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> HISTORIES > ALISTER SKEEN
Biography of Alister Alexander Skeen
(31 May 1907 – March 1993)
At the request of some of my family I am making an attempt at putting
on paper what I remember of my parents and my own early background. On
a recent visit to sone Rodney in Canberra my youngest granddaughter, Danielle,
who ws born 9-9-76, showed me a school book whose outside cover was marked
‘me’. She was participating in a school project which one had
to set out the history of his or her life. Danny had started on where
she was born and christened, what she weighed at birth, etc and included
many snapshots on each page. On many pages ner teachers had written ‘Excellent’
and I thought too the book was terrific.
Talking about ‘me’ to Rodney he remarked that although my own
family all knew their mothers background from the book ‘Le Plastriers’,
very few knew much of mine and as my 81st is only a few days away –
here goes.
I have the death certificate of my father and mother. Matilda Skeen died
at Sale, Victoria on 12 March 1913, aged 26 years. My father David died
at Sale Hospital on 23 May 1927. If my reckoning is correct this means
father was born in 1848 and mother in 1887. I know my father had been
married before and his wife had died and they had no children. He also
had a foster son named Tom Austin, but I know nothing of his history.
Tim lived with us up until he joined the military force around 1914 and
he went overseas, married an English girl and brought her back home to
Australia after the war.
I was born at Sale, in that part of Victoria known as Gippsland, on May
31st 1907. At that time we lived at Stradbroke on a sheep property. Stradbroke
is south/west of Sale and not very far from that part of Victoria known
as the Ninety Mile Beach. No shops there then, everything needed had to
come from Sale by buggy or jinker. I can remember my mother vaguely because
I was only six years old when she died. I do remember some things very
clearly on that day though. Father had a sister who we called Aunty Birss
(surname) who lived on another sheep property within walking distance
of us. My brother Arnold (2 years younger than me) and my sister Laura
who was 2 years old, and I were left with Aunty Birss while father drove
our mother to Sale to see a dentist to have something done to her teeth.
Later that afternoon our Aunty got the three of us together and broke
the news she had received word that our mother had died in the dentist
chair. I can remember thinking to myself ‘How can you live without
a mother?’ The next day we were driven to Sale to some relatives
home and we were taken into a bedroom where my mother laid and each one
of us kissed her cold forehead. Unknown to me probably at that time our
mother had a sister named Aunty Mary Brambrook in New Zealand, who on
getting word of her sister Matilda’s death came straight home and
became our second mother. How lucky we were as Aunty Mary never married
and no one could have looked after us better over many years.
My grandfather was a Presbyterian minister in Scotland and brought his
family to Australia by sailing ship before the turn of this century. I
do not know the number in his family, but have a vague recollection of
sisters Aunty Birss, a Mrs Locobs and an Uncle Alec. My sister Laura being
older than me and living together later with Aunty Mary for so many years
knew family history much better than me but unfortunately now she is gone
I have no backstop. I can remember when I was very young that my father
told me they were the first SKEENS to come to Australia. Some years ago
when Peter and I were displaying some early pictures of Albury, supplied
by the Council for a unit at the Albury Airport, one was a picture of
Dean street and there was a shot of a building with a sign on the outside
wall ‘D.Skeen – Apothacotary and Veterinary Surgeon’. So
father may have been wrong. I am still vague about exactly how my father
came to meet Matilda but the story goes that mothers parents were both
killed involving horses bolting in a buggy and that she and Aunty waded
waist deep through swamps to get to friends. Matilda was taken in or adopted
by father. After his first wife died he married Matilda, and that must
have been around 1904. I gather Matilda’s death knocked my father
and so he and Aunty Mary moved us all from Stradbroke to a little place
named Mundo. It is on the main railway line between Sale and Bairnsdale.
We were again on a sheep property 2 or 3 miles north of the Munro Railway
Station. We 3 Skeens all started school there. There were two schools,
one beside the Munro Station and the other further north, but only one
teacher. He taught at one one day and the other the next. As we lived
midway between we went to them both. Can’t recollect the exact time
we were at Munro. I do remember some people named Andrews there who were
great friends of father and Aunty Mary. Many years ago I played bowls
against a chap of the same name and he well remembered the Skeen family.
