Jean Dunscombe is a fourth generation inhabitant of Rowville, her great-grandfather John Golding having settled here during the 19th century at “Kilcatten Park” which extended from the south-west corner of Stud and Wellington Roads right back to Dandenong Creek.  

Tobacco growing in Rowville

Julius Politz first bought “Kilcatten Park” in the early 1860s. He was a cigar merchant and planted 40 acres of tobacco there and harvested his first crop in 1863. James McFarland bought the property from him in 1865 and continued the cultivation of tobacco.

John Golding worked on the property and lived in a little village on the rise near the creek. One of his sons, Angus Golding (Jean’s grandfather), remained on Kilcatten Park and started to raise his own family there. He too was involved in the growing of tobacco. He was also employed as a drover by Woodmasons of Oakleigh. Tragically he was killed in a fall from a horse in front of Dandenong Town Hall, leaving his wife a widow with five young children and expecting her sixth child.

The family falls on hard times

Jean’s father was William, the third eldest of this family and only nine years old at the time of his father’s untimely death in 1910. He told Jean that the death of his father left the family in desperate circumstances. They had few clothes and often no shoes. He recalled walking to Dandenong with his mother, brothers and sisters to do the shopping. His mother pushed a pram with the small children in it while he and the other older children took it in turns to pull a handcart loaded with groceries.

Fortunately, however, shortly after his father’s death, a public appeal was organised in Dandenong and enough money raised to provide the family with a home in John Street, (where the present Shell Depot is). The children were able to attend Dandenong State School and a job was found for their mother there as a cleaner.

William becomes a farmer

When William left school he started an apprenticeship with Bill Taylor, a blacksmith, who had his forge behind where McEwan’s store now is in Dandenong. Later on he worked for a while for a builder. By the time he was 17, William and his older brother Albert had managed to save enough money to put a deposit on 20 acres in Heany Park Road owned by Jack Gearon. They brought sheets of corrugated iron from Dandenong and constructed a makeshift shelter with them against a tree. They lived in this for some time before building a hut in which they lived for seven years. They were able to borrow a plough from Jack Gearon but often had to make individual mounds with hand tools for each cabbage they planted. This was in 1918. Their lives as farmers had begun.

William met his future wife, Emily Brooks, at a dance in Caulfield. By the time of William and Emily’s marriage in 1925, William and Albert had prospered sufficiently as farmers to each have a house built. Albert’s was put up on the property in Heany Park Road and William’s on a 27 acre block on what is now the 10th and 11th fairways, car park, club house and bowling rinks area of the Waverley Golf Club.

The two weatherboard houses were built by the same builder for 469 pounds each ($920) and were of the same design. William’s house was sited facing Stud Road where the row of cypress trees still stands but was moved to Bareena Avenue on the Seebeck Estate about 1960 when the Waverley Golf Club bought the land. Albert’s house is still there in Heany Park Road.

Jean was born in 1929, the second of William and Emily’s children. The others were Henry (born 1927), Graham (1931) and Valma (1933).

School days

The three older children went to Mulgrave Primary School which used to be where the present pitch and putt golf course is in Wellington Road. At first they walked across the paddocks to get there but later they’d walk down to where Bickerton’s house was in Wellington Road (about where the Ampol Service Station is now) and wait for George Grenda to come along with the milk truck. He’d let them hop up among the cans for the trip to school. As well as them and Mary, Billie and Lorna Bickerton, he’d also give a lift to Peter Stokie and his little brother. Wellington Road was only a dirt track in those days.

Later again William bought the children bikes. The first one Jean was given had solid rubber tyres. Mulgrave was only a small school with about 17 pupils and Mr Fleming was the only teacher. Jean loved school. When she was seven Jean groomed her favourite Jersey cow and walked it on a lead from the farm to Mulgrave for a field day. She took out second prize but thought she should have won so disputed the result with the judges.

In 1938 a bus service started along Stud Road so the children were transferred to Scoresby Primary School. However, “if Mum didn’t have the shilling for the fares we’d ride our bikes,” said Jean.

By this time Henry and Jean were expected to help on the farm. “Father grew cabbages, sprouts, peas and beans on the farm. He also grew tomatoes where the Drive-In Theatre used to be. He grew them there without water. Just depended on rainfall. Father leased that land from a man named Jenkins until Jack Finn bought it”.

As well as market gardening, William always had about 14 cows. Henry and Jean were up each morning at 6 o’clock to help with the hand milking. They’d hand separate the milk which was fed to the pigs whose sties were further down the paddock and the cream went to the butter factory in Stud Road, Dandenong, not far from the junction with Clow Street. “We always kept enough cream to make our own butter,” said Jean, “I still have the old wooden churn.”

Jean suffered from chilblains and hated milking on the frosty mornings. “Dad was a strict man and always expected us to do our best. He’d hear our spelling, tables and poetry while we were doing the milking.” The children finished school when they were about 14 and then just worked on the farm.

The Clydesdales

From that age Jean was proficient at ploughing behind two Clydesdales. She and Henry would race each other to harness up their own teams. Jean’s horses were named Cliff and Clive; Henry’s, Major and Tiger. Jean’s favourite horse once won the Clydesdale Race at the local gymkhana but her father wouldn’t let her ride it. However, she won the greasy pig race and on another occasion, the ladies’ woodchop event.

Jean remembered the Rowville men playing cricket against other teams on one of their paddocks in the mid 1930s. Her father William was a keen cricketer and she remembered him carefully oiling his bat. She remembered too the locals coming to their home to listen to the test match broadcasts on their wireless when the Australian team was playing in England in the 1930s.

When World War 2 commenced, an army camp was set up across the road from their farm. The Australian troops weren’t always popular with the farmers because they’d just march through properties without permission.

