Richmond Son

By Peter R Fitton

Richmond Son is a snapshot of the life and times of a boy during the 1950s. He lives in Richmond, an old and tired suburb on the doorstep of Melbourne. Peter attends St James, North Richmond, a Catholic primary school were the pupils are taught by nuns. Its struggling under the pressures of a burgeoning student population, the effects of the post war immigration boom and the baby boomers. Theres no government funding and few new nuns. A sense of antagonism is swirling just below the surface as Catholics continue to battle under the gaze of an indifferent Protestant majority. But unforeseen changes are about to occur which will ultimately transform this situation.

Peters parents were strugglers. Like many of that time, they had been faced by a future without opportunity. First there had been the social, political and educational abyss of the 1930s depression, where adult unemployment reached 30%. Then the war arrived, which led to conscription for my father and factory work for my mother. When wars end finally came, a whole generation would look back upon a fifteen year period that had been laced with fear and despair.

By the middle 1950s, our splendid city of Melbourne was on the cusp of great change. The Olympic Games were about to transform it and so was black and white television. Millions of new migrants would complete the transformation. Peter reflects upon how it used to be, seen through the eyes of a boy just eight years old.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524561208

Peter R Fitton

Peter R Fitton is a proud Melbournian. He received his primary education from Nuns at St James, North Richmond, an experience for which he will always feel grateful. He is married, with three children and a number of grandchildren. Richmond Son is Peter's second book, the first being the wartime biography Never Been Hit. He lives quietly on Melbourne's Mornington Peninsula.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Peter R Fitton.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017903276

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-6122-2

                Softcover       978-1-5245-6121-5

                 eBook          978-1-5245-6120-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The author has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information within this book was correct at time of publication. The author does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from accident, negligence, or any other cause. Further, all stories are taken from Peter’s memory. Names may have been changed to protect identities. Peter has an unfailing admiration and respect for the Sisters and all those who are mentioned herein.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/04/2017

Xlibris

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In memory of my parents

Contents

Introduction

My Beginnings

A Start

Childhood Happiness

The School Experience

Surviving The System

Becoming A Good Catholic

My Immortal Soul

She-Men And Immigrants

Visits From Outsiders

Neighbourhood Recollections

Life As A Boy

St Kilda Beach

New Beginnings

Harsh Lessons

Winter Delights

Melbourne Celebrates

Melbourne And Surrounds

Magic And Beauty

Saturday Afternoons

My View Of The City

Out With My Father

We Have A Refrigerator

The Second Religion

Intergenerational Contact

My Gippsland Experience

The Diamond Merchant

The City Collectors

Ghosts Of The Past

The Friendly Games

Epilogue

Appendices

Appendix 1 The Sea Voyage From Europe

Appendix 2 The Alpine Region

Appendix 3 David Mitchell

Appendix 4 Foolscap

Appendix 5 The Milk Program

Appendix 6 St Bernadette

Appendix 7 Sunday Drinking Loophole

Appendix 8 Truganini (1812 - 1876)

A Time-Line Of Melbourne’s History To The Year 2000

Acknowledgements

I was a child who would, quite literally, believe what was told to me by an adult.

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INTRODUCTION

It was the ninth year of my life. Richmond, Victoria during the middle 1950s was a much colder place. It is a fact that global temperatures declined for almost twenty years following the war, though the reasons remain unclear. It has been suggested that aerosol releases affected the atmosphere and caused this anomaly. In any case, winters were periods where morning frosts were normal in Richmond.

Memories of my earliest years at school are still vivid. The nuns who taught me worked tirelessly to deliver a great education, though they were from an era that had long passed. Some of them had been born late the previous century. They had been in their teens when Queen Victoria was still on the throne. They were young ladies during the years of the Boer War and were adults during both world wars and the 1930s depression. In my years at St James, I cannot remember any young nuns. My teachers were all past middle age, a number in their fifties and most in their sixties or seventies. To a child such a thing is not an observation that has much meaning. They were simply nuns and their word was law, even as in the middle 1950s the school was facing the challenge from large numbers of new pupils, the result of the post war baby boom and immigration, with a large percentage of the new arrivals from non-English speaking southern European countries. These women were doing their best and were being pressured to answer the post war challenge without fresh young teachers or the financial resources necessary for such expansion. The absence of state funding fueled the feelings of discontent and social ostracism, heightening the levels of paranoia which existed within the church community.

