Catherine Hannah Stuart was my grandmother. (Gladesdale Dairy, 273 Bridge Street) The dairy started in Bridge Street in 1921 when she moved from Graham Street.

Her husband was a hairdresser and had his business next to the Clare Castle Hotel, where the bistro now is, it was once the bottle shop. My father, William Raeburn, was born 1904, educated at Graham Street School and passed his Merit Certificate in 1918. He went to work in Woodruff's Dairy and started as a milkman.

Catherine's husband was killed in 1914, when his son was only 10. He had gone to the city to buy a ball of string for his son. On the tram coming home he thought the tram was about to crash with a car and jumped off into the path of the car and was killed instantly. They found the ball of string still in his pocket.

Auntie Mary lived in Bridge Street with my grandma. She was Mary Glen, hence my own first name, and was grandma's sister.

After working for Woodruff's for three or four years Rae started the dairy in 1923 at 273 Bridge Street, building the brick dairy across the back of the block with good access from the lane at the back. There was a boiler, bottling room, cool store and a small yard. Why he chose the name Gladesdale is not known. His round was in Bridge, Derham, Raglan, one side of Ross and later the flats in Williamstown Road. The dairy closed in 1954. Jack Woodruff had extended the Superior Dairy in that year and offered to buy Rae out and have him come in as a working director. This was a very good move for Rae as he had been working very hard and without any holiday breaks.

Rae used to get his milk delivered in the early afternoon from Bacchus Marsh and some from Laverton. He had a freezer. He delivered milk seven days a week, commencing work at 3:30 in the morning. His mother worked very hard with him, getting up at 3:30 too. We all used to help, especially washing bottles by hand.

Grandma was a little energetic woman and very deaf. She was quite bombastic. If Dad was not at work by 3:35am then she would walk round to our house in Ross Street and belt on the front window of the room where Mum and Dad were sleeping. She started bottling the milk at 3:30, I have no idea how she reached up to pour the milk into the bottling machine, she was so tiny.

When Rae first began the dairy he had a horse and gig but later bought a float, low to the ground. His first horse was Goatie but the second one was a brute of a horse, it was very wild. The stables were off Albert Street, behind the first house in Farrell Street, they were a big two storey building with the hay loft above. In February 1951 Melbourne was hit with a big rain and wind storm, half Melbourne suburbs were flooded. Someone came running to the house to say that the stables had been blown down. Rae, with we two boys ran from Ross Street, fearing that the horse had been killed. To his surprise it was alive under the roof but very frightened. Rae was not confident with horses but my mother Florence Margaret had been brought up in the country near Violetown and could do anything with a horse. Sometimes when the horse was in a bad mood, Rae would have to call on her to put it into the traces for him.

We used to help Dad on the rounds, especially at week-ends. People used to leave money for milk in the bottom of the billy and Dad used to say to us, make sure the billy is empty before you put anything in it. After Rae finished his house rounds, about 10:00 am, he began delivering to the factories along Williamstown Road where the biggest trade was in half pint bottles. Mother used to bottle the half pints in the morning.

All the bottles were sealed with cardboard tops, which came in a sheet and had to be pressed out, then stamped with Gladesdale Dairy. For years I used to have wads of them in the house but now perhaps they have all been cleaned away.

Mum would go down to the dairy from the Ross Street house when we had gone off to school, to wash and sterilise bottles and mind the dairy shop while Rae did the factory round.

For almost all the years that Gladesdale Dairy operated Rae did not have so much as a day off, although we would help him on a Saturday to enable him to finish in time to get to the Port Melbourne Bowling Club for the afternoon's matches. Each year Florence would take us kids on the train for a two week holiday after Christmas with her family in Murchison, travelling by train from Spencer Street. It was a great treat. One year she decided that Rae should have a holiday and organised for a neighbour, Claudie Butcher, to help her with the cans so that she could do his rounds while he was away. She announced all these arrangements to him when they were completed and off he went, his only holiday until he finally sold out to Woodruff's in 1954.