Peeps in the Past July 9 to July 15
100 years ago
VINES: This year a goodly number of blocks at Red Cliffs have come to the trellising stage and others being planted up. Very shortly Mr AV Lyon, scientist to the Mildura Vineyards Protection Board, is to lecture on the planting and training of vines, especially one-year-old plants. There is no longer doubt of the popularity of the rooting as the cutting experience at Birdwoodton, Merbein West and Red Cliffs has been such that the blocker who can secure sufficiency of rootlings will plant them in preference to cuttings.
MERBEIN: The officials of the Merbein Fire Brigade accepted the tender of Mr CM Smith, contractor of Merbein, for the erection of a station house to serve as a housing for the hose-reel and a meeting place for members. An alarm bell was erected on a temporary structure of pine posts. Members of the Merbein ANA branch entered for a ping pong tournament — after two hours Mr C Woodham was declared winner of the trophy. Constable W Smith, of Merbein Police, reported that Agnes Eastwood, who was described as a 12-year-old wearing a green dress, black overalls, black stockings and white shoes, had been reported missing last Friday. She was found in a camp along the riverbank with some friends on Wednesday night.
NOTED: A meeting was called for the Red Cliffs Fruit Growers Association at Diggerland for the distribution of the monthly allowance of chaff. On all sides condemnation was heard — a return to the former method of obtaining chaff does not appeal to any of the settlers — some settlers have had to travel three to four miles over bad roads to find they cannot obtain the chaff they need. Due to the protracted spell of excessively rainy weather the road in front of the railway station is in a very bad state. With the large volume of traffic, the railway workers have taken it into their own hands and put down a strip of coke and ashes wide enough to allow several persons to pass on it.
75 years ago
LOCAL ITEMS: Perhaps a bicycle path might be included in city council plans for Deakin Avenue to accommodate the large number of high school students who would have much use for it going home for lunch. The Mildura Motorcycle Club will celebrate its first birthday by a dinner to be held in the Capitol Lounge on July 27. The first open scramble is to be held by the ACV on August 29. More than twice the number of new motor vehicles were registered in Victoria last month compared to in June last year — there were 309 motorcycles registered last month. An appeal for a building suitable for a small Scout hall is being made by the Buronga Scout Troop. A program of 28 events has been arranged for the Sunraysia County Boy Scout Rally on September 18. Nearly 6000 citizens of Mildura, Irymple, Red Cliffs and Merbein have signed petitions favouring the establishment of community hotels in Sunraysia. Arrangements have been made for the annual Diggers’ Ball to be held in the Theatre Royal Merbein on July 22 under the auspices of the Merbein RSL. In contradiction to what Sunraysia Daily was officially told, verandah lights in the Mildura shopping area are permitted. Wentworth Council is considering that similar restrictions will be made in Wentworth. Hockey enthusiasts, including men at Mildura’s Melbourne University, are enquiring into the possibility of forming a hockey association here.
NEWS: A gas turbine suitable for powering a motor car was exhibited at the British Industries Fair. British manufacturers have co-operated in the formation of the British Racing Research Trust to sponsor the building of a British 1½-litre racing team. The RAAF had discovered a Japanese radio station working within 20 miles of Darwin before the first Darwin air raid, said Group Captain G Packer, former RAAF director of intelligence. The first indication of this was a statement made on Saturday by a Darwin Aboriginal. Doctor S Campbell, of Singapore Medical Service, has found 81 people in the Jahor jungle who fled from the Japanese in 1942 and did not know the war was over — they asked to see a White man before they would believe him, wore no clothes, had lived on yams, bananas and tapioca, made their own medicine from jungle plants and were happy.
OUTBACK: The final chapter in the colourful history of Arumpo, former showpiece of the Pooncarie district, was written on July 14 when hundreds of items of its equipment were sold by auction — about 80 cars and trucks took nearly 400 people over 62 miles to the station. Some items were sold for a shilling, others for considerable sums. A large black Persian cat taken from its home at Arumpo Station a month ago to Mossgiel Station, 160 miles away, disappeared the next day — it turned up at Arumpo yesterday. The large wall clock which was transferred from Tarcoola Station to Arumpo when its homestead was established has never stopped or been adjusted and keeps accurate time.
