1:01:57

CHERIE WOOD

Judith Jacobs

23/01/2002

E0528 - E0529

Disc 1 59:26 – Disc 2 35:40

Arlene Armstrong

1/09/2014

City of Joondalup

JJ: This is an interview with Cherie Wood on the 23 January 2002 at her home in Craigie.

The interviewer is Judith Jacobs and it is for the Joondalup Oral History Project.

JJ: Cherie, if you could just start with where and when you were born and a little bit about

yourself and your early life.

CW: My parents lived in Jolimont when I was born and that was the 15 August 1938. They

had come from Victoria because unemployment was rife in Victoria and West Australia

looked more prosperous. We lived in that house until 1941 and then my father decided to

move to Joondanna. I’m not quite sure whether he did that because the house was too

small because I was the fifth of ten children, or whether it was because it was during the war

and people had been asked to move away from war defence areas and Jolimont had an

industrial area that was assembling planes etc. The only thing I can remember……...I can

remember only three things. I moved when I was three, the Aborigines living at the swamp at

the back of our house and standing on top of the wood shed singing silly songs to them and

getting into trouble for it. The Aborigines coming to the front door to sell props and also ask

for clothes and the lady around the corner who became a firm friend of my mother, Mrs Gim,

she was a widow and then my next recollection when I was three, we moved into our

Joondanna house and that was quite fascinating because there are about six houses in the

street and then there was nothing but bush so we were near Powell street, living in Banksia

Street and there were no houses from then on except a few scattered places along

Wanneroo Road.

JJ: So, how long did you live in Joondanna?

CW: Well, I lived there until I was married at 21. My family or my father lived there until he

died and that was in the……….1970’s, I’m sorry I had to look that one up.

JJ: That’s ok. We can probably talk about your childhood now and holidays that you went

on.

CW: Right, well apart from school we had to walk to Mt. Hawthorn School which was

probably about three kilometres. Apart from school, my only recollection as a youngster was

that we just played in the bush all the time and it was quite fascinating because it was Tuart

trees and they were huge. But the understory was just a maze of flowers. So after school,

down to the bush, to play in the bush and on the weekends we had a very good neighbour at

the back, a young man who was probably only three years older than us but he had bush

sense and we’d go off roaming across the Dianella flats on a Saturday and Sunday and

having a look at the Aborigines that lived on the swamps over there. That would have been

in the vicinity of the present Mount Yokine Golf Course. All the way from Dog Swamp right

through there was just a series of swamps, they’ve all been drained now. And that was a

fascinating thing to think of because when I look back now, we were only knee high to a

grasshopper and my mother must have really trusted us to go out. Another thing I can

remember is just after the house was built, this was 1941, we had not much of a front garden

and we used to walk from there to Waldecks Nursery, which is in Karrinyup Road and bring

home plants in the pram.

JJ: So, the nursery was actually there?

CW: The nursery was in Karrinyup Road, yes Waldecks. Then of course we went to Sunday

School in Flinders Street, Mt. Hawthorn which was a Church of England Sunday school St.

Peters. And it’s very hard, we didn’t have holidays. We went to Mandurah twice I think in our

youth and that’s all. But as we grew up, I got married and about that time or just a little bit

before, my brother-in-law bought a beach house out at Whitfords. I moved down to

Manjimup for a couple of years with my husband so we came up to the beach house for

some holidays. One particular one was the 1960 Dwellingup Fires and we left Manjimup and

all the way up on our right the hills were alight, so that would have been about 200

kilometres of fire. We had a thermometer out at the beach house and in those days it was

100º Fahrenheit, even at night. For thirteen days running it was over 100º Fahrenheit.

JJ: That was at the beach?

CW: That was at the beach as well. The beach house was situated...

JJ: Whereabouts were they, it was a shack wasn’t it?

CW: Yes, it was a shack it was a three-bedroom shack. Three bedrooms on one side the

shack and then a long living room and kitchen with the three bedrooms going off it.

JJ: Were they actually on the sand dunes, on the beach?

CW: There was one sand dune between the shack and the beach, you couldn’t see the sea

from the shack unless you stood up and went outside. There was a sand dune right in front

and their particular shack was exactly where Whitfords Avenue now meets West Coast

Highway. If you look at the map right where the stroke is that’s where their shack was and

that was about the middle of the shacks. They’re all very neat and orderly, tidy. All in a row,

not much between each shack, I suppose 1 meter, all had fences so there’s 1 meter to the

fence and then 1 meter. Most people had windmills, some had lighting plants. Cooking was

LP gas or a wood stove. Usually a wood stove from what I can remember, I have been

trying to remember. But I do also remember taking an LP gas bottle in somewhere into

Wanneroo, I think. I didn’t know many people because remember it wasn’t my beach shack.

But I do remember Mr Anticich. Mr Anticich was the person responsible for laying and

maintaining the road from what was called (then) Mullaloo Road or Craigie Drive. I think

Mullaloo Drive went down to the beach shacks at Merrifield Place which ended up to be

Merrifield Place. But before you got there and from memory it’s about where the freeway

now crosses Ocean Reef Road, you branched off and that could be a bit like where the

Craigie intersection is. Or it may have been closer, I think it may have been where the

CALM Woodvale Forrest is and you went southwest for a fair way and then you had to swing

out right and went directly west. And so if I look at a map you’ll see that you probably left

Wanneroo Road at where CALM is and went through CALM and then through Craigie to

about where Whitfords Avenue is now, and then just proceeded west.

JJ: What was there to drive on to the west?

CW: Well Mr. Anticich looked after the road and Mr. Anticich was a limestone worker and in

those days all houses had limestone foundations and from the rubble and Mr. Anticich

owned a limestone pit in Edgewater. From the rubble he’d bring it out and put it down. The

first long weekend each year, all the shack owners had to come and spend the weekend

making the road. And if they were farmers they brought their tractors down or heavy

machinery down, big trucks just to solidify the road. So there was some passing spots, so

where the thick bush was like where Craigie bush is there was a passing spot, a loop in the

road and it was up to the person who was coming in to use that loop which gave the people

coming out a place to pass. I know that just after that spot, I’m looking back now, nearly

forty years. Just after that spot there was a steep rise and I remember my husband bought a

new Chrysler and it was the first time we’d driven automatic and we couldn’t get up a hill in

first gear and I think now that was probably Pinnaroo Hill, living out here cause I’ve tried to

picture it back then until someone came along and said “When you drive on these tracks you

drive in second gear.”

The track was in very good order thanks to Mr. Anticich. His head office was in Main Street

near where Royal Street crosses and there used to be a hall opposite which is now the

Yugoslav Hall. He was Yugoslav born and his wife, Elsie I think it was had two children one

was Wendy the other one was Peter. Wendy married at about the age of twenty-one John

Kagi who’s now an Orthopaedic Specialist and I’m sure that Wendy and Peter could tell you

a lot of stories about the beach shack. A typical day at the beach shack was up at 5 o’clock.

The boys would hop in their little outboard. Go out and catch their…

JJ: The boys weren’t all boys were they?

CW: The husband right, the men and all the men were only fairly young between 20-30

they’d hop in their little outboard motor and go out beyond the Whitfords Reef or Sand Island

they called it and catch the mornings’ breakfast and come home and gut it and that’s how

the morning started. The rest of the day was just walking backwards and forwards to the

beach.

JJ: And you could.

CW: Mmmm, of course we all sported beautiful sun tans didn’t we, now we’re all freckles.

