Sturrock Mary

Mary recalled that her strongest first impression of Rowville was the smell of percolated coffee brewing on the wood stove of the farm in Wellington Road that her father had bought from Bill Phillips in 1936. She had left Geelong with her father early one morning in his 1928 Chevrolet National to drive to Rowville and of all the impressions made on her nine-year old mind that exciting day, the smell of Mrs Phillip’s coffee has always been the most vivid in her memory. 

Mary’s father Bill Bickerton had always wanted to be a farmer so the purchase of the 30 acre farm on the north side of Wellington Road (just east of where the power lines cross) was the realisation of a life-long dream.

As a young man, Bill had worked on his parent’s farm in Boolarra, Gippsland and then on the roads before being employed on the construction of the Yallourn Power Station. While in Gippsland, he had met Mary Elliott and they were married at Boolarra on 11th March 1924. Mary rode her horse from the farm to Boolarra on her wedding day and dressed for the big event at her aunt’s home. When the work on the Yallourn Power Station was completed, Bill had the choice of either going to Sydney to work on the Harbour Bridge construction or to Geelong to be part of the work force building the Ford factory. He chose the latter and stayed on with Ford after the construction was completed to work in the trim department making seats and the cloth hoods that were a feature of many cars in those days.

Mary junior, her two brothers Bill and Alec and sister Lorna were all born in Geelong.

In 1929 Bill left Ford and was employed in the acid plant at Pivot Phosphate in North Shore. By 1936 he was ready to realise his dream and came to Dandenong where Redding the real estate agent showed him over farms as far afield as Kooweerup until Bill finally decided on the Rowville property.

Hand Milking

The family moved to the farm in November 1936 and went straight into harvesting the grass hay, tossing the sheaves up with pitchforks to build the haystacks. Bill gradually increased his dairy herd and he and the two Marys – mother and daughter – were eventually hand milking 30 cows. Young Mary remembered milking up to the last minute in the morning before grabbing some breakfast and joining the other local youngsters in getting a lift to Mulgrave State School on the back of George Grenda’s milk truck. Later, Bill bought her a second-hand bicycle at Dandenong Market and this allowed her to milk for a bit longer in the mornings. Wellington Road in those days was made of gravel and sand but the Council had started to put some heavier road metal on the surface. One morning in her daily dash to be at school before the bell, Mary fell off when her bike skidded amongst this rock and she was left dazed and bleeding beside the road. At that moment Old Pat, the dog owned by their next door neighbour Hal Gibb, came running through the paddock to her and Mary gasped to him “get Dad”. The dog ran off to her home at once and made such a fuss that Bill followed him out on to the road to find Mary limping home.

Mary also helped Bill to sow maize. He ploughed the land with the help of Bloss, a light draught horse, alongside Wellington Road just to the west of the power lines and Mary followed behind him carefully planting the seeds. They had no water supply so the crop depended on rainfall. In later years Bill planted maize on the lower flats of the property. He rented the sixty acre paddock immediately west of the farm and later was able to buy it. Then the next westerly paddock came on the market and he and Hal Gibb bought it between them and divided it down the middle to give them 30 acres each, thus increasing the Bickerton farm to 120 acres. Bill worked hard to improve the poor pastures on the farm and gradually upgraded his herd to one consisting almost entirely of very high producing Jerseys. As the herd grew, Bill obtained the help of boys from the Lysterfield Boys’ Home. The boys lived with the family and were given their keep and a small wage. A great advance was made when Bill bought a milking machine and a Ruston Hornsby diesel engine to power it. The engine allowed them to have electric light in the house too which was a big improvement on having to depend on lanterns. Later again the electricity supply reached Rowville. The only drawback to changing over to machine milking as far as Mary was concerned was when there was a power failure and they had to revert to hand milking. Mary recalled, “I had got out of practice, of course, and how my arms ached!”

In the days before electricity, people would come around for a talk. She remembered Harry Raymond visiting them at one time and when it started to rain Harry said, “the sovereigns are falling”. That remark really summed up just how precious rain was to those who made their living from the land.

With the advent of electricity, Bill bought a wireless for the dairy and the cows seemed to enjoy the music. They also benefited from the new concreted yards that Bill put down, as prior to that the yards had always become quagmires during Rowville’s wet winters.

Ray Dobson organised all the movement of local cattle to and from the Dandenong Market by walking them along Stud Road – he even once drove a bull out for Bill from the market. Ray was renowned for his incredible memory for cattle and one day at the market he pointed out a particular cow to Bill and said, “that’s one of your cows that I took to Dandenong a couple of years ago”.

The Rowville Military Camp

In 1942 the Army came to Rowville and formed a base across the road from them. Many of the soldiers were from the city and were able to get weekend leave. They were not allowed to have their own vehicles on the base but Bill let them keep them at the farm and soon there were several cars, motor bikes and even push bikes left under the trees beside the house. As a mark of their gratitude the soldiers dug an air raid shelter for the family across Wellington Road opposite their home.

