93 Josephine Wood (Hankin) Continues Her Descent into Hell - Part 3: 12 November 2024

Just before we left Fisherman’s Bend Hostel, Cliff worked at a small engineering factory operated by a lovely man called Karl Muehleman.  The factory was located where the Saint Kilda Junction used to be located, but the factory site has now disappeared beneath the engineering achievements which have replaced the former Saint Kilda Junction.

Once we moved to Parsons Road Research, it was impossible for Cliff to commute to Saint Kilda and he got a job with a company called Crockford and Robertson at Heidelberg.  This meant he only had to walk 2 miles to Eltham railway station and then get a trin to Heidelberg and then change trains; his travel time on the trains was only about one hour.

 

Crockford and Robertson (photo above) was an air conditioning company.  We certainly had no air conditioning in our own home.  It would have been useless anyway; we had no electricity.

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While Cliff worked every hour that was available for him to work, he had zero time to do anything to make our new home habitable.

We got our water from an outside tap on the property next door to us; that property was owned by a family called Hulmes.  We carted the water back to our house in a metal bucket because plastic buckets had not yet been invented in 1956.  The mains water supply stopped at the creek at the bottom of Parsons Road; that was at the bottom of the hill leading to our place – about 1/4 of a mile from our house.  We had to pay for the laying of a pipe from the creek up the hill to our place before we could have water in our own home.  Cliff tried to dig the trench for the water pipe with a pickaxe and spade, but he couldn’t do it on his own. Eventually Josey simply told a plumber to do whatever had to be done and told Cliff that finding the money to pay the plumber was Cliff’s problem, not hers.  I am fairly sure we did not have running water when Patrick was born on17 March 1957.  We got water in about June 1957.

Another photo of Patrick Hankin; this was taken some years ago before too much alcohol and bad food had bloated Patrick out like a balloon.

Getting electricity in the house also took months.  The main electricity supply ran past our house but there was no money to get it connected.  It was more than six months before we got electricity in our home.  At night we used kerosene lamps; the kero lamps were our only form of lighting until we eventually got electricity.

Getting the house painted only took a couple of weeks.  The painter had a wooden leg but was agile and did a good job.  Within two weeks of our arrival, he killed a brown snake that was lurking next to the house.

There was no toilet at all when we first arrived.  It took a few days before an outhouse was built with a wooden seat perched over a tin can.  I hated shitting in the tin can and I never peed into the can if I could avoid it.  Peeing into the can meant it got full much faster.  Once the can was full, Bill and I had to dig the hole and drag the can full of shit and pee across to the hole.  No matter how careful we were, some shit coloured water always splashed on our hands and legs.

We lived at Parsons Road from December 1956 until the middle of 1962 – nearly six years.  We still had to empty the shit can when we left Parsons Road for good.  I presume the people who bought our house had the money to install a septic tank.  There was no mains sewage system within miles of our house.  No one in Parsons Road had mains sewage to flush their toilets with – but we were the only family that had to use a shit can.  I loved it when we were invited into a neighbour’s home.  They all had flush toilets which did not stink.

Mum had to cook for us on a wood fuel stove.  A fire had to be started in a space above the oven.  Once the fire was burning warmly enough, cooking pots could be place on holes cut into the metal top of the fire box.  This was the only way that food could be cooked.  Boiling water had to be done by placing a kettle on top of the fire box.  We drank Lan Choo tea and the kettle always took about half an hour to boil.  Mum used to leave a metal kettle permanently on the fire box to try and make sure there was always boiling water for tea.

Once the water had been connected, we were able to have our weekly baths.  There WAS hot water for a bath.  Hot water came from a noisy contraption called a kerosene hot water heater.  Getting hot water meant we had to fill up a lidless pot with kerosene from a drum of kerosene.  The pot fuelled an ignition point above teh pot and this ignition point heated the water.  The thing made a lot of noise and somehow managed to heat the cold water that ran through it.  The hot water heater was astonishingly dangerous because the kerosene in the open can used to catch fire as well as the “wick” which was supposed to be the only part that did catch fire.  I remember Josey screaming one night when the kerosene in the open tin burst into flames.  She grabbed the tin full of blazing kerosene and ran to the back door.  Luckily, she made it out of the house before the house went up in flames.  She threw the blazing kerosene on the ground outside the back door.

We continued to use the kerosene hot water heater.  We had no money to get anything better and there was no other source of hot water.