The event of the year was New Year’s Day and they had organized sports and prizes for the

children. I can remember one particular year where, this was probably about 1963, where

they had an outboard motor race and they’d go around fishing buoys and my brother-in-law

John Hutton fell out and every time he surfaced the boat ran over him because it’s going

around and around in circles, so he was lucky. There were no fatalities when you

considered that the children ran wild really on the beach. Although they were very orderly,

they weren’t robust at all and Christmas time whoever wanted to take part in Father

Christmas Day on the beach, their parents put in, I think it was two pounds and somebody

bought a present and Father Christmas gave them a present.

JJ: So how long a time would you stay there for?

CW: Oh, the beach house was opened the first weekend in October and then whoever

wanted to use it and it was available and the family they would come and go until Easter and

then the house was closed up. All of that time the outboard motor and boat was left out on

the beach just nestled in the sand hills, no one ever stole anything out of it or stole it but

when it came to Easter it was rolled into the beach house on lie lows and the door opening

onto the beach opened up and as soon as the beach house was opened in

September/October that was propped up with proper props, proper veranda posts and that

stayed open and then when the boat was brought in after the summer that dropped down

and that sealed the front of the house off.

JJ: So all through summer the house was totally open, unlocked and never any problems?

CW: Never any problems.

JJ: Was that typical of all the other shacks?

CW: Yes, there was never any burglaries or robberies. Everyone was very orderly and well-

mannered there were never any fights even crayfisherman lived out on the beach there.

That’s how it became populated actually. It was a place where the crayfisherman could

moor their boats and a couple of them built shacks and from then on they added to it. Now

that’s about all the information I can remember about Whitfords.

JJ: Do you remember if they owned the land?

CW: No, all they did was pay it was something like, I can’t remember, five pounds a year for

a squatter’s right. And they paid that to the Wanneroo Shire. They had a rubbish tip, which

was northeast of the shacks and everyone took their rubbish to the rubbish tip. And I don’t

know where that would be now. I’d love to know because there’d lot of things buried in the

ground. Yes, I really can’t work out where it was. There was also a special place you could

take the sanitary pan for those. If you had a good water supply well you had a proper flush

system.

JJ: What kind was the flush toilet?

CW: Flush toilet, the dry well type.

JJ: So where did your water come from?

CW: It was pumped out of the ground only about twenty meters from the ocean. It was pure

white water, which means it had a lot of lime in it and so the kettle had to have a marble

boiling in it all the time to keep it clean.

JJ: A marble, a glass marble that kids play with?

CW: Yes and as the water boiled the marble swirled around inside the kettle, and stopped

the lime from accumulating on the inside of the kettle. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been

able to pour out of the spout eventually, the lime was so thick.

JJ: What did it taste like?

CW: Beautiful, brilliant water. No one was ever sick, even though now we realize there

could have possibly been diseases because of the sanitary arrangements but there was

never any sickness out there. But it had to go through sand and it was lime sand, so and

electricity had a power plant in the back shed.

JJ: And most shacks would have had their own power plant?

CW: Yes.

JJ: Did that make a noise?

CW: A little bit of a noise but it was open space and it didn’t reverberate off anything some

people had just the windmill. Power plant windmill.

JJ: So the wind actually made the power?

CW: Yes.

JJ: It’d be a problem on a still day.

CW: It’s never still in Western Australia. And that was just banked back in batteries of

course. Refrigeration was kero fridges or ice blocks and of course when you went out there

you always took bread, milk and ice.

JJ: Enough to last?

CW: Well, everyone was sort of coming and going all the time so there was always plenty of

bread, milk and ice. Sometimes there was so much milk you know you’d have to actually

throw it away. But that was the three requirements. If you ran out of food well you had to go

into Wanneroo, but we very rarely ran out of food.

JJ: So you would take your own meat, did you have a barbeque or how about for all the

fish?

CW: No, we didn’t have barbeques. Looking back we may have occasionally had

barbeques but there was always fish or at Christmas time leftover food from Christmas.

JJ: So you were eating a lot of fish?

CW: Yes and there were a lot of fish out there. And the best person catching fish was Jeff

Anticich and he knew where all the duhie holes were and all that history has gone with him

of course and of course my brother-in-law who died so he would have known where the

duhie holes were too. But I don’t know where they are now all I know is they were before you

got to Sand Island. So, they weren’t that far out and to come in from Wanneroo Road you’d

turn off at Pearsall’s Garage. Now Pearsall’s Garage is no longer what you would think

would be on the corner of Ocean Reef Road but it’s actually on the corner of Villanova

Street. And Villanova Street went through Backshall Place; these are the present day names

and joined Ocean Reef Road. Ocean Reef Road then was called Mullaloo Beach Road.

JJ: This map that we’re looking at here is 1972.

CW: Oh right. And then not long after you left Pearsalls you came to the lowlands of Lake

Joondalup and sometimes couldn’t go over that in the winter because it would be under

water. On the north side of that…

JJ: What would you do when you couldn’t get over?

CW: Well you didn’t go out there in the winter. It wasn’t very often though but that was quite

fascinating because they had cattle obviously still milking at that stage and their fences

would be underwater which we thought was quite amusing. They were having these fences

under water but of course during the summer it was dry so they needed the fences. There

was a little house there, a little limestone house that’s on the north side of what is now called

Ocean Reef Road. Then we travelled up a slight rise, not very high until we turned off.

When we got to the Whitfords gate you had to have a key, not everybody had a key you’d

have to sniff keys out. If you were going and people were expecting you had to arrange to

meet you at a certain time at the gate so they could let you in. Or if you stood at the gate and

wait until someone came by.

JJ: So each shack owner had a key?

CW: That’s right. So that’s why it kept it private.

JJ: Quite a select group then?

CW: Yes.

JJ: What about new people who came along and wanted to put a shack up?

CW: No, there was only a certain number of shacks allowed. I don’t know what decree that

was, I presume it was the Shire of Wanneroo. There were so many shacks there and that

was it. It could have been something to do with Whitfords - old man Mr Whitfords but I never

knew him or met him but I believe he put one of the first shacks up there, waiting for a

development to go through.

JJ: So whose land was it?

CW: It was leased land belonging to Whitfords Broadcasting. They formed a syndicate;

some of the shack holders were part of a syndicate that purchased the lease land to develop

it. And I don’t even know whether Mr Whitford had anything to do with that, it was just a

syndicate. Then one day they got a letter from the Wanneroo Council (and I don’t know

when this was because I haven’t got any paperwork) but it was in the 1960’s my brother in

law received a letter from the Wanneroo Roads Board at that time saying that he had X

amounts of months to take the shack down. Which he did.

JJ: Did everybody else?

CW: A lot of people didn’t want to. He was one of the first that said well we’ve got to go.

My children were very small, at that stage. So it was a wonderful place for me to go

because I could just go out in the morning with the children and then keep them inside out of

the sun. One incident came up that my sister just recently recalled. She was looking after a

niece of mine who was only about three and the niece disappeared and they searched high

and low for her and they found her asleep in the stables, on the southern side of the shacks,

down there there’s a stable, asleep on a bale of hay. She’d walked down six or seven

shacks to the stables.

JJ: So what, the stables were..

CW: Somebody had horses down there, stables. They were just an open fronted shed.

And I don’t know whether they were farmer’s sons or what but they would go for rides in the

sand hills in the daytime and along the beach.

JJ: So you think it was one of the shack owners or somebody else?

CW: No, I think it was one of the shack owners.

JJ: So they brought their horses in every summer?

CW: I presume they did but Wendy Kagi would know all that. But I do remember that

particular incident.

JJ: I didn’t realise that there were stables there. I was thinking that maybe they were there

for when the dairy farmers used to let their cows wander down that way. Well, they did it but

not for long.

