100 years ago
RED CLIFFS: At present there is no stock ranger in the Red Cliffs settlement – there is a pound-keeper, but his duties only begin when owner-less or unclaimed animals are brought into the pound as a block holder had do at an inconvenient time when he found a heifer had wandered into his planted block. It is proposed to open four railway stations on the Red Cliffs to Varley’s Tank line within the area of subdivision. Benetook will be 12 miles from Red Cliffs, Tarparoo 18 miles, Merinee 24 miles and Karawinna 30 miles from the junction of the Melbourne rail line. The Red Cliffs Progress Association asked Mr J Scouler when he was in Melbourne to make enquiries to the Chief Officer of the Country Fire Brigade as to the proposed Red Cliffs Fire Station. A municipal valuation of £2700 was not sufficient to allow the board’s taking over of the proposed Red Cliff’s Fire Brigade as the Mildura Shire pays £45/7/8 yearly on a valuation of £4400. A volunteer of at least 15 men would need to be formed.
LAND: Allotments –136 of them – have been surveyed and are open for selection 8½ miles from Merbein, 10 miles from the Red Cliffs railway station, the same from Yatpool station and half a mile from Carwarp. Reposing gracefully on a stick in the Workingman’s Club there is an extraordinary freak potato: a head with a nose, one ear, the eyes and mouth extreme life-like. It was brought in by a Mildura member.
ITEMS: Master Geoff Hammerton, son of Mr Horace Hammerton, and a Mildura Boy Scouts member, has at his home in Lemon Avenue an experimental wireless telegraph station that he’s duly licensed to carry out work on, regularly receiving messages from Rockhampton, Adelaide, Sydney and from ships in the Straits. He recently received an SOS call from Iron Prince in trouble at Gabo Island and heard reply calls to the ship. He cannot divulge current news as his licence was granted to further his interests in the Boy Scouts. Scouts or friends can call in to see his apparatus any evening before 9.30pm.
75 years ago
GOVERNMENT: The Minister for Immigration, Mr Calwell, has recommended to the British authorities a plan for adoption by Australian families of British child migrants. Those wishing to adopt would be thoroughly investigated as to be fit and proper in all respects and in the best interests of the child. Abolition of clothes and meat rationing simultaneously with the handing over of price control to the states in three months’ time will be recommended by federal Cabinet on June 16. Subsidies on whole milk, potatoes and wool for home consumption to cease payment. War widows should receive a pension equivalent to the base wage and an allowance of 18/- per week for each child up to the age of 18 years. It was pointed out that the pension £2/10 given in World War I was 90 per cent of the basic wage; today the pension of £3/15 was less than half our basic wage. Surburban trains, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with a van attached that is level with a platform was asked for so mothers can put their prams and pushers into it – just an old luggage van would do.
NEWS: The Mildura Police are seeking the owner of a small red car which was signed over to them as lost property. They believe the owner is too small to hold a driver’s licence. It is a toy Cyclops car. The Alvis is a fine British car with a record of which any manufacturer could be proud. The first was built 28 years ago. Production was stopped during the war while machinery and parts were built to assist the defence of the country. To every two houses in Australia there is one motor vehicle in service, according to last years’ census – a high number compared to most countries. There are 1,995,726 dwellings in the Commonwealth. Current registrations exceed 934,000 including commercial vehicles; 92,000 motorcycles registered. The Minister of Water Supply will confer with the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission to consider the construction of Lock 12 upstream from Mildura. Iraak, Colignan and Nangiloc Progress Association said there were already 45 market gardeners pumping their own water from the area. An area had already been surveyed at Wickett’s homestead where it could be constructed.
Of a record 42,789 vacant jobs on the registers of the Commonwealth Employment Service in Victoria, 127 vacancies – 92 males and 32 females, are in Mildura. Between 25,000 and 30,000 pairs of rabbit, most of them trapped in NSW, pass through Mildura each week. Last year 358 people were killed and 7170 others injured in road accidents, said the National Road Safety Council secretary on a visit to Mildura. This year £10,600 of the federal grant will be spent in Victoria. Electricity extensions to Koorlong residents may be completed in 12 months. The cost is guaranteed that no charge will be made to Koorlong consumers. A new kind of hot air blower to protect vines and fruit trees from frost is being used in England, according to information airmailed to Sunraysia Daily. It is powered by a 30hp engine, with a large funnel with louvres at the side to expel the hot air. The Country Women’s Association now has 23,774 members. This is an increase of nearly 400 over last year’s figures. There are 68 new branches – senior branches now 502 and many new young sets.
