I lived at 7 Fisher Street Nunawading since 1957 when I was 4 years old. It was a very different place then, a world that was and is no longer. The streets were dusty gravel tracks in summer and pot-holed and muddy in winter when the puddles froze on frosty nights. There were remnants of the indigenous bush amongst the abandoned paddocks and orchards of the rural settlers and remaining farmers. In that bush were venomous brown snakes, blue tongue lizards, echidna, frogs, swarms of insects and choruses of native birds; there were wildflowers including orchids and sun-dews, Pink Heath, Running Postman, 'Egg and Bacon', Trigger Plants, Happy Wanderer, Maiden Hair Fern, Bracken, Sword Grass, 'Blowfly Grass'. The trees were Stringy-bark, Manna and Peppermint Gums, Tea Tree and Cootamundra, Long Leaf, Narrow Leaf and Black Wattles. It was a beautiful and natural wonderland, it felt ancient and immortal, almost sentient to the balance of it's own rhythms, tough and resilient but it was under siege and about to be swept away under a flood of humanity.
My parents bought the block of land (Lot 31) for £700, they chose it for a fine Stringy-bark tree that grew at its front. Frank Fisher who was the Real Estate vendor and a First World War comrade of my Grandfather had worn a track through this block the mile to Tunstall Siding (later Nunawading Station) from his house at 327 Canterbury Road, a Californian Bungalow still standing. An early memory of mine is playing in the bush while my father was preparing the house foundations and being confronted by 'Father Christmas of the Bush' as I thought for he had a shock of white hair and red bushy eyebrows. Another memory was looking up to see my father furiously steaming towards me with an axe, I'd been playing with a baby Brown Snake and he was looking for the mother.
Before we bought a refrigerator we had an icebox and once a week the Iceman would come, drape a Hessian sack on his shoulders and lump a huge block of ice to the kitchen where Mum would be waiting with the drained and open icebox, it was a real treat in summer when he gave we children shards of ice from his truck. The Harrington's Bakery delivered bread five days a week to the door in a cane basket with a horse and van, we found thistles to feed the horse. The Milkman delivered milk and cream around dawn with a Clydesdale horse that would plod the round it knew by heart, the 'Milky' would be dashing from cart to house and back with the empty bottles, it was rare to see him with reigns in hand because the horse obeyed his voice. Occasionally I would wait for the clip clop sound and rise to join them and help, they were amiable and grateful for the company.
In retrospect it was an idyllic and healthy existence, not simply a rose coloured fondness for the halcyon days of childhood memories. Alas, this world was rapidly changing because in the aftermath of the Second World War a population explosion was happening, the 'Baby-Boom'; swelled by emigrants and refugees from a shattered Europe, Melbourne was expanding exponentially. More people meant more traffic and on foggy mornings cars crashed into the horses, killing and maiming them; the Dairies could no longer deliver and the Bakeries changed to Motor Vans until the Supermarkets denied them competition.
Around here the Australian couples tended to retain the native vegetation, especially the trees but most of the new Australians seemed bent on eliminating this alien land, recreating formal British or European gardens instead. They destroyed the wild things and planted lawns, roses, deciduous and cypress trees; gradually over decades the glorious dawn chorus of the Australian bush faded as the native habitat dwindled to very isolated pockets and feral plants and animals invaded those.
