Carlton Community History Group
Recollections
Rhonda remembers her grandmother teaching her to read from gravestones in the Melbourne General Cemetery and taking her to the public library to search for information when children were not usually welcomed in such places. She and her grandmother attended society weddings, Sir John Monash's funeral in 1931 and watched people going into the mayoral ball, all at least as far as the steps. It was novel entertainment. Her grandmother also taught her to cook so she could cook dinner for her grandmother's lodgers when she went into town to 'have tea with Lena'.
Audrey, born in a house on the corner of Macpherson St and Amess St in 1912 remembered as a 4 or 5 year old standing at the door watching the blacksmith making horse shoes, the forge was in Amess St...next door to Condon's who ran a dairy. They had 3 or 4 cows which her brother Ozzie took up in the morning before school to graze in Princes Park behind the cemetery where the tennis courts were later built. He collected them after school. The milk was ladled out of a can which sat on a board over the family bath. You had to take your own billy or jug and you could buy a cup of scalded cream for 3d. It tasted lovely on bread and jam.
Dinnie O'Brien was born in Springmount, a small country town near Ballarat, on 13 December 1905. In 1917 his parents; hotel was burned down and family and their 13 children moved to Carlton and in 1935 Dinnie and his own family moved to 387 Station Street, North Carlton and bought a wood yard at 84 Neill Street. The business not only sold wood and ice but also moved furniture for people. In 1958 he sold the business and moved to 466 Canning Street. He then became the local bottle-oh and collected beer bottles in a horse and cart. He was extensively involved in charity work organising pony rides as fund raisers for local kindergartens and St Brigid's Parish. He was an avid Carlton Football Club supporter and a fan of Carlton the suburb where he worked for over 35 years. O'Brien Place was named after him after his death, aged 80 in 1986.
Do you have a story we could use? Contact us with your recollections.