My story not only offers a detailed view of my early years at school, it presents a brief history of my family from the time they arrived as pioneers to the Colony of Victoria in the years after Melbourne was founded.

From my home in Burnley Street, Richmond I rode my bike everywhere. Richmond was a crowded and compact slum suburb, lending itself easily to a boy on a bicycle with energy to burn. I seldom went to places where my parents would not have approved, but I observed everything that went on around me and typical of all young children, would try to overhear the conversations that were taking place between adults. Traffic moved at a slow pace and vehicle numbers were far less than we experience today. The danger to life and limb was from marauding dogs rather than from motor cars.

It was a time when social interaction was more straightforward. It was an age of unsophistication. Communication was face to face, by telephone or through the newspapers. Personal relationships were not as open, permissible or as demonstrable as we see today. Apart from the behaviour of drunken individuals whose intoxicated state placed them on the other side of permissible boundaries, most individuals went about their business in a quiet and well behaved manner. Late night or evening social discourse was more subdued. Going out was to make use of trams or trains. People did not have the same level of mobility that we take for granted today. Motor cars were expensive. Many had them for work, though most of those seemed to be white collar workers rather than blue. Those who owned a motor vehicle in my neighbourhood tended to use them of a weekend.

Mass communications were by radio and newspapers, though it must be noted that radio talk-back as we experience it today was unknown in 1956. Informative and opined radio programs did exist though their presentation was more formal and subdued and as all radios were valve sets, they were neither small nor portable, requiring mains power. They were large and required permanent siting in homes or commercial premises. With that limitation and the fact that motor cars generally did not feature radios, it meant that the most popular communication medium was the newspaper. Like banks and post offices, newsagents were vitally important places.

Even as Melbourne was one of the great cities of Australia, it was isolated from Europe and the United States not only by distance, but by the ethos of its people, the reality of a small widespread population in a vast continent and the absence of up-to-the-minute communications, factors which enhanced the influence of those who controlled Australia’s media. It was a level of influence which worked to the benefit of the politicians as well, at least those of the political parties which were favoured by our media barons.

To a great extent, those who governed us looked to Britain for their cues. Australia’s Prime Minister, the self-confessed anglophile, Sir Robert Menzies had been in office since 1949 and would remain there until 1966. His inner circle was composed of anglophiles. The result was that Australia really did exist as a distant outpost of Great Britain and to a great degree its people were content to be patronized by that country. In the middle 1950s most people looked upon Britain as the mother country.

One of my hopes, as you read Richmond Son, is that I transport you to this pre-television era when our lives were far simpler and where we lived in blissful ignorance of the wider world. Imperfect as our home-lives were, we lived as families, with fathers and mothers sharing their lives together and rearing their children. It seemed that our lack of pretention and lower living standards were not impediments to our general state of happiness.

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MY BEGINNINGS

While it was a comforting thought as a child to be told that I was delivered by a stork, the reality was more down to earth. I was born at Bethesda Hospital, Richmond, Victoria on September 5, 1948, second among four boys.

A good place to start my story is with my surname. ‘Fitton’ is Old English. The name evolved over the centuries in Cheshire, England where the Fittons held sway at Gawsworth. Today in Gawsworth there’s a surviving manor house and a chapel dedicated to the Fittons. Inside the chapel there are sarcophagi capped with reclining stone images of my ancestors. Over the centuries the name has been spelt a number of ways. There have been Fitons, Fyttons, Phytuns, Phitums, Phyttons and Phittons. Then there was Mary Fytton who was rumored to have been the dark lady from William Shakespeare’s sonnets. While that is now considered doubtful, Mary was Maid of Honor to Queen Elizabeth 1.