CW: Yes but it could have been both, but I do remember the open sided shed. A bit of

corral around it. Someone put a lot of limestone around it to stop the sand because you

know it was very sandy.

JJ: So, what about storms, and things like that, did they affect the shack?

CW: No. They didn’t affect the shacks because the shacks were behind one dune. There

was one particular year and I don’t know what year it was where the water actually came up

to the beginning of the sand dunes. Not over the sand dune, but to the beginning of the sand

dunes. That means it would have come in about twenty meters. But that was a bad storm

and that could have been a cyclone coming through I don’t know. I was out there the day of

the earthquake, Meckering earthquake and I think that was a long weekend. When we left

you just folded all the bed mattresses up on top of their springy beds and all the blankets,

everything was folded up so you couldn’t make rats nests or mouse nests. So everything

was clean. I was sitting on the wire base of the bed reading and all of a sudden the bed

started hopping around the room and I thought it was one of the children under the bed and I

could see through but I still got out and then I’m looking out the window waiting for the tidal

wave to come.

JJ: It would have been scary.

CW: And I’m thinking will the children be safe in the wardrobe? Thinking of all of these

things, you know. If I see it coming will the children be safe in the wardrobe, of course it was

silly, nothing happened. But it was a very bad storm that day, it was hot and cold and hailing

as well, so we were all inside.

JJ: When you went to open the shack up in September/October, was there any damage

that had been done over the winter from storms?

CW: No, the first thing that happened was you could buy insecticide bombs and so someone

would come out the day before and light one of these little bombs and put in there to get rid

of anything. But, no there was never any sign of forced entries or anyone using the toilet or

anything like that. The food was kept in one of those old fashion safes, everything was

handed down from the house and all the furniture was cane.

JJ: Were there any people who stayed there all year?

CW: Some of the crayfisherman did and they were on the North end of the, and I don’t know

their names. But, I don’t know their names. I didn’t think Jack, I’m looking at a map now, and

I didn’t think Jack Anticich lived that far away from where we lived but it could have been

that.

JJ: Is your shack not mentioned there?

CW: No it’s not mentioned there; no I don’t know any of those. Very few of these I don’t

know what year this is. There were two families of Marinkos one was the north end and one

was about well the centre because they were next doors and then two doors up was Jack

Anticich, and there was Munsie (Marilyn Munsie) and I met someone just recently at a

Mindarie tip conference and he bought their shack, I do have his name inside. Then there

were Anticich, Marinko and then Hutton, this was John Hutton. John Hutton bought this

house from his uncle who was Charles Plunkett from Plunkett Homes. They had built a

house at North Beach, a decent house at North Beach. The Langlands were still there.

There was the electrical firm of Dennys. The Denny family was there, the Landells were

there. I thought it was Langlands actually but I could be wrong. Oh there is a Langlands

there, right. Okay I’m looking down here for Landells. That’s all I can remember. As I said

the best thing to do if you’re talking about Whitfords beach shacks is Wendy Kagi because

she’ll know. And I used to meet…

JJ: You mentioned earlier about the road and the direction that the road took, I believe that

you found some evidence in the Craigie bushland?

CW: Well there is a limestone road that goes through the Craigie Bushland and it appears

to be an old road, it’s now covered actually but there is a loop in the road. That is there is a

section, a bypass, that was used (if it’s the same road) that was used for people coming

through the heavily wooded parts, the Tuart Forrest. So if there was a car coming in the

opposite direction, one of you had to go back to the loop road. Now close by to that

particular area that I’m talking about is a split jarrah post with wires in it. So that’s evidence

that there were fences through there anyhow. People don’t think (my husband) that the

limestone road had anything to do with the Whitfords Road; he seems to think it was put

down for the sewerage pipes. But I think it’s the other way around, I think the sewerage

people used that road to put their pipes down because the road was already there. The road

is very, very old, it’s just recently been capped with loose limestone as part of the

rejuvenation or revegetation of the Craigie Bushland but there is a section still there which

was the loop road, you can still see that and its very old and very thick embedded limestone.

So I think that’s where it came and I think it came in probably what was then called the

Mullaloo Road at CALM. Research Station and just travelled down a south-western pattern

until it got to where the present Leisure Centre is and then it turned directly west.

JJ: So you said that Jack Anticich and all the other shack owners maintained the road but

did they do it from the coast all the way to Mullaloo Drive?

CW: Yes, they did. And to the gate, there was a gate.

JJ: Where was the gate?

CW: The gate was where I think it’s the entrance to CALM at Woodvale, that’s from my

memory, there was a gate there and you had to have a beach shack owner’s key to get in.

JJ: Right back there where the gate was?

CW: Yes, it was a long way back from the beach.

JJ: So did you ever come across any livestock that were roaming around?

CW: Oh yes, you had to be careful because I think it was probably Duffy let his cows in

there and...

JJ: And he would have had a key?

CW: When you think about it now, it was just a flimsy arrangement, anyone coming along

could have cut the fence if they wanted to get in, it was just that people didn’t do those sort

of things. There would have been on the eastern side of that bushland ran into Duffy’s so

there was probably no fence down that end anyhow.

JJ: Just over the road maybe.

CW: Yes.

JJ: So did the cows ever come down right to the sheds?

CW: No. There wasn’t that great food right down near the shed it was more up on the hill

where the food was.

JJ: What about other animals?

CW: No. There were no kangaroos no, I don’t recall a fox although I can remember

someone saying, there were snakes and that was one of the things that you had to basically

look for in the morning when you went out to make sure there were no snakes. All the

houses had very low tin fences with a topping on it so you could actually sit on the top of the

fence but it was tin and they had gates so all these little houses were set up in an English

manner really. So the snakes were kept out and sometimes you’d find a snakeskin around

and especially down near the stables but that was no problem because you are brought up

in Western Australia you are used to snakes so we never thought twice about if there were

going to be snakes.

JJ: Gosh, I don’t think I would.

CW: I can tell you another story that sticks in my mind. There is my brother who is about

five years younger than me, he used to love going down to the shack and so on a Friday

night after I’d left work and he’d left school we would meet in town and I think it was the

North Beach Bus Company and we’d catch the bus out to where there was a building which

was called the Dome and that’s about where the present Geneff Park is and that was the

terminus and it was a round road, end road there and then we’d get out of the bus there and

we’d walk all the way up to the beach, in actual fact we would run, we’d see who could get

there first.

JJ: All that way?

CW: Mmmmmm.

JJ: Did you have much luggage?

CW: No because you took your stuff out there just take your shoes and socks off basically,

sometimes we’d goosestep up there but you know you’re only young once aren’t you. I can

hardly get down the drive now.

JJ: You had to make the journey interesting I suppose?

CW: Yes.

JJ: Do you have memories of the Dome; did you ever call into the Dome?

CW: No. I thought it was the surf lifesaving place but someone told me that it wasn’t. All I

can remember was a strange shape building and it was at the end of the road, that’s all I can

remember and of course North Beach was fairly sparsely settled and only had beach houses

out there anyhow.

JJ: So did you ever have any connections to the shacks at Hillarys?

CW: Only passed them, we passed them on our walk up the beach and they were in a

different position, they weren’t separated from the sea by hills like we are. They had their

shacks closer to the beach.

JJ: Those shacks tend to be more boat sheds that people lived in, that’s my impression.

Would you…

CW: Yes, since there could have been a bit of snob value here. I don’t think the Whitfords

people thought the Hillarys people or the Marmion shack people were as good as what they

were. Or even the Merrifield Place people, as they are called Merrifield Place now, Merrifield

Camping Area, that became a bit up market later but to start with it wasn’t and I think there

was a shop there but we never went to that shop because if we wanted anything we would

go, and also another thing with safety, we didn’t go from area to area because it wasn’t

done. People going through Whitfords you didn’t have other people going through other

beach areas.

