by Cam Lucadou-Wells and Narelle Coulter
Geoffrey WACHTER
21/11/1932 – 05/09/2024
A widely respected Noble Park ex-teacher with an extensive record of the town’s early history has died.
Geoff Alan Wachter, 91, passed away on 5 September, prompting fond tributes from neighbours, friends and his former woodwork students.
The author of The Town of Noble Park and Some of its Early Families was six when his family arrived in the suburb in 1938.
Wachter’s parents Fred and Clarice had bought their home in Stuart Street sight unseen.
When the family arrived they discovered the house was uninhabitable because of the previous owner’s extensive menagerie.
Stoically, they erected a tent in the yard and the cleaning and fumigating commenced.
“It was much later that we discovered that this was the house that Joseph Bunn, the ‘Bush Baptist’ had built and lived in,” Wachter wrote in his book.
His parents ran a green-grocer business in the James building in Douglas Street.
As a boy he helped deliver the weekend orders in a horse and cart.
His rare grasp of Noble Park’s past extended to an album of valuable old photographs of Noble Park, which create a portrait of the past which is unrecognisable today.
In his shed was a bird egg collection that he started as a boy clambering up the plentiful river red gum trees more than 70 years ago.
“Parents would go mad these days if they saw the trees we used to climb,” Wachter told Star Journal in 2017.
“There were a heck of a lot of birds in those days – sparrows, blackbirds, willy wagtails, gold finches.
“There were trees here then. Now the trees are gone and birds are gone.”
On Noble Park’s “jug chimney” house, Wachter was full of details in 2021.
He had worked for the home’s builder and first resident Peter ‘Mick’ Jarvie.
Delving into the mystery, he told Star Journal that ‘Jarvie’s Jug’ was built as a “whimsical expression”.
It was a tribute to the “amber fluid” that flowed during so-called ‘church services’ in the garage on Sunday mornings when the pubs were closed.
“His neighbours were observed arriving with a brown paper bag under their arms. They did not contain bibles but the contents clinked,” Wachter said.
Wachter recalled Noble Park as a “wonderful place to grow up”.
He remembered riding the family horse to be shod by blacksmiths in Dandenong and Springvale.
“You’d hop on bareback, drop it off at the blacksmith and wander around town. Get back on and ride home.
“Very few families had cars.”
“It was a pleasant little town,” he said.
“Everything was here. As a boy I had the freedom to hop on my bike and disappear. We’d come home again at sunset.”
A funeral service will be held on Thursday 12 September at Tobin Brothers Currents of Life Chapel, 505 Princes Highway, Noble Park