While of little benefit to me or my family, it is interesting to note the history of my linage. The Fitton Baronetcy, of Gawsworth in the County of Chester was a title in the Baronetage of England. It was created on 2 October 1617 by James 1 for Edward Fitton of Gawsworth Hall, Gawsworth, Cheshire. The Fitton family was settled in Gawsworth from about the 13th century. The first Baronet’s ancestors included Sir Edward Fitton I (1500–1553), High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1544 and Sir Edward Fitton II (1527–1579), Treasurer of Ireland and President of Connaught. His son, Sir Edward Fitton (1548–1606) was an unsuccessful colonist of Munster. It was Sir Edward Fitton II’s daughter, Mary Fitton who was the Maid of Honor to Elizabeth 1.

The second Baronet, High Sheriff in 1633, was an officer in the service of Charles II and was briefly Governor of Bristol following that city’s fall during the English Civil War. The baronetcy became extinct upon his death in 1643. He left his estate by his will of 1641 to his Irish cousin William Fitton of Awne (grandson of Sir Edward Fitton, Treasurer of Ireland) to the exclusion of his seven sisters and their husbands. The will was disputed and lengthy legal proceedings followed involving Alexander Fitton, Lord Chancellor of Ireland (son of William) and Charles Gerard, Baron Gerard, son of Penelope Fitton eldest daughter of the first Baronet. Settlement in 1663 passed the estate to Gerard, who was later created Earl of Macclesfield.

The name was also taken up by Welsh novelist, Frank Showell Styles (14-3-1908 to 19-2-2005) with his seafaring novels about the life and times of real life naval hero Michael Fitton (1766 to 1852), a lieutenant in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic era. Showell Styles had served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and became a prolific writer in later life. His Lieutenant Fitton novels are extensive, dramatising real events that unfolded during Michael Fitton’s time in the Royal Navy:

A Sword for Mr. Fitton (1975)

Mr. Fitton’s Commission (1977)

The Baltic Convoy (1979)

A Ship for Mr. Fitton (1991)

Mr. Fitton’s Prize (1993)

Mr. Fitton and the Black Legion (1994)

Mr. Fitton in Command (1995)

Lieutenant Fitton (1997)

Mr. Fitton at the Helm (1998)

The Martinique Mission (1999)

Mr. Fitton’s Hurricane (2000)

The Fitton connection with Australia began when the agricultural labourer, William Reid Fitton arrived at the Australian colony on 3 September 1852 aboard the migrant ship, Bourneuf¹. He had come in company with his widowed mother, brother and four sisters. William was 27 years old when he stepped ashore at Geelong, Victoria. The voyage from Liverpool must have been a ghastly experience because 88 passengers died during the trip. Eighty-three of them were children, most who died of measles, diarrhoea, scarletina and marasmus. The ship stank and the surgeon was accused of being in a perpetual state of inebriation. An inquest was later held in which the Captain and crew were exonerated. And if that wasn’t enough, a mere eleven months later the Bourneuf sank when it hit a reef at the entrance to Torres Strait on 3 August 1853. The Bourneuf had been intending a return to England via the Cape of Good Hope. In this incident the Captain, his wife and her sister, along with five of the ship’s company were lost.

William settled in Geelong, Victoria where it seems he worked as a storeman and as a clerk. Six years after his arrival on Australian soil he married Ellennor Seymour. They had seven children, two of whom died in infancy. In time, William became a publican. This seemed an unfortunate occupation for William because he became an alcoholic and later developed epilepsy. When he died intestate and in debt at the age of 46 years, his family was thrust into extreme poverty. Ellennor had no money and was forced to place her five surviving children into St Augustine’s Orphanage in Highton, a Geelong suburb.

My grandfather, Frederick George Fitton was a boy of seven at the time and with his brothers and sister, spent two years in the orphanage before friends collected them. It was an experience which seared his soul. Frederick was a lifelong abstainer from alcoholic beverages.

Times were hard. The colony of Victoria was so young. Melbourne had only been settled from the late 1830s. With very few years for it to become an established town, the Victorian gold rush opened the floodgates to massive numbers of immigrants from Europe and the Far East. In addition to this, convictism was drawing to a close. Numerous ex-convicts were descending upon the Victorian goldfields.

