Growing up in Port Melbourne
Jim Sinclair
extracts from an interview conducted by John May and Janet Bolitho on 30 June 2020.
Where and when were you born Jim?
I was born in 1924 in Cruikshank St, in Port Melbourne. My father was a fireman at Eastern Hill Fire Station. I don’t know what my mother did when she was working. She must of (worked) before she was married.
When did you move into Graham St?
I can’t remember living in Cruikshank St. They had married quarters at Eastern Hill but for whatever reason, my father lived up there and my mother and I lived with our grandmother at 145 Graham St. It made for a little strange life in some ways.
What are your memories of living in Port?
Almost universally good. I can look back on those days in Port with very fond memories. We lived differently in those days. All the people I knew – we lived in each others houses. The doors weren’t shut. We played football over there. Wasn’t a Lagoon Oval, just a piece of grass.
We played football in the street, we played cricket in the street. Graham St was a very wide street.
We had lots and lots of fun. We made our own fun. We formed our own football team. We called ourselves Graham United and we all joined the Lifesaving Club. Anything that was going we would be in it.
That area was just really good, you know. There was a youth centre that was open called the Port Melbourne Scout Settlement1. It was fostered by the Headmasters Association of public schools. It was a terrific club. We all joined it. It was a club that fostered you to take charge of things, you know. I looked after the library, for instance, somebody else looked after different things. You made most of the decisions. It was supervised of course. Unfortunately the war came along.
Where did you go to school?
I was different to most of my friends. I went to Albert Park to the little school in Pickles St there. That was the junior school. Then the next school was Albert Park in Victoria Parade (Avenue) and I went from there to South Tech.
I walked across (Lagoon Reserve) there in the laneway that was in the Gasworks. I walked through there to school. More often than not if the sun was shining, I’d lie on the grass and count the crows.
School was pretty uneventful. One of the things I was proud of was playing in the band at Albert Park. I played the cornet. We played the usual that you play in a school band – very terribly.
But there was another lad who was quite a good musician. He was going to join Port Melbourne brass band. He said ‘how about I go along with him’. It was great! We used to march up Bay Street. I don’t think I ever played a note. I was about 4 foot nothing! We’d play down in the rotunda. We used to go on the Weeroona on the moonlight trips and they had dances and that was really good. Just used to eat a lot of ice cream. Don’t think I played a note in that either. But unfortunately, when I left Albert Park to go to Tech I had to hand in the instrument. It was theirs.
When I started at Sharps2, I actually earned less than when I’d been selling papers! I had quite a successful newspaper career. I started selling newspapers down the far end of Graham St down toward Williamstown Road. I had a couple of stands – two hotels on each corner, a stand down at the Pier when the visiting ships were and a stand at Graham St station so I was employing a couple of fellows. I was twelve, I suppose.
I did see some decent brawls at the (Graham) hotel and they were mainly gasworkers. There must have been something going on on strike or something. We used to go down with a wheelbarrow and get bags of coke and things like that.
We lived quite close to the police station. We used to go on Frosts corner or over the church corner cut off long bench thing sitting there. It was ideal for it. Policeman would come over as a matter of course and say ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Nothing’. They’d say ‘Well it’s about time you went home’. Same thing used to happen at South Melbourne Market and the policeman would say ‘Where are you kids from?’ They knew where we were from. We’d say ‘from Port’. We used to have trouble with some of the kids.
We had so many different adventures. Over the tip!
Fishermans Bend was a place for adventure. We used to go over there, ride our bikes on the mud flats.
We’d chase rats right down in Lorimer St where they used to tie up the old ships. Rifle butts was another one, yea, and along the beach where we were the only ones there apart from the people living in the shanties. You’d get chased out every now and then. Waving to us to get out and we’d be waving to them.
It was great. Yes, it was great.
Jim Sinclair 1 August 1924 – 11 September 2020
1 The Port Melbourne Scout Settlement, Scouts Victoria
2 Jim worked for John Sharp & Sons, Timber Merchants
