Frog Hollow Reserve, Endeavour Hills

Frog Hollow Reserve in Endeavour Hills has a number of sporting fields and is also an established wetlands  and  provides  a significant environmental and landscape corridor along the southern fringe of Endeavour Hills. The land has always been a bit swampy, low lying and  flood prone, due to its proximity to the Eumemmerring Creek, as well as a frog habitat and thus the name Frog Hollow was suggested by Cr Keith Wishart for the Reserve.* When the Reserve was first proposed around 1986, it was called the Hallam North Road Recreation Reserve. Frog Hollow is much more picturesque and sounds like something you would find in The Wind in the Willows.   These photographs were all taken by the City of Berwick.

These two photographs, above and below, were taken in May 1993, before replanting.

 There has been substantial planting of indigenous species since the establishment of the Reserve - the photograph above was taken in  August 1993. This planting has been continued by the Friends of Frog Hollow, which was established in 2002. The Friends have planted over 60,000 native trees.

September 1994.

Pavillion at Frog Hollow, taken September 1994.

This photograph is labelled ' Eumemmerring creek works opposite Frog Hollow' and was taken in September 1994. The friends of Frog Hollow are currently advocating for a walking/cycling track from Frog Hollow to Lysterfield Lake; this link should also improve wildlife habitat. There is an interview with Stephen Hallett, the President of the Frog Hollow Friends Group, which is part of the 52 stories in 52 weeks project, initiated by the Federal Member for Holt, Anthony Byrne. Click here for the link to the interview.
If the link doesn't work, you can find the interview, plus some other interesting interviews with local people who volunteer their time to make a difference to the Community at http://anthonybyrnemp.com and then click on Media.

*Place names of Berwick by Debbie Stephan (City of Casey Historical pamphlet 3, November 1994)

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Local shopping strips

These are  photographs of local strip shopping centres, taken mainly in 1990s, by the City of Berwick. This is how we all used to shop before the arrival of the large shopping centres - if you grew up in Victoria, then you would know that Chadstone was the first of these big centres, it opened in 1960 and it is apparently so big now that I wouldn't be surprised if you can see it from the moon.  Locally,  the Centro Shopping Centre in Cranbourne  and the Endeavour Hills Shopping Centre both opened in 1979 and Fountain Gate Shopping Centre in 1980.

This is Autumn Place in Doveton, 1992.

 This is Spring Square in Hallam in 1992.To see another photograph of Spring Square, click here.

Webb Street in Narre Warren, taken 1992.

Webb Street in Narre Warren. I am not sure of the exact date of this picture, but it is around the early 1990s. You can see the old Railway signal box in the background.

High Street in Berwick, 1992. To see more photographs of High Street click here.

This is an earlier shot of High Street, taken in 1975.

If you want to see  photographs of the local shopping strip at Pakenham, then click here,  or in Cranbourne, then click here

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Cardinia Creek at Soldiers Road, Beaconsfield

The first four photographs, below, are of the Cardinia Creek at Soldiers Road, taken in the late 1970s. They also show the old wooden bridge which was replaced around 1980 with a wider, concrete bridge. Bucolic, riparian and nostalgic are words that spring to mind to describe these photographs.  They were taken by the City of Berwick.

This is the construction of the new Soldiers Road bridge and shows the Beaconsfield Railway Station in the background.

 Above and below, the circa 1980 concrete bridge on Soldiers Road,  over the Cardinia Creek.

Utilitarian and functional are the words that spring to mind to describe this scene.

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Cr Jeune Matthews

I wish to commemorate the passing of Cr Jeune Matthews, who was a Councillor from 1972 until 1988, originally for the Shire of Berwick and from 1973 for the Shire of Pakenham, which was created when the Shire of Berwick split (the area west of the Cardinia Creek was renamed the City of Berwick). In 1979,  Cr Matthews had the distinction of being the female Shire President of the Shire of Pakenham, and its predecessor, the Shire of Berwick. This was a remarkable achievement given that local government in this area began with the formation of the Cranbourne Road Board in 1860 and the Berwick Road Board in 1862, the precursors of Shires of Cranbourne and Berwick, both of which were established in 1868.  The City of Berwick’s first female Shire President/Mayor was Cr Jan Bateman in 1980 and for the Shire of Cranbourne it was Cr Judy Elso, in 1988.

Juene (nee Johnston) and her late husband, Cyril, farmed at Garfield and had five children. She died on December 7, 2012 aged 83.

