My Memories of Poulter Ave Residents
By Norm Colvin
Main St corner - Originally an old hand made brick house with a slate roof. The colour of the bricks was pale orange, which usually indicates a low firing temperature of the bricks. The house was owned by Barrett’s and occupied by a family called Drysdale.
Later the site was sold and developed as a Caltex Service Station by Ken Tilley. A later owner was Ivan Martell. It is now owned by Michael Karagiannis and is a series of shops and offices the most prominent of which is Beaurepaires.
The house at top right is the corner house.
2 Poulter Ave - Originally Barrett land and subdivided about 1955, it remained as an empty block with a large peppercorn in the middle and a lovely old gum tree on the Poulter Ave frontage, now a car park and de facto road exit for north bound traffic out of Poulter Ave.
4 Poulter Ave - The original house was built in the late 1950’s and owned by Mr Bill and Mrs Emily Barrett (Roy). Bill Barrett died in 1963. Later when Mrs Barrett moved out in the mid 60’s the house was rented to a number of couples.
The first couple were the McMahon’s briefly while they completed building a house on Hobson St and Adeline St corner.
Then the newly wedded Dennis and Colleen Whelan (Ward) lived there. Their son Stephen was born during this time. Dennis liked to go shooting and ferreting, he used to take me sometimes. He dried skins in the back shed and I think he sold them to the hat factory. They later moved to Sellars St. Dennis also held a black belt in judo and later ran a judo training club.
After them were Stan and Joan Crawford. They were a Northern Irish couple. Stan worked for the MMBW as an excavator operator. They had a son David while they lived here.
Finally, in 1978, the house was sold to another newly married couple and a relative of the Barrett’s. John Hooper a great grand nephew of Mrs Barrett bought the property. John extended the house twice to its current size.
He and his wife Karyn nee Raines lived there until 2006. They had 2 children namely, Sean and Renee. I still see John, Sean and Renee on a regular basis. John grew up in Watsonia and had attended Dennis Whelan’s judo club in Sellars St in the 1970’s.
In 2006 the house was sold to a property developer, namely Michael Karagiannis who plans to demolish it and build a 4 storey unit block there. This has been ongoing since about 2008. The house has been used as a short term rental property during this ownership so it is hard to keep up with them.
6 Poulter Ave – Originally subdivided by Bill Barrett in December 1955, it was sold to a family called Rowley who lived there until 1959. They had a few children and later moved to Nth Balwyn to a larger house.
In December 1959 Norm and Marie Colvin moved there from Ivanhoe. They had been renting near Norm’s mother’s home, but Lizzie had passed away and the family house sold, so Norm got a War Service Loan and bought at Greensborough.
Dad was the local State Savings Bank(SSB) Clerk of Works. (Building Inspector), he would look after the interests of those who were building homes with an SSB loan. His area extended from Oak Park to Hurstbridge and from Doncaster Templestowe to Lalor. He visited about 6 job sites a day.
Thus I moved there as a four year old. I was enrolled at the new kindergarten in Ester St for the 1960 year and there I met some friends I still have today, but more of that another time. Back then it was closer to the Henry St corner.
My dad died at home in 1972 and mum lived there until 1997 when she moved to an aged hostel in Reservoir where she lived until her passing in 2007. But I am still here.
8 Poulter Ave – Originally Barrett land and subdivided about 1955. The owner builder was Alwyn Higgins. I knew Alwyn as a widower with a number of older children. The youngest was Lindsay who was still living at home until he married Pat Leaford in the mid 1960’s.
Alwyn remarried in the late 1960’s to a lady called Gladys and then he died in 1973. Gladys had the use of the house until her death in 1992. At that time the property was sold to developers and it is now 3 units. The front unit has had only one tenant in that time. The other two have had multiple owners and tenants.
10-14 Poulter Ave – In 1959 the first people we met were from that house. Mum had a chat with the recently married Joy Leaford, who mentioned she had a younger brother about my age, namely Chris.
Jock and Sylvia Leaford and family had moved to Greensborough in 1945 from Mildura. Jock was a mechanic and came down to work with his brother in law at Albert’s Service station on the Grimshaw St, Church St corner. This was later the Mobil. Originally they rented the house and later bought it. They had 11 children in all and 7 are still alive.
The land they bought originally extended through to Joyce Ave and Jock used to grow corn on the back block. Later they sold it to Arnold White who built a white weatherboard house. Arnold worked for the SEC in Greensborough.