This was the time of the first world war and father decided that because
of this, beef would be more in demand than mutton so we pulled up stakes
again and moved to Tragalgon. We moved into a house on a property beside
the main Traralgon/Melbourne Railway line. The three of us all commenced
School again at Traralgon Public about three minutes from us using shanks
pony of course. It was there that I remember our foster brother Tom Austin
coming to the school during playtime and bringing us sweets as he was
off to war and came to say goodbye. Aunty Mary always made up lunch for
us all to take to school. She baked all the bread and tended to us when
we had mumps, measles, toothache, or any other ills.
The High School was next to the Public School so after finishing 6th
grade I went to F Grade which is really 7th and then on to E (8th). I
left school on a Friday, started work on Monday at the Gippsland Trading
Co., a drapery footware store and was 14 years old on the Tuesday. At
the end of the week I got my first pay envelope – 12 shillings and
sixpence. Laura had a job there before me in the office. During this time
father’s health had deteriorated, and he had a couple of hearth attacks
and of course he was getting on in years too. We milked the cows, hand
separated and delivered milk to the Dairy Co. Things really didn’t
work out as father had expected. I had bought myself a bicycle and when
sixteen got my first long trouser suit and a job in a drapery store with
Mrs Muir at Morwell, some 8 miles west of Traralgon and on the main Railway
line to Melbourne. The salary was 3 pound per week for 48 hours –
a weeks work and late shopping night on Friday. For some months I bicylced
to and fro to work, sometimes I rode a grey mare we called Dolly, and
I would put her in a stable situated near my work. Doll was a marvellous
mare. We could harness her for the jinker and I can remember several times
using her to plough an acre or two using a single furrough plough. After
some time I gave up the long rides to work in favour of a boarding house
which I think was 25 shillings a week. During this time the open cut brown
coal mine was getting a bigger and bigger source of income to Morwell
shops. It was only a few miles north and they were going to build a new
township there called Yallourn. Most of the workers lived in tents and
there were hundreds of them, (workmen) many different nationalities too.
If they had a wife or kids they lived in corrugated iron shacks. It was
a real shanty town. Workers were paid fortnightly soon payday Mrs Muir
and I would pack two big suitcases with shirts, trousers, socks, boots
etc and around 4:30PM, I would lump these into a taxi and go hawking.
I would go from tent to tent open the cases on someone’s bunk and,
my goods would be allover the place amid dozens of prospective customers.
Sometimes the only light was from candles. Of course Mrs Muir had an inventory
of everything and often I would get back to the shop about 9 or 10 o’clock
with 90 to 100 pounds. We would pack the cases again the next day but
with towels, panties, kids clothes etc. Then off I would go again doing
the rounds of shanty homes picking up sales if the women had anything
left from their hubby’s pay the night before. That place at the time
was pretty rough. Squizzy Taylor would come up from Melbourne every paynight
and run a two-up school. I looked on from the sidelines now and again.
I’s getting a bit hazy about dates now. After leaving work at G.T.
Co. and later from Mrs Muir, I had good references from them both. In
those days these were very important and kept in one of my old wallets
but they must have got lost and I’m blaming Mum (Nancy) – God
bless her. But it must have been around this time that Aunty Mary decided
they would have to get out from the farm. She had been taking a course
by correspondence on chocolate making. It necessitated buying a table,
something like a card table but with a top that would take heat from a
primus or something like that underneath. Then you put the choc bars on
top of the table to melt. There were some sort of moulds you used to put
the melted chocolate in, put a walnut or almond on top and hey presto
– I often helped her make these. She bought big glass jars to put
them in. Then it was off the farm and into a shop in Traralgon’s
Main street and a home made chocolates sign and a rented house not far
away. Laura left work and she and Aunty Mary built that shop up, adding
Sennetts Ice Cream, drinks and later Adams Cake. They had a lot of good
friends in Traralgon and the surrounding area. Later on when Laura married
Wally Mathieson, it must have been around the 1930s, Nance and I (we were
engaged) went to Toorak as bridesmaid and bestman at their wedding. Wally
left his railway job and joined them in the shop. Years later they sold
it and bought another with a residence attached in Melbourne.
