Neighbours
Living on Garfield Road, Bunyip, as it was known back in the 1960’s and 70’s, our house was always described as “the third house past the Bunyip Primary School” — the house with the big shed.
For this story’s memories the first house past the pine tree plantation was the O’Halloran family, the second house was the Tittertons, then came our house, and the fourth house belonged to the Gipps family. After that, there was little else until around the corner onto Garfield.
Many others have lived along this road since then, and now there are more houses in between, but this story is about the neighbours I remember from my childhood. In the 1960’s and early 70’s, neighbours were known well and friendships mattered.
On the Bunyip side there was Hazel Evelyn Prosser Titterton and Rupert Wilson Titterton.
Our parents, and certainly us children, would never have called these folk by their first names — it was always Mr and Mrs. For this story, forgive me for using their first names.
On the Garfield side there was George Herbert Plumtree Gipps and Margaret May Snowden Gipps.
Across the paddock, I would visit Maggie and George Gipps. Some days Maggie’s kitchen table would be loaded with cream puffs, cooling before being filled with fresh cream from the dairy.
Mr Gipps — or George, as he was known — was said to be connected to Sir George Gipps, the 9th Governor of New South Wales from 1838–1846. Gippsland itself was named by Sir Paweł Edmund Strzelecki in honour of Sir George Gipps.
Our George had some funny little habits. He would tip his tea into a saucer and drink it that way. He filed his only tooth with a real file. He sat at the kitchen table polishing eggs while waiting for the VEG truck to arrive and collect the chook eggs.
Walking across the paddock, watching out for snakes, then creeping quietly to the back door, trying not to wake the red heeler chained nearby, was always a challenge for us kids.
The Gipps family were wonderful folk — grandparent types. In 1970, Maggie knitted a beautiful layette and clothes for my new baby sister, and once Dad was paid with T-bone steaks, which Maggie kindly looked after in her freezer.
The Tittertons were wonderful neighbours too. Often Hazel would have a little roadside stall selling her fabulous green tomato pickles and the nicest passionfruit you could imagine. In those days it was simple — you left a coin and took what you needed. A simple walk up the road with our Afghan dog, Faiz, just to get some passionfruit, was a happy time. Except for the time he mistook my brown tights for a tree, yep you guessed it….
Rupert Titterton would often be inside studying his race papers.
The Tittertons had a television, and as we did not yet have one ourselves, that was where we watched the boxing matches in the 1960’s, especially the Johnny Famechon and Lionel Rose fights.
Growing up on our five acres, Tarwin Farm — known as Rose Farm in my storytelling — gave us many lovely memories.
But memories of neighbours, good neighbours, are something truly special.Rose Farm is often featured in Henry the Bunyips story’s Remembering Henry has a webpage with his stories and more www.henrythebunyip.com
Happy Saturday afternoon #lovealwayshenry♥️#storybydaffy📝#picbyai