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Sister Hollins and Sister Lewis and the Pakenham Infant Welfare Centre

There is a  new Childrens Centre in Pakenham, called the Hollins Children Centre.  It has two kindergarten rooms, a toy Library, a meeting room and rooms for the Infant Health nurse.  When Councils and developers are looking for appropriate names for new buildings, parks, streets or other infrastructure, they sometimes contact Local History Societies or me, the Local History Librarian for ideas. At times, they decide that the  name we suggest is a suitable name and this was the case with the Hollins Children Centre. I was reading through the Souvenir Booklet from the Back to Pakenham celebrations held in March 1951 which has the history of various institutions in Pakenham, including the Infant Welfare Centre. The article mentioned that Sister Hollins and Sister Lewis were the first nurses involved with infant welfare in the area, so I suggested  that the new Centre could honour the nurses and in the end it was decided to call  the centre after Sister Hollins. I was very excited and thrilled that the Cardinia Shire Council selected one of 'my names' and I attended the official opening on November 20, 2012.

I have posted the section on the Infant Welfare Centre, below. As you can see the only information we had was that the nurses were called Sister Hollins and Sister Lewis, so my first task was to find out some other information about them.

The first place I looked was on the electoral rolls, available on the Ancestry family history database, available free, at all our Libraries. I found Lillian Ada Hollins  in 1936 Electoral rolls at the Pakenham Bush Nursing Hospital and Muriel Mary Lewis in the 1937 Electoral rolls also at the Hospital. (Electoral roll entries reproduced below)  - so now at least I had some given names and could look for other information.




Muriel Lewis first appeared in the Electoral rolls in 1924 when she was a nurse at the Royal Children's Hospital. She was listed at Pakenham from 1937 until 1942. In the book Somebody’s baby: a history of the Pakenham and District Hospital 1926-1992* by Heather Shallard it says Sister Lewis resigned in 1945 and according to the Electoral Rolls from 1949 through to 1968 she was living in the Camberwell/Balwyn area.  I found the death of a Muriel Mary Lewis  (I cannot confirm 100% that it is our Sister Lewis, but I feel pretty confident that it is)  in the Victorian Death Indexes in 1970. Her parents are listed as Thomas Lewis and Hannah Eliza Dinning.  I also found  Muriel's birth record  in North Carlton in 1901  and that of her sister, Bessie Isabel, born 1904 in Beechworth. Sister Lewis is buried at the Necropolis (or the Springvale Botanical cemetery as it is now called).

Lillian Ada Hollins was listed at Pakenham in the  1936 to 1942 Electoral rolls. Heather Shallard writes in her book that  Sister Hollins left in 1944 to get married and I found a report of the wedding in the Pakenham Gazette of Friday, September 29, 1944 (reproduced below). The wedding took place at the Presbyterian Church in Pakenham and Sister Lewis was the bridesmaid. The groom, Sydney Banbrook,  was employed by the Shire of Berwick in the Engineering Department.

Pakenham Gazette of Friday, September 29, 1944. page 1

The last paragraph mentions a 'social' to be held in their honour at the Mechanics' Institute. According to a report on the 'social'  in the Pakenham Gazette of October 13, Mrs P.F Thwaites paid a high tribute to Sister Hollins and praised her  for the good work she had done for the Hospital, always ready to help and she was not only capable but a good business woman and the good position of the hospital was largely due to her efforts. Cr Houilhan  told the gathering that Sisters Hollins and Lewis had done marvellous work for the Hospital and there was not one patient who had been there but would, if sick again, go there instead of to a metropolitan hospital (sic). The President of the Hospital, Mr J.J. Ahern, also recognised the outstanding service that Sisters Hollins and Lewis had given...today the Hospital was one of the best managed and equipped Bush Nursing hospitals in the State due chiefly to the Sisters. Mr & Mrs Banbrook were then  presented with a wallet containing 44 pounds.

The Banbrooks left Pakenham and in the 1949 Electoral rolls they are listed in Darwin, where Sydney is a Surveyor in the Department of Works and Housing. He died in South Australia in October 1963 and Lillian died there in June 1965. I haven't yet found a Birth Record for Sister Hollins, so I don't know who her parents were or when she was born.

*Somebody’s baby: a history of the Pakenham and District Hospital 1926-1992* by Heather Shallard. Published by the Pakenham & District Hospital, 1992.