JJ: Yes, except for when you walked past.

CW: Yes, yes, you kept away from other shacks,that was the unwritten law. But you did

that, you kept, it was their private place and you didn’t go near it.

JJ: What about they used to have film nights, movies up at the caravan park, Mariemont

Park at Mullaloo…did you ever go up to them?

CW: No, no. Of a night time we’d play games. Like Monopoly and Scrabble, oh I don’t know

about the Scrabble now, but definitely Monopoly and cards and that was our way of being

entertained and sitting around and talking and just having a jolly good party.

JJ: I have heard stories of women whose husbands would bring them out to the shack and

then they would leave them there for the week while they went to work. They would maybe

run out of food so they would have to walk up to the caravan park to get food or they just

waited for the weekend.

CW: Mmmmmm.

JJ: But obviously it sounds like you had access to a car the whole time.

CW: That’s right, yes. If anyone had to go to work there was always a car left there. I do

remember one week I was out there without a car, but it didn’t matter because there was

enough food, enough milk, everything to keep going.

JJ: So would you rely on your neighbours for things?

CW: No, no, everyone was self-sufficient. It was like a big country town more than anything,

where everyone was self-sufficient and only went to a neighbour if it was absolutely

necessary but everybody was on good speaking terms.

JJ: So did the kids all play with each other and be in and out of other people’s shacks?

CW: Not like they are these days, they’d meet on the beach and they’d play but they didn’t

go into the shacks and the shacks, because they weren’t too big they’d have the lounge

room was also the sleeping accommodation. Never even thought about that, going into other

people’s shacks. If you wanted a beer, you went outside and had the beer.

JJ: ……….

CW: Yes.

JJ: Ok. So you never had lunch or barbeques or…?

CW: No, not really. But then, I don’t remember anybody else, but then we were a fairly big

group.

JJ: So you would have actually gone up there with your brothers and sisters and their

families so you socialise together anyway.

CW: Yes, even if we didn’t stay overnight it would still be a day out, somewhere to go.

JJ: So you went just for a day?

CW: Yes, mmm, everyone had cars, it might take an hour to get out there and most of us

lived on the north side of the river like Joondanna or Mt Lawley or Wembley so it wasn’t a

long way to come. It seemed a long way I suppose in those days but I think my brother in

law even brought my sister Joan a little VW just so she would be able to come and go as she

pleased. I don’t remember much about Wanneroo, I can only remember Pearsall’s. I know

there was a shop at Wanneroo that we got milk at and they had petrol bowsers out the front

but do you think I can think of what that looked like?

JJ: You were heading to the beach and that was all you were worried about?

CW: Yes and of course looking back in history you always think why didn’t I take notice, you

do now though. I think that’s about all I can say on Whitfords.

JJ: You have mentioned before that you have been through the Craigie Bush obviously

several times and I know that you are associated with the Craigie Bushland in some way,

perhaps you could tell me a little bit about that?

CW: Well we moved to Craigie three years ago so that would be 1998 wouldn’t it? It was

April and we were living in Daglish with my husband and his two boys and we decided that

the house was old, it needed $100,000.00 spent on it and it didn’t suit the purposes that we

wanted. My husband had been made redundant (I’m not allowed to say that word)…..ah…he

no longer had a job and he refuses to accept the redundancy bit anyhow and although we

had quite a good superannuation we’d been married about fourteen years and at that stage

(second marriage for both of us) and all our spare money went into superannuation because

we knew that we had to look after ourselves, so all of a sudden we had a fairly good

superannuation but it wasn’t going to last us until the days we died so we made this decision

that we would sell Daglish and move into an area where we could buy a house that had all

the things we wanted and have some money in the bank. So six months down the drain we

finally found this house. Everyone thinks it’s our folly because its miles too big, it’s got five

bedrooms in it but it’s got a room for his hobbies and it’s got a room for my hobbies and it’s

got three bedrooms that either his children can stay or my children can stay. It can also be

subdivided off that area so that we can always have people come and stay but anyhow that

was his folly.

JJ: So it’s not your folly?

CW: No, and I love it here, wish we had done it ages ago and if you are sitting right where I

am sitting now you will understand why, because coming from Daglish we came from a

house that was built in 1926 and it only had narrow, tall windows and you looked out on next

doors garden shed one side, next doors garage on the other side and so to come here was

great, I couldn’t get over it actually how beautiful it was here. So we’d been here, no, we

hadn’t been here at all, the day we signed the contract (mind you I must say at this stage we

didn’t know the sewerage works was down the road), the day we signed the contract we

went down the other end, I think it’s called Apollo, and I said to my husband what’s that

funny little block there, let’s see what that’s about and we climbed up on the sand hill and we

saw the most magnificent vista of Tuart trees and I’d been a member of the Shenton Park

Bushland and we thought we were pretty good because we had two Tuart trees in twenty

five hectares of land, look at our beautiful Tuart Tree, the tallest tree on the coast. We used

to introduce it on our bush walks and so I said “Janice, eat your heart out, look at this!” and

so each morning we’d go down there for a walk once we shifted in there, each morning we’d

gone down there for a walk. Well it was an absolute disgrace, you couldn’t walk safely, the

cars would be whizzing around there all the time, motor bikes, you weren’t safe. So that was

in April and then in July or August I met Keith Armstrong at a shopping centre and he said

what do you think should happen to Craigie Bushland? and I said it should be fenced and

forgotten Keith, and he said Why? I said well, we love walking down there but we just about

get run over by cars etc. and I said can’t the Council do anything about it?......No….and I’m

not allowed to tell you what he told me, but I’ll tell you. He said if you can get a Friends

group together I’ll back you and I’ll make sure it gets fenced. So we had our first Friends

Group meeting in September 1999 and there were eight or ten of us met here in this house

and we agreed to make a Bush Group, a Friends of Craigie Bushland and the next day I

typed out a management plan, well next four days I typed out a management plan.

Presented it to Keith, Keith didn’t like some of the words, like I called it the Craigie Bushland

he thought it should be the Craigie Open Space and that’s a bit of a shame because if we’d

called it Bushland it would have been protected more than what it is now because Craigie

Open Space included the Leisure Centre. Nevertheless, he wanted that changed and he put

a couple of extra passages in, like some more information on the Titles details, Titles Office

details and so he got it printed up and started distributing it. It was presented to the Council

in November 1999 and when I’m speaking to you now, which is in January 2002, it still hasn’t

been passed and it’s the simplest document. All it says is we wish to look after the bush by

putting a fence around it, by putting paths around, that we can walk on and that fire and

emergency vehicles could use and let the bush regenerate itself.

Keith then did those things immediately; he put a fence around - albeit temporary to start

with to keep the cars out. We didn’t get very much co-operation from the rangers. We would

ring up and say look there’s a motor bike up here practicing going off the road and down

through the scrub. No….couldn’t do anything because they weren’t there to see it but

anyhow once we got the fence up the bush has just gone ahead. Now if you read or are

interested in any of the bush regeneration programs, in every magazine or book you will

read that the Tuart trees are dying and they are not reproducing. Well they are producing

flowers down at Craigie bush land. They are absolutely magnificent specimens. Now I tell

people, I do have bushwalks. I tell people that Tuart trees down there are at least 140 years

old because you can tell by the branches at the top of the tree, how big the branch is, how

old it is. Well I’ve read a book just recently and it was by an expert but some years ago, not a

current expert, who said that they are at least 400 years old and I’m inclined to believe that

because of the size of the branches that are 50 metres from the ground are still very big

branches and that’s the main reason I want to preserve it, is because this is the only patch of

Tuart trees in the Perth metropolitan area. That’s one thing. The second thing is the sand

dune that I am now living on overlaps the coastal plain at this stage so at the end of my

street the sand dune drops down about 30 metres, a complete drop, sheer drop. That’s the

old coast line overlapping the Swan Coastal Plain and that is absolutely fantastic because it

doesn’t do it anywhere else. Everywhere else on the coastline it’s been built on. So Pinnaroo

and Craigie are the only places that you would naturally see 7,000 year old land overlapping

120,000 year old land. Then when you look at it like that you’ve got coastal shrubbery up on

the higher plain that we live on here at Craigie and you move down to the lower plain and

you have a completely different type of tree and vegetation. So we need every tree saved

and that’s what I’m trying to do, save every tree.

