Stories

Steve Gray YHS 1971 - Cubs, Scouts, Venturers and Rovers in Yallourn:

Way up past the pool was the YMCA hall and across from that was the Scout hall, It was big, or maybe I was small, it had various bits to it, like the Captain Hurley Rover Crew hut out the back, and a side storage area used for paper and bottle drives.

There were Cubs and two lots of Scouts when I started, the Cubs would bleat out their allegiance to the cub pack leaders, and bemused parents would watch on as their kids bleated as loud as they could, the Green caps, the shorts etc made an interesting look… more

Jim Sullivan YHS 1955 - Does anyone remember the old swimming pool? OMG YUK!...It would be drained every year into the OPEN CUT....And all the bike parts....bike tyres...and BIKES...along with old wheelbarrows..and certain unmentionables (ha ha) would be exposed.....But we loved it!!!! It had 2 jetties...a diving board....along with the mud and reeds....It was great fun at the school sports to wait expectantly as the swimmers competing in the UNDERWATER SWIM SURFACED!!! Many of them finished in the reeds!!!!....Many surfacing with bewildered looks!!!! Then it was announced we were getting… more

Irene Coates (Prosinskas) YHS 1952 wrote: "John Lewis wrote about the cooking room being out of bounds for the boys" -- it was a great place, Monday mornings was cooking lunch and Monday afternoons was for baking; Miss Cronin was a very serious teacher and stood no nonsense; we had to wear our white aprons or there would be trouble. She used to get so impatient if you asked a cooking instruction "again", I think she sent me to make the teachers morning tea just to get me out of her hair! It was great having the lunch we cooked, sitting down with jugs of water on the table. The baking… more

Charles Adams - YTS 1944 wrote: To the team that put the newsletter together, my most sincere thanks and congratulations on a very stimulating edition. Your work is much appreciated (I get out a newsletter myself for the RRVV, so I’m qualified to comment). It gets better and better but there is a dearth of content from the productive end of town, the fellas that got the real work done, those from the Tech. This is from one of them.
The exact date is not something that I can give you but it was the first school day of 1944, the day the bush fire got everyone excited and had the cut… more

Bill Skinner - YTS 1939 wrote: the newsletter article re the Soccer Club, brought back somewhat faded memories of my Yallourn Soccer Club time, during 1941 & 1942. Our coach at that time was a local policeman --- who said at the end of training, "if I catch any of you riding your bike after dark without a light, you will be fined."

I am having trouble remembering the names of the players --- I think, Syd Tate & Brownie ? were players. In 1941, we won the Dunkling Shield & the Docherty Cup, & 3 of us were selected to play against a team… more

Tim Harvey YHS 1971
We have reached the last of the classical elements and the second-to-last of these essays. And this time the theme is Air.

Running, and sucking in air. I think that I might have mentioned that physical fitness was not high on most people's agenda when I was a kid. Yes, in High School they did send us on cross-country runs, but that seemed to me to have little to do with fitness and was more a crude attempt to reduce the pupil-to-teacher ratio. With the exception of a very few individuals, running – running for one's health - was not widely practiced. Later… more

Richard Bush YHS 1955
Riding bicycles in the 1950s:
Pablo Picasso once combined an old bicycle seat and handlebars to form a sculpture entitled Tete de Taureau (Picasso Museum at http://picasso-paris.videomuseum.fr/). The seat formed the bull’s snout and the handlebars represented the horns. Those handlebars reminded me of the upturned bars on my pale blue Hartley bike I rode around Morwell in the 1950’s. It was a strange configuration although the upturned bars supported a stack of newspapers or a wheat bag full of rabbit… more

YALLOURN MILK ROUND: The Early Years Kay wrote "Looking into my family history recently, I came across a story of providing milk to Yallourn in its early history - 1920s, 30s and 40s. My grandmother's family - the Bests - ran the Deloraine Dairy from their farm at Yarragon and were responsible for the Yallourn Milk round. My great-aunt Amy could remember getting up at midnight to milk the cows and setting off for Yallourn by 2.00am. The round would be finished by 9.00am and they would be back at Yarragon by noon. There would be hand cans placed at back doors for the milk delivery. How… more

PAPER BOYS TELL THEIR TALES:

John Lewis YHS 1954
Confessions of a Paperboy: In the 1950s, most families in Yallourn had a daily paper delivered to their house early in the morning by a team of ten paper boys working for the newsagent located in the Rockman’s Store. For most of this time, there was a choice of three papers: the Sun, Argus or the Age, but the Argus went out of business in early 1957. I started my first paper round when I was in either grade four or five and it was cold work, especially having to get out of bed while it was still dark. The little… more

Dr James Moore Andrew commenced practice at Yallourn on 1 January 1926, as the town’s first doctor, and remained there until his death in 1972. He was accompanied by his new wife, Catherine Dorothy Andrew, known by all as Dorothy and affectionately by most as simply ‘Dot’, and they had three children – Judith, Margaret and David. They named their home “Burculey”, after his childhood home at Colbinabbin.

Dr and Mrs Andrew were involved in a wide range of activities in the town, and all former residents of Yallourn would have a memory of them. Mrs Andrew died in 1957, and after Dr… more