Published on Tuesday, 26 August 2025 at 10:18:56 AM
This week we continue our celebration of the recent 2025 Local History Awards. Last week we began our look at entries made into the Personal Memoirs category and this week we feature Part Two of Hilary Williams recollections of being a ten-pound Pom and childhood days and fun growing up in Carlisle.
Personal Memoirs
“The Way We Were” – by Hilary Williams
-Part Two-
Sundry Nostalgic Memories
Friends owned The Carlisle Milk Depot, the Doney family. It was run from the corner of Bishopsgate and Archer, including cool room and stables. Then, milk was in bottles, delivered on the doorstep in the middle of the night and the horses all knew their own rounds. The three sons had larger than usual gaps between fingers from carrying four, one pint bottles at a time in their hands for verandah delivery, and fence hopping to next door, so as not to have to run back to the cart. In helping at times I learned to step backwards off a moving cart! That way one did not fall on one’s face!! The house is now a brightly painted physiotherapy clinic in the classic asbestos, weatherboard and tile style of the day.
Dr Laidlaw, nearby, whose surgery, also in Archer, would call at your house when required. Litis Brothers, was a greengrocer which morphed to a furniture and electrical store and is now Bella Rosa Café. I believe it is still owned by the Litis family. We would grab a string bag, pedal up to that shop, buy greengroceries as required and put them on the spring loaded carrier at the back or basket at the front of the bike. Also well remembered is the joy and unbelievable taste of the first icypole made in our own fridge in a tiny freezer section about 30cms x 30cms. The Iceman no longer called with his shouldered hessian padded bag and enormous block of ice, to put in the icebox compartment.
PH00461-05 Mary Crawford and her children in their backyard. From left to right.
This photographed depicts members of the Crawford family in their backyard at Planet Street, Carlisle c1953. From Left to Right: Andrew, Mary, Jill (aka Hilary) and Lorna Crawford. Notice the pre-Hills Houst clothesline.
Local History Collection, Town of Victoria Park Library Service.
Schooling Back in the Day
Carlisle Primary was my start, followed by the second intake to the brand new Belmont High in 1957. But it was still not completed yet and would only go to third year… i.e. Junior Level. That second year of students were bussed from their previous primary e.g. Belmay, Lathlain, Rivervale, Belmont etc. to the Old Midland High building for a year till the new High School was finished.
Two years later, in the pre-Xmas traditional Year 10 school holiday employment, my first full pay packet, including Saturday morning was four pounds six and eighty pence. This was at Coles when it was located opposite where the Woolworths complex still is, and the Commonwealth Bank a couple of doors up… now a Gym!! Coles moved up the road and took residence in the old East Vic Park Primary location, which was relocated in Beatty St. I tell friends I used to play primary school netball in Coles…It is true.
Our house was on the boundary of the division between Governor Stirling intake and Kent St intake for Year 11, and either way was maximum travel for me in the transition to Year 11. Daunting for a 15 year old with most friends going to Gov. Stirling and a Mum with MND. Finally, to complete my schooling I lived with my music teacher in Armagh St, pedalling up the Berwick St hill to Kent St Senior High, to unsuccessfully complete 5th year leaving. Term socials were held in the very modest church hall on the Rathay St corner of Berwick with the annual big, end of year effort, at South Perth Civic Centre. I swam in the very new Kent St Swimming Pool, passed my Bronze Star as I was too young to do the full Bronze Medallion. The brand new pool, was also a useful close option to the Springs. Ascot and Como, in the river for swimming. Money necessity took me immediately north to work as a governess. My brother, now finished at Graylands Teachers College became a primary teacher and was one of the very early teachers at the fairly new Lathlain Primary. So much for the childhood school experiences.
Entertainment
Entertainment pre-television, apart from sport, clubs and pubs, and games with friends… was the movies at the local theatres. In our area it was the Carlisle RSL Hall (no part of the Harold Hawthorne Centre) with deckchairs outside in the summer. The Archer Gardens at Orrong and along with Bunnings, Petbarn and the Harper Business Building were the further theatre locations. Yes, they were originally movie theatres back in the day. There were double feature showings like most old suburban theatres, with films such as the Doctor series and Genevieve. We scout walked or biked in the afternoon or night, to and from, stopping for a shillings worth of hot salty chips, wrapped in butcher paper and finally layers of newspaper. They stayed hot all the way home.
All of these slowly dies as TV proliferated. Fortunately the stately classic hotels on the highway have been preserved for that form of traditional entertainment, with mostly only the facilities changed to comply with consumer demand. A circumstance common to all old suburbs.
PH00461-03 Mary and John Crawford outside the GPO in Perth, c1954.
Local History Collection, Town of Victoria Park Library Service.