JJ: What other flora would be there?

CW: Well, there’s Smoke bush there and there is two kinds of Smoke bush and I remember

Smoke bush quite clearly from my childhood because I had a cousin who was a TAA air

hostess going back, she was one of the first air hostesses after the war in 1945 and this all

became about because of the war. Her brother was a pilot and navigator and she liked flying

etc so she became an air hostess. Whenever a Smoke bush was in bloom she would be

staying at our place because she’d take Smoke bush flowers home because it was such a

novelty or rarity and home is Melbourne. So when I see those Smoke bushes down there

now I think of her but there’s are not many places that they are left now. Now Kangaroo

Paws grow down there now naturally but there are some Cat Paws but everything else in the

Swan Coastal Plain book grows there.

JJ:

CW: Oh there’s quite a few kangaroos, about twelve kangaroos live there. Of course there

are beautiful snakes and plenty of goanna’s. I haven’t seen any, oh birds, of every kind, well

not every kind but a lot of birds and the most amazing thing, I must report this to the Bird

Society, is now the pink and grey galahs are attacking the parakeets and driving them out,

taking their nests and driving them out so we have very few Parakeets down there. What’s

the other name for Parakeets?

JJ: Are the Galahs growing in such numbers that they will tend to do that?

CW: I think they’ve got wise. Their nesting holes are being taken over by these little rainbow

Parakeets and I’ve seen that happen twice in the last two weeks, where the pink and grey

Galahs come along and rob the nest, drive them off and it was quite surprising because

wherever I went on a bush walk to another person’s bush they would all say look at the

parakeets and I said we haven’t got any in our bush and I couldn’t understand why. I thought

it might have been bees, I thought the bees might have kept them down but it’s the pink and

grey Galahs, they’re fighting for their territory. The sand is different. The Quindalup Dune

that we’re on here is beach sand and if you dig down a few metres you come across

pinnacles of limestone rock, and you’re nodding so you must live in this area.

JJ: At Wanneroo.

CW: So not much grows here so if you can get something to grow you want to really

encourage it but when you drop down to the Swan Coastal Plain, which is called the

Karrakatta Sands, for fifteen kilometres its bright yellow sand. That’s a registered fact. For

fifteen kilometres and when you go down to the bush land and you see where the sand has

been exposed, it’s only just half a metre below the surface of the ground, the bright yellow

sand starts. But a lot of things have happened in the years at the Craigie Bushland. Twenty

years or so ago they put in the sewerage works. Once the sewerage works went some sort

of communication to monitor the sewerage or the chlorine coming through the pipes. So

there you had the hole for the pipes and then you had the drain or the trench for the

communications to go through to the different stations and I think that’s how they monitored

the chlorine. They didn’t necessarily go in the same path. The Water Corporation has an

easement through there, a big Z shaped easement through there that connects it to

Pinnaroo. It also has another one that connects it to the Woodvale line. So you’ve got all of

these disturbances happening all the time and once that became disturbed then the cars

thought that they could come in and the rubbish came in. So all the rubbish has gone, the

cars have kept out. The Water Corporation respecting our wishes and keeping to the paths

and so it’s turning out to be a beautiful piece of bush.

JJ: So you mentioned Keith Armstrong. Can you explain about Keith Armstrong?

CW: Right, Keith Armstrong is a Technical Officer or Conservation Officer with the City of

Joondalup.

JJ: So he must have been very supporting?

CW: He has been extremely supportive. He wants the bushland to be kept as it is or kept

and revegetated. I think that we are the envy of all the other Friends Groups around because

he tends to give us extra attention. It seems that way but I don’t look at it like that. All we

needed was a fence and a path and everyone else needed new plants, or other things

doing. We didn’t mind getting down there and cleaning up.

JJ: Who cleaned up the rubbish and who put the plants in?

CW: Well in the beginning we cleaned up the rubbish and even that, I shouldn’t say this on

tape, we had a bit of trouble getting the City of Joondalup to pick up the rubbish. We’d go

through the bush and put it all out the front and then we’d have trouble getting it picked up

but and then days like Clean Up Australia, our first Clean Up Australia day the scouts came

in and they were amazed because they said we haven’t got very much out this year but it

was about a pile three metres wide and three metres high, three metres square. So we got

most of the rubbish out and then Keith started putting the paths down. Well I had been

advertising walks, trying to get people along so that we could save the bushland because

you can’t save the bushland if no one wants to use it and so in one of my little journalistic

efforts in the newspaper, I had stated that we needed a new fence and new paths and

Mission Australia rang and said would you mind if we came to one of your meetings. They

came along and they said oh gee you look as though you are going alright, we want to offer

our services and put up the fence and put up the paths for you. I said well we can’t tell you

what to do; it’s the City of Joondalup land. So three days later they had an appointment with

Keith, he spoke to someone there, probably Dennis Cluning and he said oh well I can’t see

why not if it’s only going to cost us the cost of materials, we’ll do it. Within a couple of weeks

the temporary fence was torn down that he had put up originally and a new fence was put up

which was a nice pine post and rail fence. Then they employed a front end loader, I don’t

know what it’s called, a machine, to bulldoze the way through and straighten up the paths,

except for a very small section that was only about twenty metres, they had to make a new

path. In the meantime as they were doing this they were taking all the old trees down and

putting in the old paths that they didn’t want to use, what we call brushing them. So no one

could use the old paths, only use the new paths. So with the council employing the front end

loader and Mission Australia people working together with them, it didn’t take long to put the

limestone road down. The fences have gates that are locked but they also have access for

wheelchairs and pedestrians. You can get bikes through there but we try not to encourage

bikes because we’re going to get back to the same old thing. You’ll be coming down the path

one day and a bike runs over you, which has happened a couple of times already. Next year,

Keith said with the settling of the path and after a good winter’s rain which we didn’t have,

he’s going to put some concrete topping on so the wheelchairs will be able to get around

quite easily. We have the area well mapped. We have all the little paths marked with a name

and so we all know where we’re talking about and the council are going to put those name

posts up and also kilometres so that if you go for a run or walk around the outside of the

Craigie Bush you’ll know how far you’ve been, or where you’re going or the quickest way

out. Now that’s been put aside but that’s been kept in abeyance too until the Management

Plan has been passed. Now the Management Plan at the moment is under review. So the

City of Joondalup organised an outside study from a place called Ecoplan to come in and

find out what the bush was all about. It had to pay for itself so it had to be economically

sustainable. It had to be recreation so therefore you had to have some sort of recreation. It

couldn’t be cut off and what’s the third thing it had to be, oh, whatever, its 2.6 in the Strategic

Plans and so it was very, very hard for her to do it and include the economic part and so

they’ve put that plan out now to the public, a submission is due at the end of January 2002

for people to submit their ideas on how the bushland should be used. And the council

basically want to enlarge the Leisure Centre.

JJ: Too late for the economic.