Frederick’s early years are a mystery. He spent his youth working in Geelong as a draper for the firm of Bright & Hitchcock, where he remained until moving to the East Gippsland town of Bairnsdale in 1888. By this time Frederick was 24. He didn’t remain there long, moving to Omeo later the same year where he began working at E. J. Johnson’s store. Known in Omeo as the new man, it was whilst working at E. J. Johnson’s that he met Olympia Mary Thomās.

It so happened that the man who would become my great grandfather, Theodore Thomās, arrived at the colony following his mysterious disappearance from his family in France in 1854. Whatever his reason for stealing away from them, they never forgot or forgave. Theodore sought his fortune in Victoria’s High Country² and whilst there, met and married his bride, she being Mary Nestor, an Irishwoman from County Galway. Following their marriage they settled in the town of Omeo. Theodore and Mary had seven children, my paternal grandmother being the fourth. Theodore and Mary remained in Omeo until after the death of Theodore in 1914, sometime after which Mary came to live in the single room quarters within the backyard of the home at 144 Burnley Street, Richmond.

Omeo was and still is a remote place. There’s no train, just a winding road that until recent times was unsealed. The northern route to Omeo is via Bairnsdale in Victoria’s Gippsland. Gippsland is the well-watered home of Victoria’s dairy cattle industry. Alternatively, if travelling to Omeo from the south is unsuitable, then it can be approached from the mountains to the north-west. The route is across Victoria’s Alpine Region. The country is rugged and lonely.

During the gold rush era, Omeo was the major distribution centre for equipment, transport, mail and supplies and when the gold fields finally fell quiet, Omeo went quiet as well, though it remained and endured as an outpost and centre to this remote region. Today, Omeo is a tourist town and a service centre for the vast farming and timber industries which exist in Victoria’s high country.

Frederick was drawn towards the Thomās family and Olympia in particular. They became engaged and by the end of 1890 were married. Such occasions were of widespread importance to the people in these remote communities. The wedding attracted a reporter from the local newspaper, The Omeo Standard. The newspaper article reported on their wedding: The marriage of Miss Olympia Mary Thomās, second daughter of Mr Theodore Thomās of Omeo (a native of France), to Mr Frederick George Fitton, third son of the late William Reid Fitton of Geelong, was celebrated on Monday 30 December 1890 at St Mary’s Church, Omeo by the Reverend Father Collier. The bride, who was given away by her father, was attired in a gown of white liberty silk trimmed with white lace and orange blossom; pretty floral wreath of orange blossom and long tulle veil. The bridesmaids were Miss Josephine Thomās and Miss Matilda Thomās, both of whom were dressed in cream satin with white lace hats to match. Mr. Earnest John Thomās, the bride’s brother, acted as best man. After the ceremony the guests proceeded to the residence of the bride’s parents where the dejeuner was served in a large hall, the friends of the newly-married couple present numbering between 40 and 50. The wedding gifts were both numerous and valuable.

Life in Omeo was very much about gold mining, Frederick’s father-in-law was still active in mining and prospecting. Frederick learnt from Theodore and in time, became interested in gold mining, eventually moving to a remote place close to Mount Wills in Victoria’s Alpine country. It was Sunnyside. Olympia and their first three children went as well, with a further six being born at Mount Wills in the years to 1907. It came to pass that my grandfather became a part owner of the Mount Moran Mine, an association which benefitted his family. The following extract presents a good account of how the old miners went about their business.

The Mount Moran Mine, Sunnyside - An extract from The Omeo Standard December 13, 1907

"The mine is one of the most consistent gold producers on Mount Wills and is perhaps one of the most profitable mines on the field, for although not so sensationally rich as some of the mines, it always maintains a steady average. This, combined with the fact that the stone is easily obtained in large quantities, makes the mine a valuable asset to the present shareholders.

