and four children: Colleen, Denis, Jenny and Michael. Pat and Denis’s next two children: Brian and David were born here. After many years of working as a share farmer and a shearer, Denis had finally reached the stage of being his own boss after negotiating the lease of the land south of Wellington Road owned by Pioneer Quarry. He successfully set up a dairy farm on the property and ran a herd of between 80 and 100 Friesian milkers.

From Timboon

Denis was the sixth of nine children from a noted sporting family in Timboon in Victoria’s south-western district. From an early age he was a talented footballer and cricketer and was invited to play with VFL Club St Kilda in 1948. During his time in Melbourne he also won selection at Prahran in the District Cricket Association.

One night at a dance at the Trocadera Ballroom (which was on the site now occupied by the Victorian Arts Centre) Denis met Patricia McNamara. Pat was a city girl – from Armadale – and at the time was doing a dress-making apprenticeship at Prahran. Their romance developed and they were married the following year.

The next few years saw a complete change in Pat’s lifestyle from city girl to country wife and mother. Denis bought a 1928 Chrysler “raghood” sedan and hitched a hired caravan to it to travel throughout Victoria and New South Wales following the shearing season. Pat was busy caring for baby Colleen and cooking for the shearing team.

In 1952 they returned to Timboon, running sheep on a property leased from Denis’s brother-in-law. However, Denis’s income still largely came from shearing over the next seven years.

By 1959 there were three more children and Denis recognised the need to spend more time with his growing family. The family moved to Shady Creek near Warragul to commence share farming, a pursuit Denis followed for the next five years until moving to Rowville.

Resurrection of the Rowville Cricket Club

When Stuart Finn, the captain of the Rowville cricket team, left the district in the early 1960s, the club went into recess. Denis, with his keen interest in sport, went around Rowville door to door drumming up interest in getting a team together again. He was successful and a team competed in the Ferntree Gully District Cricket Association from the 1965-66 season. Denis became the President of the Club and held that position for 13 years until deteriorating health forced him to step down in 1978.

He also captained the team and proved himself to be an astute leader. At 6’4″ and 16 stone, he was an imposing figure on the field and a very accomplished cricketer with both bat and ball. He topped the Club’s batting averages in three seasons: 1968/69, 1969/70 and 1973/74 and also led the bowling averages in 1968/69, 1970/71 and 1973/74.

In 1974 Denis won the FTGDCA Lomax Award as the Association’s best player in second division and in 1980 the Club made him its second life member.

Finding the time for all of his commitments to the Cricket Club was not at all easy in the pre-Christmas weeks each year as Denis and his sons were working from dawn to dark cutting and baling hay throughout Rowville and beyond. This activity also became a good source of funding for the Club: members helped Denis with the hay cutting and he paid their ‘wages’ into the Club’s funds.

He was also a great worker for the Rowville Football Club and was its Vice-President for four years. In 1967 he was named as Best Clubman. His son Denis proudly remembered the day when his father pulled on the boots once more to make up the numbers when the reserves were short of players. The two Denises played together that day, the son aged 15 and the father 40.

All of the children were keenly involved in sport. Michael won Rowville’s bowling averages in the 1981/82 season and Brian, the batting in 1985/6. Brian followed in his father’s footsteps when he was elected to the Presidency of the Club in 1991. He served in that capacity for three years.

Young Denis became a very good footballer and went on to play with North Melbourne Reserves. Meanwhile Colleen and Jenny were among the first players with the Rowville Netball Club. Pat was kept busy making uniforms for the girls and driving them to matches while during the summer she was the cricket team’s tea lady. She picked up the sandwiches and cakes from Mrs Gilligan’s shop and served afternoon tea to the players and supporters from a tent beside the ground.

Although ill with a serious kidney complaint, Denis agreed to once more take on the Presidency of the Cricket Club for the 1983/84 season but sadly he died in office on 2nd December 1983 at the age of 55.

Although all members of the family have now left Rowville, their importance to the community is permanently recorded on the honour boards of the Clubs and in the naming of Doolan Court, a street in the Silkwood Rise Estate.
Interviewed by Bryan Power                                 PHOTOS