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Vancam Lois

Lois and Ray Vancam

Lois and Ray Vancam are the longest living residents on the Stamford Estate having moved into their home in Hillview Avenue in 1959. In this interview they recount stories of the primitive conditions on the estate in the early years. Lois, of course, is very well known for her many years of dedicated service in manning the school crossing in Stud Road. 

Ray and Lois knew each other quite well for several months before they ever met. Lois was a telephonist at the Melbourne Telephone Exchange in 1947 while Ray was in the Signals Corps of the RAAF stationed at Laverton and Mont Albert. During the quiet times while on night shift it was common for the Signals airmen to call up the telephonists for a chat and to play music down the line for them. This is how Ray and Lois came to know each other and they enjoyed many hours on the phone before they ever met face to face. Their first date was a night out to the pictures at the Rivoli Theatre in Preston. “The picture was ‘Gilda’ starring Rita Hayworth,” Lois remembered, “and Ray bought me a box of Black Magic chocolates.” That night at the movies must have had a lasting effect on Ray too as his hobby to this day is collecting video copies of films of that era.

Vancam is not a Dutch Name!

Ray had come to Melbourne from Sydney to visit his ill father Maurice who was in the Air Force at Laverton. When he turned 18 Ray decided to join up too.

His father was a colourful personality who had come to Australia from Vancouver, Canada in 1924 while literally walking around the world – for a bet! His real name was Camp but he changed it to Vancam, a combination of Vancouver and Camp. He was an entertaining speaker and could perform any trick with a pack of cards. Ray’s mother was in the entertainment business and worked as an assistant to an illusionist, “The Great Murray”. Even after their marriage, Maurice continued his walking and Ray remembered moving from school to school as much as eight times a year. Maurice was known as “The King of the Tramps” and Ray has one of his father’s surviving notebooks that is crammed with newspaper reports of his visits to country towns throughout Australia. Even when he was in his 80s Maurice would catch the train to Dandenong and then walk out to Rowville to visit Lois and Ray. He lived into his 90s.

Lois’s Family

Lois was born Lois White, the seventh child in a family of nine living in Preston. She was a Preston girl “through and through” attending Preston State School, Preston High School and keenly supporting the Preston Football Club – the “Bullants”. Lois’s father was a traveller for Waltons and later became a Rawleigh man. He pedalled his bike around the district to his clients’ homes with his products in a trolley towed behind the bike. By the time Ray came on the scene Lois’s mother was very ill following a stroke but she soon warmed to his charm and they became great friends.

Lois and Ray became engaged in March 1949 and were married in the Presbyterian Church in Coburg on 3rd December 1949.

During their first six months of marriage they lived in a caravan and then the Commanding Officer of the base at Laverton asked them to live-in in his quarters in exchange for them looking after his young children when he and his wife were out at functions or entertaining at home.

The Stamford Heights Estate

Ray left the Air Force in 1953 and he and Lois moved to Brighton then later to Mordialloc.

One day in 1958 they drove over towards Ferntree Gully for a picnic and as they went along Stud Road they noticed a sign advertising cheap land on the “Stamford Heights Estate”. They stopped to look through the two display houses in Stamford Crescent and met the vendor, Aloysius (Wish) Drummond, the owner of Stamford Park at that time.

Ray and his good mate Arthur Haystead decided to buy neighbouring blocks in Hillview Avenue for 500 pounds each. As early buyers they were entitled to one of the 15 half-inch water tappings allowed by the Board of Works (later buyers had to install rain water tanks). However, no other services were provided: no drainage, sewerage (not even a pan service), gas, electricity, telephone, footpaths or made roads.

