LIKE thousands of people who grew up in Merbein, Deon and Summer Blaby have fond memories of lunches and recess gossip shared with young friends, and the company of a few spiders, beneath the enormous sun shelters at the town’s now long-gone primary school.
With a bit of help from the Merbein District Historical Society, their father, well-known Birdwoodton builder Grahame Blaby, and some other proud local people, they will be able to do that again, although hopefully without the spiders.
The senior Mr Blaby, who heads project management firm CPM, is donating his time and skills to reconstruct one of the shelter sheds – which was dismantled and stored by the historical society volunteers after the school was closed and classes moved to town’s current P-10 college – at what’s being informally called “Pump Hill Place”, a gradually developing public space at Chaffey Park.
Deon, 44, and Summer, 42, will probably also be involved in some way, as they work with their father in a family business historically linked to the shelter.
Harry Blaby, Grahame’s grandfather, was one of the builders who helped erect the shelter at the school in 1927.
“My grandfather was a builder in this area, dad was a builder in this area … I worked with dad and I still remember getting materials from Smith’s hardware store in Merbein,” Grahame said, adding a fond memory of his times with mates in his youth.
“We played football in Commercial Street outside the Roxy,” he said.
Grahame will be assisted in the reconstruction by other local people such as plumber Craig Chislett, whose family operated a soft-drink company in the town, and all volunteers are right behind the historical society’s aim to develop a park specifically devoted to Merbein’s irrigation history. It already includes a historic pump and a section of irrigation channel as an example of the way crops were watered before pipelining.
“Most of us forget the open channels and that sort of thing, and that’s what this is all about,” Grahame said.
“There’s a little bit of history there between us all, so we just wanted to get involved in it.”
Both his children have fond memories of their lunchtimes under the school shelter, although when Summer mentioned the hunstman spiders that lurked beneath the benches, Deon joked that “that’s where I got my phobia”.
“It was good, though, getting together with all your mates,” he said.
“You don’t get that sort of stuff anymore. You get an airconditioned room and a desk.”
Summer said she thought that having a place to showcase irrigation history would be great.
“We (modern generations) have no idea, really, what it used to be like,” she said.
The historical society hoped to have the shelter erected this year, pending finalisation of funding from Mildura Rural City Council.
President Bernadette Wells said all permissions were in place and the park plan was coming together. The shelter would be a landmark, and would give locals and visitors a place to appreciate other historical items being installed in the area, most of which would relate to irrigation.
“It will be the only place in the district where you can really look at that (irrigation) history and the shelter shed will be the centrepiece and that will really be an attraction,” she said.