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Digitised World War One newspapers

The State Library of Victoria has undertaken a project to digitise a number of World War One newspapers and these papers are now available on Trove - http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper  With the centenary of the commencement of the War in 2014 it is expected that there will be a huge amount of interest in how our ancestors and our community lived during this time and the  local newspapers will  provide a wonderful resource to both local and family historians. The newspapers were selected to provide as  broad a coverage of Victoria as possible and the papers  for the Casey Cardinia region are the Pakenham Gazette and its forerunner the Berwick Shire News which  have now been digitised from 1914 until 1918 as has the Lang Lang Guardian. The Bunyip Free Press is available from 1914 to 1915. The South Bourke and Mornington Journal has also been digitised previously and also covers much of our region, as does the West Gippsland Gazette.

Berwick Shire News and Pakenham and Cranbourne Gazette  8 September 8,  1915, pg 3

National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92095834

The papers recorded sad news such as the death of local soldiers including Private Frank Leigh A'Beckett, who was the son of the grandly named Edward Fitzhayley A'Beckett and his wife, Jane Deodata A'Beckett (nee Bourke). 

Pakenham Gazette and Berwick Shire News   June 15,  1917, page 2

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92153530

The women also played their role in the War effort, some of course served as nurses overseas, but for the women who remained at home they worked on the family farms, fund raised for patriotic causes, joined the Red Cross, or as we can see from this report, knitted sock for the soldiers.

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The Australian Inland Mission and the Pakenham connection

It is the centenary of the Presbyterian Inland Mission this year. It was established in 1912 as the Australian Inland Mission  by the Presbyterian Church with the Reverend  John  Flynn as the first Superintendent. Flynn’s  idea was to provide spiritual  support to those in the outback and this later developed to providing  medical facilities  as well.  Thus from  1917 he founded nursing services in remote areas and in 1928 he formed the AIM Aerial medical services. This service changed its name to the Royal Flying Doctor Service in 1954 and is still providing medical services  or the mantle of safety  as Flynn described it,  in the outback today. The Presbyterian Inland Mission has an interesting website www.pim.org.au.

There are two local links to the Australian Inland  Mission.  Firstly, John Flynn  was a Home Missionary at the Pakenham Presbyterian  Church in 1908-1909. I believe  a Home Missionary was sent to smaller churches, usually in country areas, who couldn't support an ordained  Minister.  John Flynn was was born in 1880 in  Moliagul Victoria to Thomas  and Rosetta (nee Lester ) Flynn . He was a ‘pupil teacher’ with the Education Department from 1898 to 1902. He began study as a ‘student lay pastor’ in 1903 and  did further study at the Presbyterian Theological Hall and was ordained in 1911. He died in 1951.

I have found two references to the Reverend  Flynn and his time at Pakenham  in the South Bourke and Mornington Journal available on Trove.  The first was from  February 3 1909  and is a  report of the St James Church of England Sunday School  picnic where  amongst the visitors was  Mr Flynn, the Presbyterian Minister and many of our Romans Catholic and other denominational friends. Pakenham was obviously a very ecumenical town. The second report from May 12 1909 (reproduced below)   was of  a very  pleasing and instructive evening held at the Pakenham Mechanics Institute when Mr J. Flynn delivered his lecture  Along the Snowy River.

South Bourke and Mornington Journal, May 12 1909, page 2 

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article66200050

There is another Pakenham connection to the AIM. The Reverend Victor Murrell was the Presbyterian minister there from 1963 until his death in May 1969. The Murrell family was in Beltana, South Australia as part of the Australian Inland Mission from 1949 until 1957. There is a memorial to the Reverend Murrell outside the Uniting Church in Main Street Pakenham. The memorial has been photographed and transcribed as part of the Casey Cardinia Remembers project www.caseycardiniaremembers.org.au, a project of the Narre Warren and District Family History Group. http://nwfhg.org.au

The memorial to the Reverend Victor Murrell outside the  Uniting Church at Pakenham. These photographs are from the Casey Cardinia Remembers website and are used with permission.

According to  a report in the South Bourke and Mornington Journal of February 13, 1907 the Presbyterian Church in Pakenham was officially opened on Sunday, January 27 1907, so when John Flynn arrived sometime in 1908 it would have been a very new building. The Presbyterians had  previously met at the Mechanics' Institute.  The Church was was built by Alex Miller of Berwick and painted and varnished by C. and J. Warne also of Berwick. It was a weatherboard building and could seat one hundred people. The building cost £125 and  initially the congregation had to supply £35 and the Home Mission Committee £100 which would cost £10 in interest over ten years, however  £80 was raised by the congregation so they could start their worship in their church really free from any anxiety as to ways and means.  A new brick church was opened in October 1960 and the original church was moved back on the block and used as a Sunday School and it was demolished around 1987 to accommodate extensions to the Church.

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