THE tea came with lamingtons, chocolate biscuits and jam rolls.
Then came the memories.
Around a table sat members of two families. Some had known each other for many decades and others had just met, but all were there to talk about the house in which they were gathered and the stories that had made it a home.
That home is Valetta, which has stood at 223 Eleventh Street since 1891, when what is now one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares was a dirt track barely on the edge of an adventurous irrigation settlement yet to grow into a town.
Mildura’s government school was just three years old, as were its Methodist and Anglican churches, and there were only a few shops, a couple of bank branches and a “coffee palace” closer to the river.
The Mildura Shire had been declared just a year before, a cottage hospital would not open for another year to come, and it would be three years before the Mildura Club and Settlers’ and Working Man’s clubs were established.
According to the 1891 census, Mildura’s population was 2235.
Centuries have turned twice since then and the paddocks and plantings around Valetta are long gone, as is the Sarnia packing shed that stood next door for a few years.
It’s now bordered to the south-east by the relatively new Henderson Place, and Eleventh Street is an arterial commuter route with a centre plantation of pines where palms and peppercorns once stood.
Protected by a heritage overlay and named a historic landmark on the Chaffey Trail, however, Valetta remains, and it remains a private home.
It’s also for sale for the first time in a generation.
At Sunraysia Daily, this story started out as a simple tale of an old house going on the market. It was supposed to be just a few interesting paragraphs and a couple of pretty photographs.
We had arranged to talk to the vendor, Brian Bleeser, but first we dropped in to last Saturday’s open inspection and bumped into a bloke called Geoff Dickson, who said he was just there “for a stickybeak” because Valetta had once been in his family, his mum had grown up there and had fond childhood memories of the place himself.
Before long, we were exploring the cellar with Geoff as he searched for, and eventually found, markings he and other young family members had left in the woodwork.
Not long after that, it was decided that his mum should come along to our meeting with Brian.
So a day later, there we were, with tea, cake and biscuits, as well as cherished, if hazy and disjointed, memories of little things that had happened long ago.
If you’ve ever been to a big family reunion, you know the sort of thing.
There was Geoff with his mum, Lyn Spence, 87, and Brian had brought his daughters.
All had some sort of a connection to Valetta, but Lyn’s link to the property’s distant past seemed strongest because her grandfather had bought it from the original owners, so we asked her to begin.
“When grandfather Hawkes died, Nan was on her own here … and Mum moved in to be a companion for Nan, so consequently me and my sister lived here from when we were born,” said Lyn, who was born a McKenzie.
She said her family had been very proud of the history of the home, which had been designed Mr D. T. Edmunds, the builder of the Chaffey home of Rio Vista.
It was her own family’s history that had meant the most to her, though, as that grandfather, Fred Hawkes, had been one of the pioneers of the Mildura horticultural industry after leaving England and a previous career travelling with the P&O shipping company.
It is believed he was the home’s second owner and gave it its name because of happy times he had spent in the capital of Malta.
The spelling of that city’s name is Valletta, but the house dates from a time when the variation was common.
Mr Hawkes became a prominent member of early Mildura society and, according to a front-page story in Sunraysia Daily on March 22 1924, Valetta “lends itself admirably to outdoor entertainments, owing to being charmingly situated in the midst of beautifully kept lawns”.
The story was about a garden fete hosted by the family that week in support of the Red Cross.
Lyn’s recollections are, by her own admission, not as clear as a newspaper archive and they’re not the sort of record you’d find in a history book.
They are personal memories, often of little things such as the leadlight bird with a worm adorning an inner door.
“Hello, birdy,” she said as she walked through the doorway, much as she might have done as a little girl.
Brian didn’t grow up at the house but he is 93, has lived much of Mildura’s history and, having grown up in a grand residence on the riverside site of what is now Baldwin Boats, he later owned the house next next door to Valetta.
When Lyn’s family put it up for sale in the 1990s, he jumped at it.
He had wanted a house with a bit of history and was also keen to make sure it couldn’t be knocked down for a new development, but he did get heritage approval to build a new back section, with a modern kitchen and bathroom, in a colonial style sympathetic to the original structure.
The original house now is certainly liveable but in a state of suspended renovation.
There’s painting to be done, the odd crack to be filled, and skirting boards waiting to go back on after some anti-termite work.
Brian would like to see someone strip back all the woodwork, though, because he knows there is magnificent timber underneath.
According to Chaffey Trail information, it was the responsibility of a Mr Kells, who also worked on the interior of Rio Vista.
“I wanted to get all the timber back to the original … but I didn’t have the money to do a great deal,” Brian said.
Valetta is for sale through Professionals Mildura Real Estate.
