Sullivan Vern

Vern was born in New Zealand in 1918 to Australian parents, Alexander and Elizabeth Sullivan, who had met and married while on holiday in the shaky isles. After the wedding Alexander and Elizabeth decided to stay in NZ and they bought a dairy farm at Levin on the north island that they had for fourteen years during which time their first three children: Gladys, Thelma and Vern were born. In 1921, when Vern was three, the family returned to Australia and continued dairying on a farm at Drouin in Gippsland where Vern’s youngest sister Eileen was born.
Vern’s father went broke during the Great Depression but he was lucky enough to find a job with the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works at Werribee. The family by this stage was living at Coburg so Vern’s father was away during most of the week.
After attending school at Brunswick Tech Vern was employed at Hilton Hosiery in Brunswick where he worked as a machine operator until he was 21.
One day Vern drove the family out to Rowville in his A model Ford to visit his uncle who was paying off a farm he was buying from the Kellett sisters. The farm of 60 acres was located on the south side of Kelletts Road about 150 metres west of Napoleon Road. The frontage to Kelletts Road continued west to near where Blaxland Drive is now situated. Uncle Moylan was having trouble finding the money to pay the mortgage as times were hard and the farm was not productive because it was largely an uncleared bush block.
VERN BUYS 60 ACRES IN KELLETTS ROAD
Vern, however, was immediately impressed with the potential of the place and saw it as the chance of realising his boyhood dream of becoming a farmer. He had fifty pounds saved and persuaded his mother to chip in another fifty to pay out his uncle’s debt so he was able to take over the mortgage and, fired with enthusiasm, he set about the task of clearing the property with the assistance of his father.
One day an old neighbour named Thomson put his head over the fence and told Vern that he would be a “six week wonder” – he would never have the stamina to stick it out. This slur had the effect of firing Vern up with an absolute determination to succeed. He was only 21 and was a city boy with almost no experience of farming but he had an enormous capacity for hard work
When the Second World War broke out in 1939 Vern tried to enlist but failed the medical examination because of a hernia. He was put on a waiting list for an operation but in the meantime was directed to report to a ordinance factory in Maribyrnong where he was trained as a cylindrical surface grinder. As it turned out Vern never received his call-up papers and so continued to work at Maribyrnong throughout the war, manufacturing anti aircraft guns.
Even though he was working 12 hour shifts, sometimes 7 days a week, Vern made time to drive the Ford out to Rowville to clear the farm. (With wartime petrol rationing in force, Vern ran the old A model on a fuel mixture of half petrol and half kerosene.)
“GRUBBING AGAINST THE WIND”
The trees were brought down by digging out the soil around the roots on one side of the tree. As Vern explained it: “we grubbed against the wind” so that when the prevailing wind blew up it would blow down one tree onto another and then another like a line of tumbling dominos. One night a storm blew up and knocked the “grubbed” trees down all over the farm.
The bigger trees were pulled down with a cable attached to a truck. The very big stumps were removed by “stoving”. To stove a stump they dug the dirt out from around the roots and set a fire in the space. Once a strong fire was burning on a bed of coals they packed the loose dirt and clay around the stump, leaving a single hole to allow air to reach the fire. The stoved fires would burn for up to a week until the stump was gone.
Vern considered that the removal of the trees was the easier part. The harder job was “running the roots”, that is, digging out the several large roots that radiated for many metres from each tree. It was essential to remove these roots before the cleared ground could be ploughed.
Vern contracted woodcutters who cut the fallen trees into lengths with cross-cut saws. They then used wedges to split the logs into fence posts. The timber was also cut and split into two foot lengths to sell as fuel to be used in boilers. Firewood back then sold for ten shillings a ton.
Vern’s first planting was a crop of peas and when it was time to harvest them he worked all day one Sunday picking with the help of two local women, Mrs Pitson and Mrs Hayes. He then went straight to the munitions factory for a twelve hour night shift and at knock-off time he drove back to Rowville to continue picking all Monday. That night he returned to the factory as usual and in the morning headed back to Rowville to take his peas to market. In all he had worked without sleep for over fifty hours!
PROFESSIONAL BOXER
Not content with this hectic life style Vern took up boxing as a young man, training under a former Victorian heavyweight champion, Harry Doran, at his Brunswick gym.
Before long Vern was fighting professionally on Saturday nights at the West Melbourne Stadium. Boxing was a very popular sport in the 1940s and the old stadium was always filled with eager fans.
Vern competed successfully as a featherweight and later as a lightweight against some classy opposition. He held his own with the best of them, winning 15 of his twenty bouts. Vern rated his win over Vic Dyer, who had been undefeated in his previous 18 bouts, as one of his best results. He fought in four and six round bouts and was paid a pound a round which was almost as much as he was earning at the hosiery factory in a week.
MARRIAGE TO MARY BYRDEN
One of Vern’s workmates, Pat Byrden, became a great friend and often came out at weekends to help Vern at Rowville. One day he brought his sister Mary with him and Vern took one look and said to himself: “She’s the one”, and that’s the way it turned out. They were married at Sacred Heart Church in Oakleigh in 1948 and moved into the old four-roomed, fibro cement house on the farm at Rowville formerly occupied by the two Kellett sisters. The house was very basic but Mary patiently waited until improvements were made. When they first lived there they washed their dishes in a basin on the kitchen table. Vern recalled that they thought they “were in heaven” the day they had a stainless steel sink installed.
Another major improvement was the purchase of a kerosene refrigerator which allowed Mary to make ice cream for her Sunday lunch guests. In those days ice cream was considered a luxury.
Their major entertainment was the Saturday night dance at Dandenong Town Hall but apart from that it was work, work, work.
