Memoirs. Memoirs. Memoirs. Memoirs. Memoirs. Memoirs. Memoirs. Memoirs. Memoirs.
An anecdotal collection of stories by A. E. Coate about the people and places in Katanning over his lifetime.
LITTLE SHOPS AND BIG PEOPLE
By A.E. COATE
It was Mr. A.G. Hobbs of Hobbs Bakery in Daping Street, and at one time Chairman of Katanning Flour Mills Ltd., who said ” I’d rather be a big man in a little town than a little man in a big town”. Arthur Hobbs was the owner/producer of “Balloon Brand” self-raising flour with the caption “Always Risin”. It was made from “Katanning Flour Mills Ltd.” flour “Premier Brand”.
Mr. Hobbs also made “Melray Brand” for that firm and a plain packaged S.R. flour for the Co-Op. And all from the same bin at the same time. It was amusing therefor to hear such comments from the various customers patronising Rogers Ltd. who sold “Melray”, Richardson & Co. who sold “Balloon Brand” and the B.K.W. Co-Op. who sold plain brand S.R. flour. “Oh, I prefer “Balloon Brand ” or ” I prefer “Melray Brand” or “I’m sure the plain packaged brand is the best of them all “. Had they but known. But then, the customer is always right.
I used to stencil “Balloon Brand ” self-raising flour with the “Always Rising ” motto onto thousands of bags over the years, for that was part of my job. We used to sell it to our customers in 150 lb, 50 lb and 25 lb bags, for in those days it was pounds in weight not kilograms as today. Likewise, on the weighbridge, it was tons, hundred weights, quarters and pounds. When the new weights came into force, we had to get used to using them in tonnes.
There were so many things that changed over the course of the years. One day we would find ourselves loading flour, the next concrete pipes at the Hume Pipe Co. yard down where the S.E.C. is located today. The horse stables were by the Police Station fence a little to the right.
Yes, there were more little shops down Clive Street than can be remembered here, but to name a few: The 1920’s-1930’s decades really housed big hearted men and women behind their doors. Mildred and Mavis Cornelius ran “Westwood” Hostel. When my first wife and I came back from Perth after our marriage at Easter 1935, on the 3 a.m. train, we stayed a few days and nights at “Westwood” while waiting for house furniture to arrive. Mildred and Mavis fixed our bed so nicely by short-sheeting it and loading it with confetti. We met one of their South Australian relatives as “Miss Australia”, Lisa Cornelius by name, in Albany a couple of years ago.
There was Fred Mitter’ s newsagency and hairdresser’s salon, A.G. Bunes and Joe Berger’ s Shoe shops, Alf Tree’s green-grocery and confectioners shop, Charlie Gunter’ s butcher shop, Jack Wanke’s grocery, manchester and musical shop, Alex Meldrum’s General Store, Rogers Ltd., and W.P. Bird Tailor and Mercer – “No Fit No Pay” his motto.
Alf Somas fish and chip shop near Taylor/Clive Streets. I celebrated my 21st birthday at Alf Somas shop at midnight on 31st December, 1929 while trains and Flour Mill whistles blew the old year out and welcomed in the new. I bought a 9 carat gold tie pin from W.P. Bird for l/6d. I still have it and use it often.
There were chemist and doctor’s surgeries and further down by Alf Dennis, the baker, was Frank Harris bootmaker and repairer. There were bakers, butchers and milkmen who delivered at the door, all with an obliging smile or word. Grocers called for orders and delivered same day service. Post Office delivered mail two services a day, five days a week and one delivery on Saturday. How ‘s that for service?
Opposite the Post Office, Cecil and Linda Worsley ran the “Trocadero” restaurant and while for much of the time Cecil worked as a painter with my wife’s father, Andrew Jamieson and her uncle Bert Charlton, Linda worked full-time running the restaurant shop and dining room to perfection.
Often together with some of my friends in those days, such as Dick Applin, Carrie Abbott, Clara Holm, Wally Fleay and later my fiancée, Ethelwyn Hancey, we would slip into the “Trocadero” or Gordon and Mabel Beeck’ s little shop where the Commonwealth Bank is, part then taken up with Paul Beeck’s saddlery shop, and enjoy a hot cup of tea or coffee with pie or sandwich for about l/6d. or 2/-.
At Gordon and Mabel’ s shop we would listen to the test cricket when on, coming relayed from England. As Don Bradman and the team heaped up runs for Australia, and while not as today’s TV presentations, nevertheless it was “something out of the box ” just to be able to hear the play, even if the runs were simulated by the tapping of a pencil on the desk of the relay station. Yes, they played the ball, and cricket then, not the gate.