Lois and Ray decided on a house design and their home was built by Beaumaris Construction for 2,511 pounds and 2 shillings. They moved in on the weekend prior to the opening of the Stamford Hotel. On the opening day – 23rd October 1959 – the three families on the estate were invited by Wish to come for free drinks. When Ray and Lois arrived the carpet was still being laid in the foyer. Wish asked Ray if he had ever pulled a beer and when Ray answered in the negative Wish said, “Don’t worry, there’s seven others in the same boat; you’ll soon learn!” Ray went into the saloon bar and was kept so busy pulling free beers and serving other drinks that it was about 5 o’clock before he had a chance to quench his own thirst.

The Stamford Hotel was an immediate success and it was considered a very upmarket thing to fly out from the city by helicopter to have dinner at the Stamford. For years if you said that you lived in Rowville outsiders had no idea where you resided but as soon as you said that you lived near the Stamford Hotel people knew exactly where you were.

Lois was employed as the first receptionist and loved working there. “The foyer area was beautiful and the long fish tank attracted everybody’s attention.”

At that time those on the estate were John and Betty Drummond (Wish’s son and daughter-in-law) on Stud Road, Pat Rose and then John and Betty Allen in Stamford Crescent (the Allen home was the one which burnt down several years ago). Next were Joe and Maria Schmidt in Fourth Avenue, Hank and Corey Piening and Fred and Irene Colby in Deschamp Crescent and Ron and Vi Renton in Lakeview Avenue.

As others moved onto the estate a circle of women friends developed. They included Lois, Wilma Haystead, Mary Cramer, Margaret Stubbs, Pam Ness and Merle White and they were a great support to each other. In the early years all of the families on the estate used to go up to Heany Park Lake for a pre-Christmas picnic.

Although Ray and Lois’s contract when buying the land guaranteed that the vendor would provide an electricity supply, they had to make do for some time with Tilley lamps loaned to them by Betty Allen. Wish Drummond was very ill at the time and Ray was making no progress with his manager over the issue and finally had to visit Wish in his sickroom. Wish, however, was as good as his word and wrote out an authorisation there and then for the power to be supplied immediately.

Good News and Bad News

By this time Lois and Ray had been married for nearly ten years and had almost given up hope of starting a family. Whether or not there was something in the fresh air of Rowville, Lois became pregnant. Without a telephone they had to drive to visit friends to break the good news and on returning from one of these trips they were shocked to find that thieves had completely cleaned them out, even taking their clothes, bed linen and carpets. A bigger shock was in store for them when their insurance company refused to honour the claim. That was a real downer and they had to set about rebuilding their lives.

The arrival of their first boy Peter in July 1960 lifted their spirits. Four more sons – Jonathon in 1962, Robert in 1965, Simon in 1968 and Jamie in 1970 completed their family. Their joys were marred by the death of Jonathon in a tragic car accident at the age of four but their friends on the estate rallied to support them and Lois recalled thinking at the time: “there were nicer people in Rowville than in any other place I know of.”

As more and more people moved onto the estate the unmade roads became rougher and rougher. The worst spot was on the bend of Deschamp Crescent and Ray ruefully recalled sitting down one night to watch a much anticipated TV special when his neighbour knocked on the door to ask him to tow his car out of the mud there.

The roads were made doubly wet in winter because the waste water from the houses just ran out into the streets. One day Lois saw a long brown tail sticking out from under a wooden cover where their house’s drain flowed into the road. She investigated with a shovel and quickly despatched the snake.

After Rowville Primary School opened in 1973 Lois and a couple of the other mothers went with their children to escort them across Stud Road. Even though it was a single road then and far less busy than it is now, it was still dangerous and Lois took it upon herself to safely shepherd the other children across too. She did this regularly for several years before being appointed by the Council as the official “lollipop” lady, a position she held for 19 years in all sorts of weather – and even continuing on for a time after having bypass heart surgery – until her retirement at the end of 1996. She is very proud of her accident-free record in all of that time on what must be one of the most dangerous school crossings in Australia.
Interviewed by Bryan Power

PHOTOS

First published in the April 1997 edition of the Rowville-Lysterfield Community News.

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