An afternoon in the Park
My mother Molly Lowrie, aged about 8, with her younger sisters Nancy, Betty, Patsy and Lorna taken in the Crichton Reserve, opposite their home at Princes Street Port Melbourne, in 1929. While the two-storey Nott Street School building in the background still survives, all four homes visible on the Stokes Street side of the reserve have now been demolished.
At that young age, Molly was already fulfilling the role of a “little mother”, good training as my grandmother went on to have a further 6 babies over the next 8 years. Twenty years later I was born, and for the first 19 years of my life, my family lived opposite this same reserve, next door to my mother’s previous home, at 249 Princes Street. This playground with its swings, slide, monkey bars, rocking horse and see-saw was our “backyard”.
Sadly, none of the sisters still survives, with the death in 2016 of my Auntie Patsy.
Glen Cosham
5 Comments
Steve Coyne
Hi Glen,
As I was searching for old photos of the Nott St State School your image from 1929 came up. What a wonderful surprise! There, at the far right of your photograph is 238 Stokes St where I lived with my mother from mid-1958 when I was 7, until mid-1964 when I was 13. The double-gabled house next door was where our kind neighbours, Kit and Arthur Turner, lived for decades. Arthur worked for the local council. Next door to them lived a Polish family with a daughter named Irene. And next door to them, in the last house before Farrell St., lived a woman named Dolly who charged the Turners to garage their car in her large corrugated iron shed on the corner of Farrell St. The school crossing was on that corner and I remember that the crossing flags, that are everywhere today and almost professionally managed, were a new safety feature and the responsibility of the ‘flag monitor’. Always seemed a bit of a flash job, grander than milk or ink monitor, but up there with the band members who drummed us into class after the “I love god and my country . . .” routine in front of the flag rostrum.
Steve Coyne, Sassafras.
Brenda
Hi,
I’m researching the Winslade Family that lived @ 46 The Bend back in the 1950’s. They also had a Son that died in a motorbike accident.
Thanks Brenda
David Thompson
Hi Brenda,
We’ll see what we can find in our archives and contact you directly via email.
David Thompson
Volunteer, PMHPS
christian patton
My great great grandfather John Charles Lowrie was a shipwright in Port Melbourne.
I wonder if you guys have any info?
David Thompson
Thanks Christian,
We’ll see what we can find out and let you know.