50 years ago
CAMPERS: Farmers near Wickett’s Point, on the river about 23 miles from Mildura, are standing by with their tractors in case a party of five Mildura Technical School teachers and 17 boy and 13 girl students need rescuing. They have been camping as part of outdoor studies. They managed to get into the spot but it has rained ever since. Access to the spot is down a steep hill and then across clay flats.
ITEMS: Ward One of Mildura Base Hospital, which was gutted, should be operational again within 10 days. Apart from the patients, hospital records were removed to safety. Once the muck has been removed, workmen will remove all the charred rafters and replace them. The Fire Brigade had two units and 20 firemen at the scene. Sometimes you might prefer not to carry private articles or goods you have purchased elsewhere when you enter a supermarket so Woolworths’ new store has a set of shopper-lockers conveniently situated at the entrance of the store for customers’ use. You keep a special key in your purse and open the locker for your goods when you leave. Creation of a new form of administration for the whole of the Murray Valley has to come if Sunraysia is to have any rapid development. Sunraysia is divided by the Murray River artery which provides its existence. It is sectionised in its government and interests. With governments planning the development of the Albury-Wodonga complex comes an opportunity to have some different form of control for the whole of the Murray to South Australia.
LASS: A Merbein girl made Guiding history when Susan Bennett, 16, was presented with the first Queen’s Guide badge in Merbein. A candle-light ceremony was held when all the girls lit candles in the shape of a crown representing the Queen’s Guiding badge symbol. Guests were then shown the number of badges Susan had to obtain before she became eligible for the Queen’s Badge.
25 years ago
PEOPLE: An exhibition of over 40 photographs depicting the plight of East Timor over the past 50 years is on show at Mildura. It features shots taken by a number of Australians since World War II titled Betrayed not beaten. Children from the Kathleen Kelly pre-school had their “first run-in with the law”. Having made their own colorful cars from cardboard, the kids hit the road for the Mildura Police Station to be presented with a “roadworthy” certificate by Constable Deckert. Leading street kids’ welfare Open Family has issued a warning to rural kids and teenagers to stay in their country home towns rather than face an uncertain future in the city. These kids come in search of the bright lights only to fine someone’s switched off the lights and face a dim future. Professional fishermen based in Sunraysia could have a market for more than 500 tonnes of quality European carp – the Gippsland entrepreneur K&C Bell said they were processing carp for human consumption and had already developed good markets. A member of the Merbein Fire Brigade and a legend of Merbein Football Club, playing for it for 17 years between the wars, Mr A ‘Ponty’ Tyers passed away on June 8 in his 99th year.
FIRMS: Mildura contractor Garraway Earthmoving is nearing the end of a four-month contract that will see 57,000 cubic metres of soil excavated to form a 260-megalitre Benetook water storage for First Mildura Irrigation Trust. A shortfall of trained medical staff in country areas has one lesser aspect: a dramatic shortage of dentists. Mr D Tankard said they were trying very hard to get dentists of an impeccable standard. Weirs Dairy, Mildura, has received a major boost with an extra 20,000 litres of Sandhurst farms’ milk delivered each week following the two Woolworths restocking of the popular milk brand. Fisher’s Supermarkets is a truly local company, with a history from 1911 when the first grocery store was established at the top of Pump Hill, Merbein, by Eugene Fisher. The store was relocated about a year later; Eugene and Elizabeth and eight children lived in the tent at the rear. Mr Alan Fisher was the only member to stay and continue the business and establish branches in Dareton 1935, Wentworth 1949 and Robinvale in 1950. The only son in the third generation, Bill, took over the reins from his dad and opened three more stores, Deakin Avenue in 1961, Red Cliffs in 1984 and Lime Avenue in 1993. Bill’s son Alan is now running the supermarkets.
COLUMN 10: Wall Street executive A Greenberg has decided to give the gift of love. He is donating US$1 million ($1.7 million) to a New York hospital to pay for Viagra for impotent men who can’t afford it, saying it will give pleasure to a lot of people. Long hair and “exotic” clothes made Elvis Presley, King of Rock, unsuitable to meet late FBI director Edgar Hoover, according to the star’s once-secret 663-page file, one of the most popular files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s online reading room. The 1970s memo warns that Presley’s “gyrations” while performing were the subject of considerable criticism by the public and comments in the press. It also says his hair is nearly down to his shoulders and he wears all sorts of exotic dress. Hoover himself also donned the odd exotic dress.