In that year Alec, the youngest in the family, became ill with German measles and never really seemed to get over it. Eventually he went to Dandenong Hospital but the doctors couldn’t find what was wrong with him so he returned home to Rowville. Tragically he died a short time later. He was only seven. On the day of his funeral the soldiers lined up on either side of Wellington Road as the hearse was driven to Dandenong Cemetery. Bill never got over Alec’s death. When he later started his Jersey Stud he named it “Alville Stud”, a combination of Alec and Rowville.

Bill became one of the original members of the Rowville Fire Brigade formed in 1942 and in the following year joined the V.D.C. (Voluntary Defence Corps). He and three other local V.D.C. members, George Barker, Gordon Dobson and Jack McIntyre used to go to training together. The most exciting thing they had to do during the war was to guard a plane that had come down near Bakers Road in Mulgrave.

After the Australian troops left in late 1942 the base was taken over by the American Army. The Americans had plenty of money and were keen customers for the Bickerton eggs. One of the Americans asked Mary to bake him a chocolate cake and she made one for him every week until the time his unit moved out. They were all young fellows who were training in readiness to move up to the war zone in the Pacific Islands. Mary was a friend of Betty Drummond whose father Wish owned Stamford Park and when he invited American soldiers to a party there, Mary was asked to come too.

During the war the dances at the Lysterfield Hall attracted lots of the soldiers from the Rowville Camp so the girls always had plenty of partners. The local young people would get a ride up to the hall on the back of Jack Finn’s truck and Mary always baked a plate of cakes to take for the supper.

The music was provided by the Gearon family band or by Lois Pearson’s band. Dancing competitions were very popular in those days and one night Mary senior won a waltzing competition dancing with Ehrenfried Exner. Mr Exner was one of the locals who helped a Committee to run gymkhanas to support the War Effort. Mary recalled that those on the Committee were her father, Reg and Leo Gill, Bill Crawford, Jack McIntyre, Ray Dobson, Alf Taylor and Vin Willis. Vin was the manager of a property owned by William Angliss and the gymkhanas were held there. The property was located where the Pioneer quarry is now but when Vin left the district, the gymkhanas were moved to the area behind the Mulgrave State School. The Gymkhana Committee also ran boxing and wrestling nights at Dandenong Town Hall and these were very popular events, raising quite a deal of money for the War Effort and Red Cross.

After the Americans moved out, the base became a P.O.W. camp for Italian soldiers and Mary often saw them wandering along the roads in their burgundy uniforms. Bill leased the camp area after the war to graze his herd but the grass was very poor.

One Phone in Rowville

One day Bill’s father became ill and Bill told Mary to go on her bike to the Post Office to ring for a doctor. The only phone in the district at that time was at the Post Office but when she arrived she found that Miss Bergin the Post Mistress was not there; she had gone by bus to Scoresby to pick up the mail. Mary ran across the road to Kath Manley who opened the Post Office and put the call through. The doctor found that grandfather had had a stroke but he recovered quite well. Next to the Post Office, Miss Bergin’s uncle Nick Bergin had the blacksmith’s forge and Mary remembered watching him shoeing the horses. He was an old man by the time the Bickertons arrived and he finally closed down the business in 1937. Later Dan Gibson built a small building in front of the old forge. He set up shop there for a while but it was not very successful. However, it became a meeting place and the locals gathered there to play cards. When the Progress Association was formed, the committee sometimes met there and Bill was on that committee too.

Bill also helped form a local branch of the Milk Producer’s Association and became the Secretary. Mary had the job of writing and posting out the notices of the meetings.

Rowville Cricket Club

In the early 1950s Stewart Finn asked Bill to help him form a cricket team. They eventually got one together and entered the Mountain District League. The team members worked to make a cricket ground on the south side of Wellington Road west of where the power lines cross. The wicket was made of compacted earth on which they rolled out the matting for the games. The team was very successful and in 1954 won the premiership. When Baker took over the lease of the old camp area, the Club prepared a ground on Jack Finn’s property in Bergin’s Road (opposite Village Court). The Club also transferred to the Dandenong Association as many of the players lived in Dandenong and found the travel to the hills too difficult. One of the Club’s best batsmen was Jim Sturrock and he and Mary became close friends. By this time she was working in Dandenong at Roberts the pastrycooks.

By 1954 Bill was not in good health due to high blood pressure and decided to move to a smaller farm at Hampton Park. The Rowville farm was sold to Bill Robinson and the locals gave the family a send off at the Scoresby Hall and made presentations of a barometer and a chiming clock. Bill soon became involved in local affairs in Hampton Park but after suffering a stroke he had to withdraw from those activities.

Mary and Jim were married at the Dandenong Presbyterian Church in 1959 and were blessed with three daughters, Susan, Glenda and Kay.

Bill died in 1968 at the age of 67 and his wife Mary in 1984.
Interviewed by Bryan Power

Comments

 From vern white (20 Aug 2004)

 From Bryan Power (24 Aug 2004)

 From Lindsay Jacgung (22 Jun 2005)