Jack looks back
AS KIDS in the early 1930s my sibilings and I began our expeditions around the little market town of Dandenong, which we fondly recall as ‘our place’.
On one of our early treks from home we discovered the Eumemmerring Creek.
We had been exploring the remains of the wattle-and-daub sheds and huts of the old tannery on the hillside of Kidds Road on the Gordon Park property, just above where Betula Street is today.
This tannery was one of Dandenong’s earliest industries.
It was started in 1865 by a Mr Henderson who, at the same time, had a saddle and harness and whip making business in Lonsdale Street opposite the post office.
The early house of the Gordon Park property was on the opposite side of the creek at the end of Wedge Street in what is now Caroline Street.
It sat on a bend in the old creek alongside what today is the entrance and driveway of St John’s College.
We continued up the fairly heavily timbered hill to the unmade section of Power Road and the many gravel pits that existed in this area at the time.
If we walked up an over the hill, the far end of the paddock was a gum-sucker covered swampy area near the narrow road that would become the Princes Highway.
The paddock itself would eventually become Power Road, Doveton, the link between the Princes Highway and Heatherton Road.
When we first came to this spot it must have been summer because the creek had ceased to flow and it had ponded in the lower marshy areas.
We found two deep waterholes a short distance apart.
They were still reasonably full of crystal clear water.
Below the granite-like banks of the creek we stood beside the holes and watched schools of minnows come up from the depths to the sunlight.
We called these fish minnows, but they could have been the type of native fish that have recently been re-discovered in creeks and lagoons around Hallam.
As little kids, on our first visit to this spot, we wondered how the fish came to be in the holes.
When we returned to the same spot after the dry season the little stream was running again.
The sparkling water flowed over the high granite-like bank into the first hole; then out of the first hole and along a small section of the creek into the second hole.
From there is gently overflowed into a wider marsh-like area.
It was easy to see the water flowing across the Princes Highway but in the deeper areas the current was imperceptible. We then understood how the minnows came to be trapped in these holes.
As an adult I discovered that after we came down that hill through the marshy area and arrived at the cleared land below we were in the exact spot where in 1834 Alfred Langhorne had built the first settler’s hut in the Dandenong area. Here we were, a few small kids, discovering this same exciting spot a century later.