A Long While Later
After long and varied life in Melbourne and country stints, marriage, Lancelin and child, I returned to this area to experience the burgeoning mining industry, and development of neighbouring Belmont and Kewdale making the Rivervale Pub, in due course, the Empire Bar in Lathlain a post race and mining industry focussed leisure destination. This was about 50 years ago. I was housed in 3 Rowe Avenue before the remarkable unit and other infill housing development in that area exploded and also at an Archer Street duplex, and Cookham St in Lathlain. Thus the periodic ongoing familiarity at times was more noticeable to me, but like the whole metro area, inexorable, incredible infill, modernisation, change of business common to all suburbia existed Vic Park was morphed, embracing the very old and new requirements of the area, along with diverse classes… Makes it interesting I think.
This all in turn also changed the face of The Town of Vic Park, as a business feeder area to the industrialising Belmont and proximity to the buzzing Welshpool. These also had a unique closeness to Perth central. The biggest transition to me over extended time is from European migrant activity, to the increasing Asian population evident in the choice of eating and suppliers in the Cage strip. I comment that you can dine in a different country every night for more than a month. Nevertheless, Sebastians, Catalanos and also Brandos persist to add more diversity, there seems to be a very vibrant, positive and social influence. The area seems to have a unique mix of aged like me and very young, FIFO, professionals of all stripes, social housing and has a life and personality of its own, one only has to walk down the street, any street, particularly close to Albany Hwy for this to be evident…
Next Wave
Great Eastern Highway has seen massive transformation from being what is now Burswood Pde, framing a picturesque, well appointed and much used park. Burswood is now on the riverside, replacing the delightful rubbish dump, Swan Portland Cement and Hamburger Hill. Gone forever, the replacement being a massive noisy traffic artery now present, serving north and east. But we have the inimitable Burswood, Optus complex and developments to the river. Also the North Freeway complexes serve coastal north and west links. This I know as a retiree, returned resident of Vic Park, I use the G O Edwards dog park regularly at all times of day. It is hard to remember Hamburger hill for late night eating, with the Burger caravan on the hill in front of the unsightly but extensive Cement Works, after passing the rubbish dump of course. I find to be the outstanding the interesting patchwork charm of the growth and change of this area, from the unchanging omnipresent John Hughes Motors… Surely an immovable icon of the area, to the high rise, long standing social housing with little charm, in streets with ancient peppermint trees with massive girths, cut down to size, so as not to interfere with power lines. Charming past tense now defunct corner shops with bird motifs brighten up the scenery. I will do one more spot of Vic Park name dropping in my memoir. In Year 11 and 12 at Kent Street I shared classes with Jenny Rossiter, whose father was another Vic Park civic icon and small corner shop owner and also with Brian, the son of Sir David Brand. Lady Meagher, 2nd wife of Sir Thomas Meagher, esteemed Doctor and also Lord Mayor, who practiced in Albany Hwy for many years was partly in my care in her dying year but that was very many decades later. The links keep happening without intention.
Places
Pubs have remained stalwart, Carlisle, Broken Hill, Victoria Park and Balmoral, reflecting their original very early Vic Park historic character, with progressive business practices to adapt to the times. Private schools tucked in midst the infill and St Joachim’s with superb views, a Catholic icon standing defiantly on the hill. The diversity of the infill, neglect of some unlucky dilapidated once pretentious homes, intricate renovation of others within the council parameters. Unit development of every style and calibre. Then there are those homes, the just plain always cared for, from the early 1900’s residences. Evan vacant blocks hopefully waiting profitable transformations, trimmed increasingly with for lease and sale signs. Other buildings have come and gone like the infamous Brownleigh Towers now demolished as a cess pit of crime. I lived there without any real concern on the 9th floor with my 11 year old son, after finishing Muresk in 1982.
In moving back to Vic Park as a Senior Citizen, the ease and choice of services of the area is becoming evident, I do believe in my recent year of residence, it does cater well to we oldies. This then is one of the changes or indeed a continuation of the wide spectrum of convenient services for all ages with the trendy coffee shops and businesses and diverse eateries and health services concentrated from the Causeway to Welshpool Rd in a smorgasbord of choice.
Boorloo Bridge now offers a new picturesque book end on the Perth side should one want more than the Burswood Complex offers in progressive breathtaking diversity.
End of Memoirs
This interesting exercise will never be complete, the more you delve, the more you are tempted to add. But there must be and end and this is it. My head has spun enough.”
-End of Part Two-
Next week’s #TimeWarpTuesday will feature a different entry from the Personal Memoirs category as we continue our journey back through time in the lives lived in Victoria Park and Suburbs.
We hope you are enjoying this celebration of Local History, and the work of those who have taken the time, talent and energy to submit entries into the 2025 Local History Awards and thus helped us record our stories for the benefit of all those to come. We can tell the stories, because you care and have shared with us in the first place.
#LoveVicPark
PH00461-08 Hilary (aka Jill) Crawford
NB.: Original is printed on computer paper and has been damaged by some liquid in the past. Photo is as it appears in a birthday card made for Hilary by her brother Andy, on the occasion of her 72nd Birthday.
Local History Collection, Town of Victoria Park Library Service.
Back to All News