CW: Well that’s their idea.

JJ: And what do you mean by enlarge the leisure centre?

CW: Make the leisure centre building larger. So they’ve had to price the floor space.

JJ: To accommodate more activities?

CW: Yes, and also social areas so that the outside (tape 1 cuts off here)

JJ: This is the second tape of the interview with Cherie Wood on the 23 January 2002.

We were talking before about that the council wanted the Craigie Bushland to be

economically viable and they’re planning to do that by extending Craigie Leisure Centre, or

that’s one of the options. Can you just go through again the things that they would like to

have at Craigie Leisure Centre.

CW: I think their whole purpose is to enlarge the gym but they also want to enlarge the

outside recreation area so that they can hold barbeques and evening functions out there but

they haven’t precisely said that but they do want to enlarge the other function centres inside

and I don’t go down there a great deal so I don’t know exactly what sections they want to

enlarge but to make it in their eyes economically viable means they need more people to go

through there. Now whatever the time of day or night they want these extra people to go

through there I don’t know. It seems to be the car park, which was a public car park, I must

say and is now leased out is about half full during the prime times of the day but first thing in

the morning between 5am and 10am there aren’t many cars there and between 5 and 10 at

night there aren’t many cars there so I don’t know why they want to enlarge it because it’s

obviously not running to capacity. But in their lists, they say in that RANS have the right to

spend $1million, 1hundred thousand dollars on it and that’s capital improvements and that’s

$850,000 for the building itself and the other $300,000 is interest. Well, I find that an

extremely difficult thing to come by considering that it’s on Crown Land and it’s a commercial

venture and I can’t see that the Department of Environmental Protection will pass it anyhow.

Everybody knows I was against the leasing of the leisure centres because the leisure

centres were when they started, community controlled and the community worked there and

all of a sudden they put employed people to run them and they weren’t running at a great

profit, they were running at a profit but they needed to have this wonderful bookkeeping

system where they’d drag in all sorts of debts like depreciation which brings your credit

balance down to nil. Anyhow that’s all old hat now, they were leased out and there isn’t

anything we can do about that. It wasn’t a popular decision at the time and it was a decision

made unlawfully I suppose is the word I can use, not illegally, but unlawfully because they

did not consult with the Department of Lands Administration or the Department of

Environmental Protection, or the Companies Office or the Local Government. So they broke

four particular acts to lease that leisure centre out, and they managed to get away with it

because the public is apathetic and one of the directors said that’s what we survive on, the

apathy of ratepayers. But I can’t fight these battles alone. There’s 160,000 stories out there,

there’s 160,000 people out there the Mayor keeps telling us about and only 8 people care.

JJ: You mentioned before that all the paths have names.

CW: Oh we are only naming them after the local; to start with they were Number 1 gate,

Number 2 gate. Now we’ve named them whichever is the most prominent tree, like Banksia

Walk, Banksia Grove. I did have Heartbreak Hill along the freeway, because no matter which

way you walked you had to walk up a hill. That’s just call Freeway Path. But we do have

maps to give out to people.

JJ: Where are those maps available?

CW: Well, there is one map down at the information board down there but I advertise a

bushwalk every Saturday and Sunday at 7.00 o clock or you can come walking in the bush

every morning at 6.00 o’clock for an hour, just a walk.

JJ: But people can go down there anytime they want and walk through it?

CW: Yes.

JJ: You don’t have to have keys to get through the gate.

CW: No, and you find a lot of people walking there at various times but no one comes on

the official walk, I must bore everyone to death, but to start with there were a lot of people

came on the bushwalks, but I continue advertising them because I consider that’s the only

way you are going to keep the profile there.

JJ: How big is the area?

CW: It’s supposed to be 56.7 hectares but that includes the vested area to the Water

Corporation and also includes the vested area to the overhead wires, the power, Western

Power. It also includes the Leisure Centre that 56.7 so when you get down to it all its only

about 45 hectares and they do say that. They say that 56 hectares you can give away such

and such but you can’t, we’ve already given away too much or some. But it’s not a case of

them and us. What makes me disappointed is that we’re not the only things on this earth.

And soon we won’t even be here if we don’t start looking after our bushland and protecting

our climate and I’m not a mad rabid greeny, it’s just that is common sense.

JJ: So you have a formally constructed group do you?

CW: Yes.

JJ: A constitution and that sort…

CW: No we don’t have a constitution. I did look at it and I did advertise that we were going

to have one but there wasn’t much point because at that stage I thought that we might have

to start applying for loan monies to do things but the council put the fence in, put the paths

through and the bush didn’t need any more money spent on it. Keith does have the Work for

the Dole people down there but the main things that we have to do these days is just pick up

the rubbish. Well we’ll get back to that question, so we didn’t incorporate because we didn’t

need to incorporate, we didn’t have to ask for Lotto money or anything like that.

JJ: How many members do you have?

CW: Oh we have floating members of about twenty six people; about eight people come to

a meeting.

JJ: And how often do you have meetings?

CW: We try to have them the first or second Wednesday in the month. But last year we

only had about eight meetings because it’s got to the stage where there’s nothing much to

discuss, it’s all taken care of.

JJ: You mentioned before that you are doing bushwalks, is that something that you’ve done

for yourself or do the council help you with printing maps or advertising?

CW: Oh no, I do that myself. Yes. I like the idea of (although the council do all the work) I

like the idea of doing the bushwalks myself and that means that I don’t have a higher body to

answer to basically. But I’ve done a little bit of public speaking so I’m quite wary of what I say

or I look at what I say and I try and be quite concise and informative. I don’t have many

groups. Parents without Partners comes once a year and they bring a group along of people,

that’s one Sunday outing for them but apart from that it’s just anybody who wants to turn up

at the information board.

JJ: We have eluded a couple of times to the Water Corporation structure that’s there. Does

that have anything to do with the Craigie pong?

CW: Yes it does of course. It’s not as bad as what people say, but I live on the South side of

it and I don’t think I would like to live where the Craigie shops are. Because when I call in

there in the morning at 7 o clock to pick up the paper, it’s usually smelly. Here it was smelly

yesterday and that’s the first time for a long, long time. Now that’s got an end, you can see

the light at the end of the tunnel here because those ponds that are there now are going to

be sunk and covered. At the moment they are big open tanks and the smell is basically an

imbalance that happens, say if children are up in the sand hills and throw rocks into the pond

it mucks up the paddle. The paddle stops, smell comes. Birds fly in there, can’t get out, die,

mucks up the paddle, the pong comes.

Most of the sewerage is treated before it actually gets there which is the bit that amazed me

and so that’s where that sort of phone wire or electronic wire comes in, that releases the

chlorine through the pipes apparently because they just lost one, they just lost an electrode

up here and it was amazing the heat, they had the tops off the sewerage pipe and it was

amazing the heat that was coming out of them, it was like a fire. It wasn’t on fire but it could

very well have been on fire. You no doubt know that they burn off the excess gas here, as

you pass along the freeway going north of a night time you see the huge flame in the sky. So

they do burn off the gases, methane gas yes and that can’t be harnessed really because of

the impurities that are in the gas, it’s not like gas that comes out of the ground, I suppose it

can eventually be, because everyday something new comes out, what couldn’t be done ten

years ago is now being done. It’s something that we’ve all got to live with no matter where

we live, there’s quite a few spots around Perth and it wasn’t until we got here that we found

out.

JJ: You mentioned that you didn’t know but when you found out did it concern you?