While at Morwell I had applied for a job advertised by the Quambatook
Co-op store. This was in the mallee country of Northern Victoria. I had
an interview with the Manager of D&W Murray in Flinders Lane. My references
helped there as he gave me the job, told me to buy a new suit and gave
me the money for a 1st class ticket to Quamatook. I took the train to
Quambie, as we called it, early on a Friday, then a quick trip to Bendigo,
then a change to another one to Boort, stopped at little places I never
knew existed, but eventually arrived at my destination about 5 or 6 PM.
Being used to so many trees and hills I thought this part of the world
desolate and I felt like going back home. Only that’s when I found
that there was no return trian until Tuesday. I went to a Coffee Palace
and got a room. It turned out that there was around 29 other chaps boarding
there, one with a wife. Next morning about 10 I decided to walk over to
the Co-op and arrange to start work Monday. That’s when I met the
Manager, Mc McLauren, and got ticked off for not being at work at 8:30.
I told him I didn’t think it was worth coming in for a half day.
That’s when he said ‘half day be damned, today is the biggest
day of the week. We don’t close until 9:00PM – you get your
half day Wednesday.’ So I got my coat off. I was behind the men's
wear counter just a little later when a chap came in for six pairs of
work socks and then handed me a cheque for over seven hundred pounds.
I took it around to the boss. He told me to give the fellow a new Borsaline
Hat. Quambie was a huge wheat area and as growers were only paid yearly
they paid the Co-op store yearly. Until the time I left Traralgon we all
went to a Methodist Church there for Sunday school and the service. As
a matter of fact I won a long cherished ambition at that church. I got
into the choir. Anyhow a chap from the Co-op and myself started going
to the Methodist church, there was a tennis court there and we both joined
up. One of the elders of that Church was a Mr Coot. He was also the Chairman
of the Co-op store and as I found out later, he was aptly named. There
was a lot of wags amongst the boys at that Coffee Palace. The second night
I was there and got into bed, I stubbed my feet on a very spiky mallee
root. I can also remember tasting my beer there, buying one No. 3 iron
and one ball and playing golf on Wednesday afternoons, also playing billiards
and snooker and going dancing at many Balls around the district. It was
good years for the wheat growers. Mnerva cars, Napiers, Buicks and other
really good cars were all around. There were a lot of mice plagues too.
Aunty Mary wrote to me regularly while I was at Quambatook. Now and again
she would send me a bottle of Cod Liver Oil. She reckoned I wanted building
up. It was terrible stuff to take and I wasted a lot. Father wasn’t
well so I gave notice at the Co-op and went home. Got a job again in a
drapery department. Eventually father had to go into a hospital at Sale,
there were none at Traralgon then, and I went to Sale regularly to visit
him. He had cancer. They gave him Morphine and I could see him wasting
away every visit. Father died there in 1927. I can vividly remember a
Dr McLean of Traralgon saying to me at that time ‘Alister, if you
live as good a life as your father, you’ll be doing well’. I
have thought of that over the years many times. Later that year I went
to Melbourne and got a job in a big men's wear store named the ‘Leviathan’
on the corner of Swanson and Bourke Streets. I liked doing display work
and one day decided to apply for a job at the Murphett Display Co. in
a little side street off Flinders Lane. When I asked for Mr Murphett I
was told to take a seat as he was engaged. I was sitting beside a six
feet high office partition and I could clearly hear a chap in the office
ticking off a fellow and sacking him. I didn’t like the sound of
his loud voice and was just heading for the door when he came out and
told me to come in. I gave him my references, then he asked me where I
was staying. I told him I was with a cousin Nellie living on the corner
of High and Bell Streets, Preston. HE wanted to know if I could drive
a car. When I said ‘yes’ he told me he loved a couple of blocks
further down High Street, and if I would go there early the next Monday
morning and drive him to work I had the job. (He could not drive.) So
that is when I got into Display work. There were a couple of ticket writers
and half a dozen other display fellows at Murphetts all doing contract
work. There was a mock-up display window in a workroom. I remember when
Lux soap first came on the market, then with showcards, posters and a
couple of dozen Lux (wood blocks inside packet, instead of soap) the setup
was inspected by the Lux people and we won a contract to make displays
in chemist and grocery shops all around Melbourne suburbs at twelve shillings
and sixpence each. Driving the Murphett Citreon I did hundreds of these
and other products as well as chocolate displays in theatres, Sunraysia
fruit displays, Kayser stockings and underwear. While there I also got
brother Arnold a job working with me and after some time he left to go
to MacRobertson’s as their Australian Display Manager. Many years
later son Peter did some of his display training under the supervison
of Arnold.