Linda Worsley (nee Batt) used Katanning Flour Mills Ltd. “Premier” and “Swan” flour in her spotlessly clean kitchen, and when the bags were brought back to the Mill store for credit, Bill Rafferty would always remark “Here’s Linda’s bags Bert, you can eat your dinner off them, they are that clean”. Yes, you could do just that. For clean picked out was the dust and flour particles. We could not say that of so many other thousands of returned flour bags for credit from bakeries and restaurants all over Western Australia; some of the dirtiest from Perth. Cecil and Linda retired to Perth in later years. I met them once again in St. George’ s Terrace. That was to be my last word with them. Cecil died not long after and Linda died on 26/11/1982 aged 89 years, ten years to the day after my mother passed away in Bunbury aged 92 years.
Likewise, Gordon and Mabel Beeck have long since passed on, but the happy memories associated with these people continue to burn bright through the years. The pies that they cooked and served with steaming hot coffee or tea in their little restaurants, the aroma lingers on. In truth “never in the history of man were so few shillings spent in obtaining so much goodwill towards so many people in their generation”. Indeed, as C.J. Dennis would say, “I dips my lid to them”.
At the corner of Clive Street and Daping Street, Barry Cass and his two sisters operated a manchester and knick knacks store. If you wanted something from the previous century like Baird’s advertisement of yesteryear, “you will probably find it at Cass’s store”. I knew Barry quite well, he used to attend the Baptist Church and did much street preaching in Clive Street where the local lads and lassies would fill his hat on the pavement with bottle tops, stones and anything else handy to them. Barry, more than once, was hauled away to the city lock-up in Perth for doing the same as in Katanning. He claimed to be able to read his Bible in seven languages, I and once gave me the “tongue lashing” of my life for not saying what I should have and for saying what I should not at a church service during the first part of 1930.
Back at the Flour Mill there was Arthur Newton. He operated the silos from “down under to up top”. Arthur lived out along the Ranford Road near to the junction of Warren Road and opposite the Rifle Range. It was a familiar sight to see him coming into Katanning in his horse drawn cart and with little black dog to commence work at 7.30 a.m.
A choke in the elevators, either at silos or mill end of the wheat band, would often mean hard back-aching work to put the system right again. And the wheat conveyors extended across and below railway line at silos to the big shed opposite. Men had been chased out of this area in days of old by big rats. Spillage of wheat always meant more work for the silo operator.
Claude (Dooley) Gorman Sen. likewise operated the silos for many years, running up the 90 to 100 feet of ladders or stairways and like the “Grand old Duke of York” down again into the basement areas. Dooley Gorman’s son, Claude Augustus (Dooley) Gorman Jun. fought with the 2/28th Battalion A.I.F. in World War 2 and was one of the “Rats of Tobruk“. He died at Rockingham, W.A. in July, 1985.
“Pig, woman and bag of wheat day” in that order heralded the monthly pig sales when in the years of the great economic depression of the 1930’s some hard-up farmers would send their women folk into the Mill with a pig for the saleyard and a bag of wheat for gristing into flour, bran, pollard. Often the wheat would be on the front seat beside the lady of the farm and the pig tied down in the back seat. But such was the times in which they lived and the stringency of their need. It was W.J. Cobb who, as Manager during those years, introduced the gristing scheme whereby a farmer would bring in wheat in various quantities as required, one to fifty or more bags, and receive an equal amount of flour, bran, pollard in return after payment of small gristing charge, or he could have it deducted from the proceeds.
I remember Mrs. Mills, a certified nurse, coming in from Nyabing during the 1930’s before I was married to Ethelwyn Hancey in 1935. She had to pick up a load of produce for farm. She also had to deliver poultry to railway for sending to market. Mrs. Mills backed her truck, unnoticed at the time, a little too far onto the flour shed ramp with the result that, when it was loaded, the weight of the stuff set the tail hard on the ramp. Mrs. Mills turned to me and said, “You’ll have to unload it, I can’t pull this off “. I didn’t fancy double trouble but, looking up, I spied a crate of turkeys on top of the cab. “Sixpence to a turkey” I cried, “it will come off”. Mrs. Mills got into the cab and as she started the engine, I picked up a lever used for inching trucks on the rails and applied it to the tail of the truck. It slid off effortlessly. Mrs. Mills got out a turkey and brought it to me. “No” I protested, “That was only in fun I said that”. “Take it” she commanded ” If you had lost, I would have asked for your 6d.” And I didn’t have sixpence on me.
Well, that Christmas we had turkey at home, the first in Katanning since we came here to live. We ate it with much appreciation to the very generous spirit of Mrs. Mills. Fifty years later, in December, 1980, Mrs. Mills died in Perth aged 95 years. She was so big hearted, and a pioneer.