Jack Johnson is the author of when The Clock Strikes, a fascinating account of growing up in Dandenong, his years tending to the city’s pipes and drains as a plumber and bringing up a family with wife Frances in their beloved home in Macpherson Street.
Dandenong was a town so quiet and safe that as a five-year-old I would be sent on errands to the shops in Lonsdale Street.
If it were for groceries, it would be to Crump’s General Store which backed onto the wide, open brick drain that ran through central Dandenong.
As the drain regularly overflowed throughout that area the flood water beneath the building often reached to the front door of the shop.
The stumps at the rear of the building were very high and cut from round red gum logs.
Inside the shop the groceries were on the left and on the right was the general store section.
Through a doorway at the back could be seen the walls, lined with hessian and wallpaper, of the quaint old living quarters of the Crumps.
The Walker Street frontage of the building was occupied by Maggs Hardware.
If it was a grocery order that had to be home-delivered I would sometimes take it to a little shop on the west side of Lonsdale Street about midway between the Albion Hotel and Clow Street.
At that time the shop was single-fronted with a residence above in which lived Mrs Johnston, a lovely little old lady. I remember it so vividly.
As you entered that perfect shop, the bell dangling on the wire door would ring and this petite lady would appear at the top of the stairs clad in her immaculate Victorian attire, with her long brown hair twisted into a knot.
The whole scene was not unlike a Gainsborough canvas.
Then there were those unforgettable aromas of spices and produce none of which was packaged, all painstakingly transferred from containers into a polished metal dish which was then weighted on scales.
The scales were counterbalanced by brass weights graded from one ounce up to two pounds and when the correct weight was achieved the goods were tipped into a paper bag.
Mrs Johnson’s little grocery store was not of a size to warrant a large delivery vehicle but had a bicycle with a good sized steel framed basket over the front wheel in which the grocery boy would deliver our order.
That particular grocery boy, Gordon Norris, would eventually own the business and later the Gordon Norris Real Estate Agency.
If you turned left at our front gate you were heading to the shops of the excitement of the produce and stock market where you could meet some of the greatest characters ever to be found in a country town.
There were Chinese, Italian and Greek, Jewish, Afghan, Russian and others.
I never heard their real names, only nicknames lovingly bestowed on them by their Aussie stallholder mates – who were also given nicknames in return.
Milk was delivered by Mr Kendall.
Our house sat behind a cypress hedge that had overgrown a Federation woven-wire fence.
All that was visible, in line with our front door, was an iron and wire scroll top gate on which we hung our milk billy for Mr Kendall to fill.
Mr Kendall delivered the milk from a hand can which hung from the handle bars of his old black pushbike.
Inside the can was a long-handled half pint dipper.