Once a platoon was marched through William’s pea crop when it was almost ready for picking. However, two good things that came out of the army camp was the sealing of Stud Road and the installation of a water supply that William was allowed to tap into.

When the Americans came they were good customers for the Golding eggs. However, on Sundays, busloads of Australian girls used to arrive at the camp for the day and Jean was told to stay in the house by her father.

The Italian P.O.Ws were pleasant men. They didn’t work on the local farms but would always offer to help if they were walking past and saw Jean and her family working in the paddocks.

William also grew crops on leased land in Heany Park Road and Jean remembered going up to Heany Park pool for a swim after hot days working in the paddocks. She couldn’t recall anybody teaching the local kids to swim. “We just taught ourselves.”

Few holidays but lots of dancing

Everybody worked very hard. There was always something to do on the farm. Jean remembered Boxing Days when her father filled his truck with relatives and took everyone to Mordialloc beach. New Year Days were spent at Frankston and they never worked on Good Friday but apart from that there were no holidays. Jean remembered picking peas one Christmas Day! “Dad wouldn’t harness a horse on a Sunday. One Sunday he had to for some reason and the horse dropped dead! So he never harnessed one on a Sunday again.”

As she grew into her teens Jean became a very keen dancer. Her parents were on the committee of the Mulgrave Hall and she would go there with them every second and fourth Saturday night of the month. “The oldies would play Euchre in the back hall while the teenagers danced in the main hall. All the families attended functions like the dances, so everybody knew everybody else.”

A dance was also held at the Lysterfield Hall on the first Saturday of the month and Scoresby on the third Saturday.If there was a fifth Saturday it would be at Cranbourne. Jean and a group of her friends regularly rode their bikes to these dances – even to Cranbourne. The closest street lights to Rowville in those days were in Heatherton Road and the roads were rough but nothing would stop them from getting to a dance.

One night when she was 17 Jean met a young man at the Lysterfield Hall. He was a market gardener too and used to drive the band from Glen Waverley to Lysterfield in the back of his father’s truck. “When I told dad I’d met Harry Dunscombe at the dance, dad knew all about him because he and Harry’s father had had adjoining vegetable stalls at Victoria Market for 20 years,” said Jean.

The trip to Victoria Market

Up to 1928 William would set off to Victoria Market with his dray laden with vegetables at 10 o’clock at night. The dray would be drawn by two of the Clydesdales and his wife Emily would follow him in a jinker until the dray had been pulled to the top of the steep hill in Wellington Road, next to what is now VFL Park. William would then unharness one of the Clydesdales and continue on with one horse while Emily led the other one home tethered behind the jinker.

Along the road William would fall in with the drays of the other local farmers heading to market: the Taylors, Gills, Armstrongs and Arnotts. They’d take it in turns to be the lead driver. The other horses would just follow along so their drivers could safely doze off to sleep. When they reached St Kilda Road they’d be joined by the drays of the Chinese market gardeners coming up from places like Cheltenham and Moorabbin.

In 1928 William bought his first truck, a Chevrolet, and this quicker means of transport allowed him the luxury of not having to leave home until about 2 o’clock in the morning.

Jean and Harry settle in Heany Park Road

In 1948 William decided to sell the Rowville farms and moved to a 450 acre property at Cranbourne. Jean didn’t go with them as she and Harry married in the same year and bought one of her father’s ten acre blocks in Heany Park Road. There they built their home and raised their five children: Susan, Pamela, Emilea, Harry and Donna.

They are still there 45 years later with no thought of retiring from farming. At present (1991) they are kept busy running a nursery with their son Harry to provide plants for their stalls at Melbourne’s craft markets.
Interviewed by Bryan Power

DUNSCOMBE Jean Dunscombe 1929 – 1993

After a long and very courageous battle against cancer, Jean Dunscombe passed away peacefully amidst the loving support of all members of her family on February 3rd 1993.

Jean had lived all of her life in Rowville and was a member of the fourth generation of the Golding family to have lived here.

Her great-grandfather John Golding, settled at “Kilkatten Park” during the nineteenth century. Her grandfather, Angus, and father, Bill Golding were born on the same property. Bill obtained land in Heany Park Road in 1918 and then in 1925, after his marriage to Emily Brooks, built a home and established a farm on what is now the 10th, 11th and part of the 14th fairways of the Waverley Golf Club. Jean grew up on this farm with her two brothers and sister and attended Mulgrave and Scoresby State Schools. After leaving school she worked on the farm and could do any work – even ploughing with her team of Clydesdales.

Jean became a keen dancer and it was at a dance at the Lysterfield Hall that she met her future husband, Harry Dunscombe.

Jean and Harry were married at St Pauls, Glen Waverley in 1948 and settled on a ten acre block in Heany Park Road where they brought up their five children: Susan, Pamela, Emilea, Harry and Donna. (Donna is now married and living on the Wellington Park Estate. Her daughter Bianca, is therefore a sixth generation Golding descendant in Rowville).

Jean was a lovely woman, fondly regarded by all who knew her in the district. She was never one to put herself forward in local affairs but could always be depended upon to make a generous contribution from the background. However, Jean was one of the founders of the Rowville Basketball (Netball) Club in 1964.

Her great focus was her family and they were all equally devoted to her. When I interviewed Jean in 1991 she was in obvious distress with her illness and I asked her how she found the strength and will to continue her fight. She answered simply: “Because of my family”.

Attended by a large congregation of family and friends, Jean’s funeral service was conducted at St Pauls, Glen Waverley where Jean and Harry had been married 44 years previously.
Bryan Power

Comments

 From Judith Mott nee Waldron (27 Aug 2004)

 From Bryan Power (29 Aug 2004)

 From Kellie Adam nee: OConnor (01 Apr 2007)