Better than a Horse on a Merry-Go-Round

My grandfather Bert Cosham, with my cousin Barry Bond, in the lane, Princes Place, at the rear of his house at 94 Princes Street Port Melbourne in 1948. Along the lane is the wall at the rear of St Joseph’s Priory in Stokes Street, while the church hall in Rouse Street seems to be impaled by the chimney of Swallow and Ariell’s. I watched this chimney being demolished about 8 years later by a steeplejack sledgehammering the bricks from between his feet as he circumnavigated the lip.

At the time, my father had a wood delivery round and used to ‘garage’ the cart in the shed at my grandfather’s and ride the horse to a nearby stable.

Pop had been in the Navy as a young man before becoming a wharfie after World War 1. When I was a boy, we used to go to our grandparents’ place for tea every Sunday night. Pop had a cockatoo that used to squawk and swear and peck at the top of the paling fences. A layer of sheet metal soon stopped that!

Pop died of a heart attack in his backyard in 1961.

Barry and his family also lived in Port Melbourne, in Boundary Street. We had cousins all over Port, now there’s only two others remaining.

Glen Cosham