CW: Oh it was a particularly bad time when we moved in, in April, we got the shock of our

lives but we said ok well that’s there, it’s been there for twenty years and its buyer beware,

we were caught out, can’t do anything but as I said last night is the first time that it smelt oh

must be six months or eight months here and they are doing all they can. Now they have

promised thirty million dollars. Now I’m not sure that they will have thirty million dollars with

the water restrictions because they are already sixty million dollars down from not being able

to sell water and they, oh another thing that was interesting, when we first decided we would

do something with the bush, we invited the Water Corporation along because they were the

ones who had mucked up the bush. They were amazed that their workers had left such a

mess and hadn’t revegetated and so they promised to revegetate. An unwritten agreement

was made between (I haven’t seen anything in writing) Keith Armstrong and the Directors of

the City of Joondalup that the City of Joondalup would look after the paths and the

revegetation and the Water Corporation would pay for a pine staircase to come up the

fourteen metre hill so that you could walk up and see the view that we can see from the road

up here over the tops but that’s on the Water Corporation land and the Water Corporation

owned the land between Warrandyte Reserve and Stirling Court I think it’s call, the steepest

part of the sand dune. We have received a letter just last week saying that there’s no money

for paths or staircases but that doesn’t affect me because I think that the longer it’s sealed

off from the public the more beautiful it’s going to be for when it is opened up.

JJ: That’s right, give it a chance.

CW: Yes, it’s amazing how quickly all of those motor cycle and motor vehicle tracks have

now just got so many trees just a couple of centimetres high growing there.

JJ: So you haven’t had any problems with fires?

CW: Oh yes, you still get the fire problem. There was a small fire set in early December but

last year the City of Joondalup (Keith in other words) did a blanket weed spray, now people

don’t understand, fires wouldn’t happen in the Australian bush if it wasn’t for European

weeds. The Wild Oats and the South African Veldt grass are susceptible to fires and the

more fires they have the stronger they grow. They didn’t have those when the Aborigines

were here, the natural undergrowth of the vegetation here is the very low growing Grevillea

and very low growing plants that keep the bush floor green all the year round. Once you’ve

got rid of the exotic weeds, like the veldt grass and oats that leaves no competition for the

natural herbage and so when you go to the Craigie bush now you don’t see a dead weed,

you see green undergrowth. It’s a very good example of a restored ecology. A fire did start

there in early December and it burnt about 1/8th of a hectare and that was because it had

nowhere to go. During Xmas, about the 26th and the 28th of December two paths were set on

fire down there and they just burnt out on the road.

JJ: You did mention to me before when you were talking about old Wanneroo, about a

Jacaranda trees around your house that you remember as a child, can you tell me about

that?

CW: My sisters actually stayed at this lady’s house and they were called the Millman family

and they had a poultry farm in their back yard and my older sisters would go out there and

stay (well they stayed a couple of times) during the school holidays and once or twice a day

the eggs were collected and first of all they went through a sizing programme which was just

different holes they rolled into and then they went onto a weighing machine and then each

egg had to be stamped with the weight of the egg and it had also to be coloured. Brown

eggs weren’t as popular as white eggs and then they were crated into big crates much like

they are these days only they just weren’t one dozen or two dozen they might have been six

dozen and they were sent to the Egg Board which was in Wellington Street from what I can

remember. Sometimes if we were out there on the weekends, my father would bring them in

and deliver them on Monday morning so they didn’t have to go in with them. The only thing I

can remember about it is that it was past the ABC Transmitting Station and then we looked

for the Jacaranda trees and there wasn’t much in between, just a couple of pig farms and

poultry farms and that’s about all.

JJ: Dairies, any dairies?

CW: Oh well there were dairies because there were dairies around our place in Joondanna.

There was a dairy, and I don’t know what’s there now but the Gobies Dairy was in Wanneroo

Road about 500 metres up the road that’s North from Dog Swamp and then when they sold

that they sold it to I think it was the Behan Bus Company or it might have been the North

Beach Bus Company who then was taken over by Perth Transport and it became an MTT

Depot and I don’t know whether that’s still there. Now the Gobie boys, my sisters know a lot

about them because they used to let their cattle roam around the lakes and that and of an

afternoon they would come out on their horses to round up the cattle and they’d stop and

often talk to my two elder sisters and we had a brick wall out the front, just a low brick wall

and we’d all say “the boys are out the front on their horse Mum, talking to the girls.

JJ: Dobbers.

CW: Yes, and we would just go out and absolutely amazed. But we actually had horses

ourselves in our own back yard, they were trotters and we had a horse also for the children

to ride because they were huge blocks of land and so horses weren’t any novelty to us or we

weren’t afraid of horses. There was another dairy farm where Okley Road is now and that

was the Duffys and then of course they had down here but I don’t know about them being a

dairy farm down here in Mullaloo Drive. I know they had cattle there but I don’t remember

whether it was dairy farming. Up in Joondanna there was a Short Street, McDonald Street, it

was all limestone roads, limestone block roads and Mr Thompson he was the iceman and

the woodman and he lived next door, no sorry Mr Dushka was the woodman and he had a

son called Carl and I think Carl is Cheryl Edward’s father. I can just remember that now Carl

would have been ten or twelve years older than me I know he was a young man when they

delivered the wood to our place and they would come out here and cut the wood in a very

old Ford T about 1926 Ford T Truck. And then there was the iceman and the iceman was

also the piano-tuner and all these people liked talking about horses and I think my mother

used to spend half the time down the stables talking about horses, about the trots and going

to win on Saturday night and all that sort of thing. That was the iceman and the piano- tuner;

I’m just trying to think who the milkman was. I think it might have been Mr Bonadella who

was the milkman but I can’t remember now, I did remember yesterday but it’s just gone by

now and we always used to say you can know what time the milkman comes because you’d

hear the tap going out the front, he watered milk down. Another recollection was that of

course Dog Swamp was a swamp and had a lot of water in it and it was very reedy but

across the road from the swamp was Osbornes and that was a mustering yard and that’s

where they mustered their cattle to go to market there were big ramps that used to back up

for the trucks and across the road from him was Keanes and I think Denis Keane, was a

well-known identity in Perth and he owned a lot of land there and he adopted two daughters

through the Roman Catholic Church and he donated that land to St Dennis’s on the corner of

Powell Street and Wanneroo Road, you might have all that written down. So on the opposite

corner of Powell Street was Osbornes and after the war they had the resettlement schemes

and so Osborne Street, Millett Street, all of those streets along to Wanneroo Road that’s

between Edinburgh Street and Wanneroo Road, were all servicemen’s homes built by

Plunkett Homes.

JJ: Plunkett?

CW: Mmmm.

JJ: When you said you used to go out on the weekend to the egg farm do you remember

what the road was like? Was it a good road?

CW: It was a good road, by that time they’d taken up the blocks I think and there were no

plank roads anyhow. But then again it was after the war and during the war a lot of roads

were bitumised or done up and I’ve got an idea, and this is only from memory, it’s nothing

I’ve read but I can remember them taking up some of the jarrah logs or jarrah slabs down

near Dog Swamp they were still under the bitumen and probably is still the same but down

there I think they had begun to float and so they had to take them out around the swamp.

JJ: I think they are still under the road down in Wanneroo. So this egg farm you think it’s

where the Jacarandas are?

CW: Yes, that’s the only reasonable thing that I can think of that it would be there.

JJ: And why did the Jacaranda trees make an impression upon you?

CW: Because I hadn’t seen them before. Hadn’t seen Jacaranda trees before and there

were a lot of them, there just wasn’t one or two they had lanes of Jacaranda trees above the

poultry farms.

JJ: On their property?

CW: Yes, on their property, yes they probably would have had six acres of land I would say,

looking back now and apart from the pig farm, well. Luisinis was there, I know because my

dad used to come out and buy two litres of wine about every two weeks and one time I was

allowed to come out with him so I remember Luisinis and all the vineyards.