Vern and Mary steadily built up a herd of dairy cows – mainly Jerseys – to about 35 in number, hand milking and then hand separating the cream which was collected by Ideal Dairies.
Mary eventually refused to hand milk any more and, because there was no electricity connected to the district, Vern bought a diesel generator to power the milking machine he’d installed in the dairy. The generator not only powered the milking operation but also the separator and Vern’s father was delighted to be relieved of the task of carrying the buckets of separated milk down to the pig troughs because now the power pumped the milk through pipes to the eagerly awaiting pigs. Vern’s father had made the troughs by cutting out the interiors of large logs with an adze.
Another regular caller was Mr Pedlar of Bayswater who delivered newspapers, bread and groceries. Later a Tuesday bus service was commenced to pick up people in Rowville who wished to travel into Dandenong Market.
In the early1950s Kelletts Road was narrow and unsealed and full of potholes. Once when Vern’s pregnant sister Thelma came to visit them she refused to travel in the car down Kelletts Road. Instead she walked right down to the corner of Stud Road and Vern picked her up there to drive her home.
GOOD ADVICE FROM THE OLD HANDS
Old Salvadore Alberni whose farm was across the other side of Kelletts Road advised Vern to give away dairying and take up market gardening if he wanted to get ahead in farming. Vern decided to follow this advice and then was offered another valuable piece of wisdom by a very good market gardener, George Robinson, whose farm occupied the area that is now the industrial estate north of Kelletts Road. (Rivette, the winner of the 1939 Melbourne Cup – and the first mare to win the Caulfield Cup-Melbourne Cup double – was reared on the farm down along Stud Road west of George’s farm.)
George told Vern to choose two successful district market gardeners that he admired and then copy exactly what they did. Vern decided to follow the examples of the Alberni brothers and George: he sowed the same crops at the same time using the same methods of ploughing and fertilizing. He has always been grateful to these men for their advice and for their generosity in allowing him to benefit from their experience and expertise.
The Alberni brothers – Marty, Henry and Salvadore – grew cabbages, brussels sprouts and silver beet for Gartside Cannery in Dingley. They employed Italians from Bonegilla Migrant Centre as pickers. The three brothers did so well that in 1948 each of them was able to pay for a new home and buy a brand new Holden.
Vern was determined to match their success and to that end he was one of the first in the district to appreciate the value of tractors. He realised that his old horse Blossom that he’d bought for thirteen pounds and that had served him faithfully for thirteen years “pulling the mortgage off the farm” was not the way of the future. Using the horse, Vern had to rise at 5.00 am and then take hours to shape the mounds (or “lands”) necessary for the planting of vegetable crops. To construct each mound required ploughing up and back along the same strip six times. Then the mound had to be harrowed and finally rolled with a heavy log to break up the clods.
Vern had even, on occasions, used the old A model Ford to pull the harrows.
The heavy Rowville soil was difficult to work but it had the great advantage that it held moisture well. This was particularly important in those days as they had no running water. Vern had a 44 gallon drum on a sled which the horse pulled to the creek that used to flow under Kelletts Road near the present corner with Blaxland Drive. He’d fill the drum with a bucket and then return to the crop to pour the water onto the new plantings. Fortunately the summers were not so dry and the winters wetter in those days so usually only one watering was necessary.
With a tractor the lands could be built with one up-and-back ploughing. As well, Vern devised a frame to hold the roller behind the harrows so he was able to harrow and roll in the one operation. This huge increase in efficiency allowed him to quite quickly plant a six acre crop of cucumbers that brought a profit of six thousands pounds – a result that, as he said, “finally put us on our feet”.
The next tractor that Vern bought was fitted with headlights and he was delighted that this allowed him to work for a few more hours every day.
With the farm now all cleared and in full production he needed more land to accommodate his boundless energy and ambitions. As well, the lack of electricity and a reliable water supply in Kelletts Road were constant irritations. And then the birth of their first son in 1955 gave Vern and Mary an additional spur to look to the future.
Vern tried to buy more acreage but his neighbour to the south, John Masterson, was not prepared to part with any of his 300 acres. (However, he shortly afterwards sold to Keith Hicks.)
VERN AND MARY LEAVE ROWVILLE
Vern was not the sort of person who could put up with this frustration so he sold up in Rowville in 1956 and moved to a 70 acre property in Somerville. Within no time he had bought two more blocks (of 11 and 13 acres) because “I was no good unless I was in debt”.
In 1961 Vern and Mary moved to a 300 acre property on Baxter-Tooradin Road, Pearcedale.
Vern and Mary’s older son, Kevin, now grows vegetables on 30 acres in Somerville while their second son, Laurie, is a fisherman.
Vern moved into sheep farming at Pearcedale and soon realised that he needed a good dog. Never one to settle for second best, he wrote to the owner of the English Champion border collie and before long this great sheep dog, Glen II, was on the boat to Australia. Vern trained hard to become a very successful working dog handler, and with the help of Glen II and its progeny he became a leading figure in the world of dog trialling. Vern was a councillor with the Victorian Working Dogs Association for 18 years and has judged in all of the southern states.
At the same time Vern continued to work seven days a week and not even an encounter with a tiger snake while digging potatoes that put him into Frankston Hospital when he was 50 could slow him down.
Only major heart surgery a couple of years ago when he was 83 has caused Vern to realise that he is facing the thought of retirement. At present he keeps himself occupied fattening beef cattle.
Nothing remains to show where Vern worked the soil in Rowville – the old house, dairy and sheds have long gone. However, Sullivan Drive, named in honour of Vern and Mary, is a permanent reminder of their pioneering contribution to Rowville.