SYDNEY SIDE WITH JANET PARK Costly dirt in Dandenongs

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33819, 16 April 1975, Page 6

SYDNEY SIDE WITH JANET PARK Costly dirt in Dandenongs

In Sydney my suit, even with a sleeveless skivvy under it, looks i ridiculous. It is a hot I blue day as we head for the airport. “You want the International?” asks the taxi driver eyeing our clothes (and the overseas airline bag ' that holds, alas, not the long I flight necessities but the (overlooked last minute J throw-ins. We tell him, no, ( 'we are going to Melbourne. I He accepts that; it explains: (everything. c Six hundred and some- ' I thing miles away in the 'iDandenong Ranges my suit ( still looks ridiculous and 1 | . ut on my coat. Everyone ' else is rugged up in thick ■! coats, sweaters and woolly ’leaps. ; ( But if it is cold up in 1 “them hills” there is gold as; (well. There always was. of (course. Little specks of it J| still drift up in the creeks il round about. But it is dirt .’(that fetches the money now. HThe price of even a modest (block of land has skyrocketed as we have disr'covered having gone up .(there this time to assist at a ijkind of wake, settling up the •'(sale of the little house we ■'have owned down here for •Ithe last 17 odd years. ' CHOCOLATE BOX J There have been other '(visits of course. Once with ißikki a young ginger tom cat, who spat and scrambled (round the car until we found (an old coat to use as a kind I of straitjacket. He settled down and grew into a big (fluffy cat who could have (decorated a chocolate box 'lid but used to prowl in and (out of the bush chasing .things. There was the early i morning dash with eight : squawking black hens who ! were dumped into the old chicken run and went on to prove that if you want 'brown eggs all you need are i black chooks. I The bellbirds are still: chunking in the trees al-: though Bikki and the chooks • are no more. The view is; 'nearly as good as ever it! was. ’ But things have ■ i changed since we bought the place. Then the road was (gravel, you got rid of the (garbage as best you could and 'rank tank water. Neighbours were few and far between, about half a dozen within a couple of miles. Now, as the dusk comes down a dozen or more lights come on close by and one morning a house

goes up across the valley 11 (literally before our eyes. It'l (has come up from Mel-(l ! bourne overnight, in two ( (halves. In an hour they are(l slotted together and the nextli iday the van comes with the : furniture. i A car follows the woman 1 w-ho has the mail contract < on her rounds one morning. She is giving it up. When > she started, she says, she < : had only about 30 deliveries.;! Now there are over 100. if NO JELIVERIES But creeping subur-(, Ibanisation has taken lhe|, (local grocer the other way.j, (Once he spent all day Friday!, (delivering orders. Now, ex-: cept for a very few old cus-|, tomers, he does not deliver; . at 'all because so many) women are taking the lam-,, : ily’s' second car to pick up; the groceries themselves; ’ either from him or the;, supermarkets in neighbour- j i ing centres. ;; The daughter of the neigh-( ' bour in the new house on - the next block drives in to. ! the city each morning to ai t job that is “something to do; • with computers ” t The market gardener! ' round on the creek road re-( ’ tires, parcels up his land] ’ into house blocks and finds! 1 himself a wealthy man over-1' ‘ night selling dirt after a life- ’ time of precarious, nearr poverty selling cabbages and carrots. , And, yes, we have made a, r good price ourselves — i nearlv 10 times what we ! paid and feel slightly guilty 1 about it. Our purchaser is 1 from Melbourne, someone j who wants a quiet place tor 1 the week-ends and will per- , haps try his hand at making ’ mud bricks. He has seen it { being done and the resulting I houses, at. Eltharn on Mel- > bourne’s outskirts, some?l thing of an artists’ colony, II which • ith nearby Wari' randyte has some eart * l

! buildings that have become I i known as Australia’s “mud < brick palaces.” i The .dobe hacienda is no i longer just something in an i (old Gene Autry song, wattle i 'and daub no longer the last < resort of the shelter-needy but .on and environmentally conscious to boot. There are drawbacks to ' mud bricks, according to one 1 of the protagonists in an ari gument now going on in (Sydney, an esoteric dis-! icussion throwing doubt on; (whethei rushes for Sydney’s; (early dwellings were gath- . iered at Rushcutters Bay andi (whether reeds and bulrushes' (ever grew there at all. If they did not, then (someone is going to have to! (rewrite the Sydney folklore; (because Rushcutters Bay is! (supposed to have been; (named after a couple of; | rushcutters who were; ■speared to death there. I But the echoes of the Sydney argument have not' (reached our purchaser. Perhaps, as a man of the cloth,(' , he is familiar with the more I durable methods , of Biblical! (times. And mud bricks i ishould make an interesting' (contrast to the smart yellow (ones next door, the A-line i (house down the road, the Ilog cabin on the corner, all the white paint and new

iron lace, the fawn bricks' and red cedar that are typi-J cal of the suburban sprawl. reaching round this bend of; the road and promising, soI some say gloomily, to be the death of Billy. PUFFING BILLY Billy, it seems, is running out of bush. Not. on our road but all the way back to Belgrave along his narrow gauge line, for Puffing Billy is the little steam train that 40 years ago was the i regular train up into the hills. Now. preserved for the (last 30 years by the Puffing ! Billy Preservation Society, he runs school holidays and week-ends from Belgrave to [Ermerald as a joy ride. But (more and more of the scenic ibushland is being bulldozed' ' for houses. If something is! ■ not done soon at Government level, says the (society’s president (Mr A. P. Wymond) “Billy could soon (be running alongside backyards and clotheslines” in;stead of bush. ■ The society has bought (two blocks of land at Menizies Creek to save them. '“But we haven’t the money to buy up the whole route” says Mr Wymond. At the price of Dandenongs dirt these days that is not really surprising.