Living in Briar Hill

Our family moved to Briar Hill when I was about four.

Our first house there was just a shack. It was one long room divided with a curtain, and a back verandah. Mum and Dad slept in the bedroom and we kids had the verandah. One end of the room had an open fire used for cooking and warmth. We bathed in that room in our galvanised wash-tub with handles.

Dad was receiving a small army pension from the Department of Veteran Affairs. Some other unemployed people were on “Sustenance” from the government during the Great Depression of the 1920’s and 30’s. It was common to hear the old limerick poem:

“We’re on the Susso now,
We can’t afford a cow.
We live in a tent, we pay no rent,
We’re on the Susso now.”

We used to buy firewood from a wood merchant at the end of our street. Mum would take our old pram and get about 25 kilos of firewood. She always got small foot-blocks because she had to do the wood-chopping.

Our house was next to a grocery store, and I was always interested in the activities that went on. A lot of goods came by train in those days. The guard on the train would unload goods at the station. He would deliver a wooden box full of butter, weighing about 25 kilos. Then a lad from the shop by the name of Charlie Davis would pick it up from the station on his bicycle. He only fell off once that I remember. In the store, the butter was kept in a cellar made especially for it under the floor-boards behind the counter.You lifted up a section of flooring and put the butter-box in the square hole. Customers received weighed portions, patted into shape.