I was born in 1949 and spent the first 20 years of my life living with my parents at the rear of their grocery shop (Garnett’s store) at 152 James Street, New Farm. I attended the New Farm State School which was just up the road, as was the Church our family attended twice every Sunday, the Kingsholrne Methodist Church.
In my early years, the powerhouse, the sugar refinery and the woolstores at New Farm and the railway yards at Newstead were still operating. From an early age, I learned to ride the old shop bike (heavy frame and no gears) and after school, on holidays and weekends, a lot of time was spent on my bike. There was no hill in New Fann or Teneriffe that I could not negotiate. Teneriffe Drive was always a good challenge up but great to come down.
Many, many hours were spent following trains delivering wool etc to the wool stores and supplies to the powerhouse and sugar refinery. The train drivers and their helpers got to know me as often I would ‘race’ the train to its next destination. The train lines ran along both sides of the road and the lines crossed the road regularly. These had to be carefully negotiated on the bike. A reward for my interest in the trains was to allow me one day to sit in the driver’s seat of the steam train and drive the train accros Breakfast Creek Road. In those days, one of the train men would walk in front of the train with a red flag and large hand bell to stop the cars using Breakfast Creek Road.
One of my many jobs at my parents’ shop was to help Dad deliver groceries to the customers. One of the companies that provided lunch and snacks to the wool buyers attending the sales at the woolstores was a customer of our shop. The orders were taken over the phone, packed into large cardboard boxes and delivered in our Holden Station Wagon to the woolstore. In front of each woolstore was a long platform where the train carriages loaded with wool bales were shunted to allow for easy loading and unloading, all of which was done by hand using two wheeled trolleys.
From memory, the lunch room was located on the third floor of one of these buildings and access was gained by using the old type lifts that had the two door system of closing: the outer wooden door and inner steel concertina steel-grated door, both of which had to be securely closed before the lift would operate. As the boxes of groceries were very heavy with lots of tinned jams etc, Dad always parked as close as he could to the door which was adjacent to the lift. A two wheeled trolley which we could use was always left by the lift. Parking the car was always a difficult manoeuvre. It could not be parked on the train lines for obvious reasons, but also had to be far enough from the lines to allow the trains to pass without them hitting the car. Also, as a lot of trucks used the road, the car could not be left too far out on the road.
There were a few occasions when we were upstairs and could hear train whistles blowing signaling obstruction on the line. We had to check to see if we were the problem and sometimes we were the guilty party. Negotiating the heavy boxes through parked carriages was often tricky and it was very difficult lifting the heavy containers up onto the high platform. I was always worried that one day a train would hit our car, but it never did. On some occasions we had to do a small urgent delivery. This was left up to me while Dad stayed in the car. This was both exciting
and scary for me. I always worried about getting stuck in the lift or not being able to find ‘Mrs Anderson’, the lunch room supervisor, who would take delivery of the goods and pay for them.
I can still remember the smell of the wool, the greasy wooden floors, the wool spilling out onto the walkways through the open bales and all the men from overseas countries looking at the hundreds of bales on offer for sale. The smell from the coal fired steam trains would often linger along the woolstores and in the buildings. There was always a lot of activity happening inside and outside the buildings.
When not following trains on my bike, I would ride the gauntlet of the tunnels at the rear of the woolstore buildings trying not to be seen by the workmen unloading the wool from the trucks. These tunnels were located at the rear of the first woolstores that commenced near the old tram terminus at the end of Merthyr Road and ran all
the way to Beeston Street.
TIme was also spent under the wharves trying to avoid being seen by the wharfies loading the ships. What we got up to under the wharves is another story.
– Jeff Garnett, 30/06/2010