Leafords’ owned this property until Sylvia died in 199?.
The property was sold and since then a number of occupants have been there. In 2014 an attempt to sell it at auction attracted a lot of interest, but failed to meet the reserve. The house is still there today and empty.
14 & 16 Poulter Ave, showing Railway Transformer building
16 Poulter Ave – Apparently this house was built in 1914/15 by Hans Maurer.
In my time this house was owned by Bluey Diamond and his wife. I remember them as a friendly older couple. Their block went through to Joyce Ave like the Leaford block. The house has a distinctive diamond shape to the roof and can be seen alongside the Leaford house in the 1945 aerial photograph.
Diamond’s had a row of plum trees along the fence line with the paddock and we used to feast on them in season.
Railway Yards – Across the road was the railway goods siding. Briquettes were unloaded there along with wheat and other seasonal bulk goods. The Connell family from Nell St had the contract for the briquettes which was the main product delivered. The ground was covered with a mixture of briquette dust and crushed basalt. It is now the railway car park.
Greensborough Railway siding
20 Poulter Ave – In my youth this was a paddock. We called it “Pope’s First Paddock” because it was closer to our homes. It had a gully running through it and this was an extension of the one behind the Main St shops. It is now a barrel drain and largely forgotten to those who never saw it.
Above the top of the gully was a ring of quince trees and the cattle or horse would use it as a shelter. There were a lot of quince trees in Greensborough then.
Mr Pope had a horse called Teddy and he was easy to pat and feed. My cousins from St Kilda thought it was marvellous having a horse just down the road and would want to go there first when they visited.
In the late 1960’s the Pope family sold out and the paddock was developed by the Shire of Diamond Valley as Elderly Citizens units.
2 Pope Place – What is now Pope Place was formerly a section of Flintoff St. The cream brick house was built by Pope’s in the late 1950’s and in the late 1960’s sold to a family called McPhee. In 2015 Mr McPhee sold out and I don’t know who lives there now. I only knew him to say hello to.
This block is on the edge of the high ground and at the top of Lejins’ Hill and Pope’s Hill. Lejins’ Hill was the hill down Poulter Ave and Popes’ Hill the stretch down Pope Place. Both were good for billy cart races, although Pope’s preferred we use Lejins’ Hill as it wasn’t in their working space.
Lejins Hill from Bonnie Vale. C 1950’s
Poulter Reserve – The area known as Poulter Reserve was known to us as “Pope’s Second Paddock”. This is low lying ground and was annually flooded by the Plenty River. There was an old corrugated iron canoe, kept by Mr Pope. He let us use it on the river and even gave us some tar to plug holes in it. I now believe this was made by Atis Lejins older brother in the 1940’s.
In the centre of the paddock towards the Rand St end there was a raised mound or small hill. This had a raised causeway type drive leading to it and the ruins of building foundations on it. Events in the last month (June 2016) have revealed the origins of these.
Originally there was a house on the hill called “Bonnie Vale” built by William Poulter in the 1850’s. We now know that among its later tenants were the parents of Matt Craig and the Lejins family. Apparently it was burnt down in about 1959.
In order to create Poulter Reserve, clean fill was added to the site to raise and level it and thus obliterate all remnants of its history.
Beyond the Rand St crossing the ground rises above flood level. In 1922 William H Poulter sub divided the land into the “River Garden Estate”.
River Garden Estate map
54 Poulter Ave –
56 Poulter Ave –
58 Poulter Ave – Jack Gibbs and family lived here.
60 Poulter Ave –
62 Poulter Ave – Youngs?
64 Poulter Ave –
Memories of Bicton Ave Residents
High side blocks
7 Bicton St
9 Bicton St
11 Bicton St
15 Bicton St - Parkland and walking path.
River side blocks
2 Bicton St – 1960’s Pringle family
4 Bicton St – Fleming family
6 Bicton St- Drodge family, Dutch immigrants.
8 Bicton St – Mason family
10 Bicton St – Douglas family, Sharman was in my class at 2062 and WHS.
12 Bicton St -
14 Bicton St -
16 Bicton St -
18 Bicton St – Curtis family lived here 1960-70’s. Jenny was in my class at 2062 and WHS.
View of 18 Bicton St, Rand St and across to Lejins’ Hill and Watson Holden.
20 Bicton St – Flood prone ground, parkland.