JJ: Can you tell me about that?

CW: Well that’s all I can remember is that, and it hasn’t changed according to photos I’ve

seen and I haven’t been there but I’m interested to go and have a look at that because I was

actually a guide at Tranby and I heard all about the Wanneroo Aboriginal Mission and I

believe Luisini is part of the original Aboriginal Mission House. So I’d like to go and have a

look at that and when I was a guide, which was probably 18 months to two years, no one

could actually tell me where it was, it’s taken me all this time to find out where the Aboriginal

Mission was. So I do want to go and revisit. I can remember all of that area around there,

that’s the west side of Wanneroo Road going down to a series of lakes, because most of that

was vineyards.

JJ: It would have been a fairly impressive sight I would imagine?

CW: Oh Yes.

JJ: Did they go up to where Wangara is? Did they cross the road and go up there?

CW: No, that was always pretty thick bush until you got to the pine forest. Back further

along Landsdale Road there were a few market, there were market gardens everywhere you

know and they were all in the low lying places and they all had bores and water going most

of the time. Other interesting people we used to visit quite often, was the Schultz family but

that was in North Beach on North Beach Road and that was Balcatta. My father was a

modeller or a moulder or a plasterer and he had a firm of his own and he used to put plaster

ceilings in and he got to know a lot of these Yugoslavs because they were builders and our

house in Joondanna was built by Goodrich I don’t know if you ever heard of him and his

house is remarkable because they all have natural stone panelling so out the front will be

rendered and then there will be a great diamond shape or a rectangle of granite and

whatever set in with black mortar and our lounge room had a huge fireplace in wire cut

bricks with thick panels of granite in it and that was Goodrich homes and we used to go to

the Goodrich family occasionally along North Beach Road and then there was the Loncars.

The Loncars had a bit of a bad name because they were inclined to be socialists. Yugoslavs

come in with that and they weren’t very popular, even now they’re not very popular because

of their social leanings and those houses are still there, they are just about opposite the

shopping centre along that North Beach Road and they had market gardens. Whenever we

went to these places it was a semi social call, like dad would be doing something but it would

also be catching up with his friends and he did seem to have a lot of Yugoslav friends.

JJ: What was his brother’s name?

CW: James Alfred Scrimenger. His company was actually called Cowans and he started up

a business here and then Mr Cowan was killed in a road accident so my father carried on

again but in the meantime I think what happened, Plunketts bought out the deceased estate

of Cowans and eventually my father got all the Plunkett work and so that was no problem but

eventually they had the final say because they were the biggest shareholders and when my

father retired he didn’t get any money. But talking of the Yugoslav people my father was very

friendly with the Yugoslavs and we would go out there and have afternoon tea, usually

Devonshire Teas and I don’t know what they must have thought when Dad came because

he would have his car full of kids but we never ever left there without huge boxes or bags,

gummy sacks of carrots or radishes or spinach or rhubarb or whatever the current crop was.

They were just the most generous people and there was another family that lived along

North Beach Road that were called Schultz, like going on TV now and actually he looks like

them. I know he is no relative but he does look so much like that family because I think the

ABC announcer Schultz, he comes from South Australia or Victoria or something but he just

looks so much like his family it’s incredible, even the style of glasses he wears it seems. We

used to go to their place and they specialised in carrots and they lived next door to a family

called Stevens and Stevens was the first market garden here to concentrate on overseas

exports and he just grew for the overseas markets which was quite astounding for the 1940’s

considering there was no refrigeration etc. but he had beautiful produce and looking back

now I think the Schultz family probably grew for him as well but they had the most beautiful

carrots.

JJ: So his name was Stevens, that’s an English name one would think.

CW: Yes. Well Schultz were German. I think Mr Schultz, I don’t remember him very much,

only the mother and the sons and daughters. I’ve never looked it up but there is a pioneering

family here called Arbuckle and it’s got the Arbuckle standing outside the house and that’s

how I remember the Schultz’s house, it was limestone with the brick around the outsides and

I often think that perhaps they bought that house but it was interesting going there because

they backed onto Gwelup Lake. I think it would have been or a lake which isn’t there

anymore, it’s all been in-filled for the freeway, because, they grew according to the lake. So

sometimes you’d go down to collect the vegetables and you could see that the water had

been there and it was slowly decreasing. So they sowed the vegetables as the water

receded.

JJ: They did have irrigation?

CW: They did have but they relied also, they would have eventually because it got so dry in

the summer, but they relied on the lake for their sowing season. So they are just a couple of

people that we met. I think possibly, if I really concentrated we probably knew every family

between our house and Wanneroo.

JJ: Why is that?

CW: Everybody knew everybody. Perth was so small; they probably only had about 400,000

people in Perth when I was born and my mother knew everybody. You’d go to town and

she’d know everybody.

JJ: So do you think you knew everybody along that stretch because you travelled it so often

perhaps?

CW: Yes, travelled it and my father was very good and he’d say “oh so and so lives there”

or whatever and a lot of weekends especially after the war and he was very busy he was

working seven days a week, he would go out to the new housing estates and measure up

the rooms so the next day they could come out with the plaster board. So I can still tell you

what a ten by ten room looks like. And we were no trouble, he just used to pile us in the car

and we’d go out. Perhaps some days we might be his scribe and just write down the

measurements while he was, but he didn’t have to have a rule, he would just look in and just

say such and such will fit this room. And also when I go into the houses like in Daglish and

Nedlands and I see his beautiful ceilings, all the art work he put into them that people now

treasure, those models were in our garage.

JJ: So he had a mould? He would make a mould himself?

CW: Out of Rossam, he’d model it and then and he would press them out or pour them out

of that.

JJ: So he must have been a bit of an artist?

CW: Oh yes, he did some beautiful artwork. Like modelling, statues of ladies and things like

that, animals out of plaster. My son also does that. He didn’t know him.

JJ: Runs in the family then, without knowing?

CW: Without knowing.

JJ: What about your mother, what was her name?

CW: Mum was a homebody, her name was Craig and both my parents were born in

Australia but my grandmother on my mother’s side was born in Maryborough, a Victorian

Goldfields town in 1873 and my mother was born also in Maryborough in 1905. The

interesting thing is, over in the hospital in Maryborough and every time someone in that

family has been admitted to hospital it’s got, it will just say, my grandmother (Craig, Sophie

Agnes), how old, then it’s got whether she was a free person or a bonded person, if she was

born in Australia, that’s if she wasn’t born in Australia and which ship she came out on. If she

was born in Australia and she put born in Australia she didn’t have to put bonded or free.

And that’s incredible to think that that’s only that short time away. So every time some

person in the family was admitted it was in the hospital book so you can actually trace the

family through the hospital books there and my father was born in Ararat and his parents

were Scots and I haven’t really done much research on that. I did a little bit on mine but only

in Australia, my mother’s side, only in Australia. My grandmother and grandfather came to

Western Australia in 1898 and they didn’t like it and that’s my mother’s mother and father

and they went back but they came over here as the family so their brothers and sisters, like

they were the Craigs and the Bartletts, they stayed, they were the only couple that went

back.

JJ: So they would have come for the Gold Rush do you think?

CW: Yes, they were all gold miners. Yes and her husband’s brothers were quite successful

gold miners and they were actually gold mining up in the Kalgoorlie goldfields, long before

there was an official strike. As a matter of fact, one of the brothers died up there and he is

recorded in the Worlds Loneliest Graves, in your book.

JJ: Well, thank you very much, it’s been fascinating, I could sit here forever, I’ve learnt so

many things today, so thank you for the interview.

CW: Thank you.

End of recording

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