This mine has had a stormy career. First discovered by Mr A Moran, now a part owner of the Gentle Annie, it was worked for a considerable time with anything but flattering results. Eventually, it was disposed of to a Melbourne company, with local shareholders retaining a large number of shares. The company commenced developing the mine on a large scale, not discovering anything of a permanent nature, but obtaining small parcels of ore at different periods which were not sufficient to make it payable. During their term of ownership they drove no less than three tunnels which cost a large sum and on every occasion extended their crosscut through the line of reef that is now being worked by the present company. As there are several lines of reef existing on the lease, it was a simple matter to drive through the gold bearing line, especially when the point of intersection was in a blank. Had the crosscut at number 4 level been driven a further 100 feet north, the owners would have been amply rewarded for their labor as they would have intersected a shoot worked by the present company. Unfortunately for them they were not aware of this fact, and being sadly disappointed at past results, resolved to let the mine on tribute. For a considerable time it was worked by different parties of tributers with varying results; some of whom did remarkably well, but taken on the whole it was hardly payable.

As is often the case when a mine is let on tribute, the shareholders become careless and if the tributers are not sufficient in number to comply with the labor covenants, the shareholders take the risk that the mine will be forfeited because they failed to put their hands in their pockets to hold it. i.e. they did not keep the minimal number of tributers employed to hold the lease. It is a noteworthy fact that on this field many pioneers, after putting their labor as well as their money into a mine, by force of circumstances have been compelled to abandon it almost within sight of the long-sought-for goal. That has been the experience of the original company for not being prepared to put any more money into the mine they developed. They let it take its chance. The result was that an application by Butler and party for forfeiture was upheld by the Minister for Mines who granted a lease to the applicants while excluding the tunnels driven by the previous company. This was not a good outcome as the new lessees were forced to drive a new level or sinking on stone that was going underfoot. It was the latter that they decided to do, but owing to the expense of hauling poor stone with a windlass, they did not obtain a profitable result, leaving them in the same dilemma as the original company. They were not in the position to provide the number of men required to hold the lease and another application from Crawford, supported by Fitton and one other shareholder for forfeiture was again upheld by the Minister for Mines.

This time the tunnels were included in the lease and the party commenced operations at the number 3 level, continuing it north along the line of reef and after a few feet of driving, intersected a shoot of stone which is now known as Crawford’s shoot. About this period the shareholders were increased from 3 to 4 and started stoping with payable results. The shoot being short and the backs not being of any great extent, all the stone available was soon worked out and the shareholders decided to drive further north. The holder of the lease was not prepared to risk doing an amount of dead work and disposed of his share to Frederick Fitton. This made Fitton an owner of half the leasehold. When they drove north, the shoot they followed rendered 592 ounces of gold from 100 tons of ore crushed. This was a good outcome and they concentrated their efforts on extending the number 3 and number 4 levels.

It was in following level 4 they drove north at the point where the original company had driven through the line and after 100 feet of driving, obtained the shoot of stone going north which has been almost continuous for a distance of 500 feet. After working the ground above the levels, a shaft was sunk for a depth of 125 feet below the tunnel level and at 115 feet, levels have been driven north and south for a distance of 250 feet where the stopes are giving payable results. Up to date, the party had crushed 2,366 tons of ore for a yield of 5,145 ounces 7 dead weights, being an average of 2 ounces 3 dead weights 9 grams to the ton. The hauling has been done by a 5 hp oil engine which was very satisfactorily."

Whatever the financial rewards, Frederick finished his time with the Mount Moran Mine in 1907, around the time this article was published. Frederick and Olympia sold out and bought into a dairy farm at a place six kilometres north of Bairnsdale. Located on the banks of the Clifton Creek, Clifton Park was a 250 acre dairy farm. It had its own cheese and butter factories. He and Olympia worked their dairy farm for seven years. They loved the life but when labour became scarce following the outbreak of war in 1914, the work became too hard and the family sold out, moving to Heyfield where Frederick purchased the general store.

Heyfield lies in Gippsland, near the Glenmaggie weir. This is dairy cattle country and the store was a focal point amid this out-of-the-way rural area. Life would have been staid and constant, so that when the First World War broke out, there would have been many young men eager for the chance of seeing the wider world and of