Hi - my name is Jim Donnet. My parents Jean and George arrived in Yallourn in the early thirties, dad was a electrician at the briquette factory and then in the workshops down near the power station. They lived in the married quarters for a while and then with the Lobley's before moving into 65 Parkside.
Dad was a cockatoo - a lookout for the SP Bookies in Richmond so it was only natural he would be a SP Bookmaker in Yallourn. He would set up the race sheets on trees opposite the hotel which was called "Little Flemington". One day the fraud squad came up from Melbourne and they arrested dad and his mate, Gabby Ray and put them in the squad car and it was then that all the drinkers inside the pub came out and started to try and tip the car over. While they were doing this, dad and Gabby got out the other side, raced over to the six-foot fence at the railway station, climbed over and were gone.
Another time they came up, dad heard the squad were coming he went inside the hotel, jumped the bar and started to serve beers and the barmaid said "you can’t do that" - dad said "I just have" and raced out the back door and was gone.
Later dad became a registered bookmaker and one Saturday, we were at a race meeting and mum was home on her own and there was a knock on the front door. When she opened it, the fraud squad officer pushed her aside, ran through the house and let the other officers in. They then searched the house for SP betting slips but dad was ahead of them because if there were any, he had taken them all with him. We once had a police officer living next door and he would have his bets with dad through the hedge and then say, "if I catch you down the street, I will book you", but it never happened!
....Jim Donnet (Aug 2020)