50 years ago
VEHICLES: Sunraysia Motor Sports Club swung into top gear at its second meeting with the election of office bearers and 35 people attending the meeting. Buronga police are cracking down on yahoos who keep people awake in the early hours of the morning most weekends so those caught ripping around or doing wheelies will be charged. Mildura Chamber of Commerce is to approach Victorian Railways for the introduction of a motorcycle service for passengers similar to the MotoRail where their motorcycles are loaded at the platform and taken to a destination the same as cars on the MotoRail.
PEOPLE: From success to success — that’s the football story of Merbein winger Brian Doering, 16, who steps straight into the Sunraysia team in his first year of senior football, chosen over other players. His speed and ball handling has to be seen to be believed. Children’s Book Week got off to a good start. A busy week is planed. Mildura librarian Jenny Greenwood has been reading to a crowd of St Margaret’s pre-school enthusiastic children. Sunraysia school children are being asked to help in a scheme designed to keep aged people in the district warm by knitting squares to be sewn into blankets. Last year 19 blankets were donated to elderly patients in the Mildura Base Hospital. A plan by the Mildura Jaycees to develop over five acres of riverfront in five years is probably the most ambitious ever undertaken by an Australian Jaycees chapter. It will mean an outlay of $6000, extensive planning and hundreds of man-hours of spare-time work. After 32 years on the shire council and secretary for 27 years, Mr AD Harvey will retire in September.
OLD: Wentworth councillors took a ride back through more than 120 years of history journeying to Cal Lal, a small ghost town far west of Wentworth Shire near the South Australian border. The first settlers moved to the area in the mid-1800s. The town even had its own magistrate and court, along with a police station and lock-up, then Wentworth was established and slowly began to draw both commercial trade and population from other areas. The last police journal lying there was dated 1937. A feature of a recent Salvation Army Home League meeting was a display of money boxes from all over the world. The tendency to add an “e” as seen in the name “Brooke” serves no purpose and does not change the name’s meaning, which is to indicate that the nominal ancestor lived near a brook, occupying the same cottages near the stream for generations handing the name down. The earliest sense of the word seems to refer to a marshy ground rather than running water. “Barn” and “Beck” were preferred in northern English countries so the people who lived near the “brook” probably came from the south. The best well-known modern Brooke is the poet Robert Brooke who died aged 28 in 1915 and wrote a series of patriotic sonnets.
25 years ago
SPORT: Ceasar Del Farra was an outright winner of the North-West Victorian Motorcycle Club’s enduro. Dry and dusty conditions saw a huge turn-up of enduro riders bite the dust on Henschke’s property. The exhilarating sport of hang-gliding exists in this region. When most people think of hang-gliding they picture thrill-seekers throwing themselves off clifftops. With safety the number one priority, hang-gliders are much safer and stronger, making them very reliable. Hang-gliders can be launched behind a car, usually in stubble paddocks. The Mildura Hang-Gliding Club has been operating since the early 1970s.
COLUMN 10: Football fans will have no excuse being cold this winter as Betty Schultz of Red Cliffs has been burning the midnight oil at her knitting machine making a magnificent range of scarves and rugs in SFL club colours. They drink beer in pints, hunt in packs and change their men more often than their duvets. Britain’s New Women have only a passing acquaintance with the vacuum cleaner and like to treat themselves with a four-hour “lie-in” on Sunday mornings according to a survey of young single females — 18- to 34-year-olds — 36 per cent date more than one man at a time, one in six uses a vacuum less than once a month, a New Woman changes her man four times more often than she would buy a new duvet, nearly half have to wash a dirty cup or glass because they have run out of clean ones.
ITEMS: The mystery of a river plaque may have been solved. The plaque, found on the banks of the Murray just downstream from the Mildara Winery, Merbein, with the use of a metal detector, with the word “Atlas” written across the surface, has been solved. The plaque was actually the brand badge of a type of car battery manufactured in the 1920s. The biggest ever sweet potato discovered in Charlie Zappia’s small garden weighed 10kg — a whopper without using chemicals. Most people could recall the tune to the old Cottee’s cordial commercial: “My dad picks the fruit that goes to Cottee’s … to make the cordial … that I like best.” Well, in Mildura this week were the producers of the Cottee’s commercial — Barry Hall and Rodd Martin — to film a remake worth half a million dollars — it was easy to choose here as it was the only place where there were oranges on the trees, they said. The three-day filming stint at Orange World featured seven local kids between the ages of six and 12 so the second week of the school holidays was far from boring. Another 27 youngsters obtained roles as extras.