I think it was around 1928-29 that I applied for a display managers job
advertised through D&W Murray. I didn’t know where the store
was until I was invited to meet a Mr D.A. Thomson at Scotts Hotel. He
was the Governing Director of Mate’s Limited in Albury, which had
been established in 1850, and I started there one Monday morning at six
pounds per week, big money in those days. Mates was looked on as being
the largest country store in Australia. I was staying at a hotel called
‘Court House’ right next door to Mates. Four days after arriving
I went to the annual dinner given by the Directors and there were about
250 employees there. That’s when I first met Nancy Marion Lee. Most
of my family will know most of my story from here on. According to the
family bible of Nance’s mother, we were married at St Matthews, Kiewa
Street on June 9, 1931. I always thought it was the 6th of June. Later
on Ken, Jennifer and Margaret were also married in the same church. I
can remember going to see my old chief D.A. Thomson before we got married
to ask him if there was any future for me at Mates. He would not guarantee
anything, asked me how much money I had and I told him about eighty pounds.
He said I was mad but I took all my money out of the State Savings Bank
the next day. The day after that the then Premier of NSW Jack Lang closed
all State Banks. They were really depression years. Anyhow in spite of
all this and we only got ten days annual holiday, Mum and I spent the
first night of our honeymoon huddled in a railway carriage leaving Albury
at 11:00PM bound for Sydney and the Metropole Hotel. Mum wouldn’t
have a sleeper but we had the carriage to ourselves. I found out later
that the Manager of the Footwear Department at Mates had bribed the conductor.
When we were somewhere around Goulburn and daylight came I spent a lot
of time sweeping up confetti off the floor with my brand new clothes brush.
We got to the Metropole around 9:30AN and the first thing my new wife
wanted to do was take the ferry boat over to Manly and being a new husband
I had to agree. One week in Sydney and then we went aboard a ship at midday
one Saturday bound for Melbourne. The mast seemed so high that it appeared
we could never get under the harbour bridge but of course we did. Then
a bell ringing meant lunch so down we went to the Dining Room. Three courses,
including soup and by this time we were out of the Heads and the sea a
bit rough. That was the end of the trip for Nancy Marion. She was so seasick
and of course I did what I could but in the end I felt pretty squirmy
myself. Arriving at Melbourne wharf early Monday morning one of the first
things we did was to phone ‘Gar’, as we called Nance’s
mother, and got her to send us money. Honeymoons were more expensive that
I anticipated. Nance and I had arranged with ‘Gar’ to use three
rooms in her home so we had a bedroom, kitchen and lounge/dining room
there. We had a coloured photo of her home hanging on a wall in our dining
room now, but the home was pulled down a year or so ago and there is a
Motel on the block.
When children started to arrive and more room was needed we rented a
house in Jones Street. I was earning a little more money at Mates then
and when Brian and Ken were only toddlers I git Aunty Mary to come up
and live with us. Jennifer was born during that time too so Nance needed
a bit of help. I was working very hard and long at Mates and after taking
over the Advertising Department I was made Sales Promotion Manager and
engaged more staff. D.A. Thomson made me an Associate Director of Mates
and I attended all Board meetings. I also had the keys of the store, let
all the staff on of a morning, signed cheques, ran fashion parades (Jenny
was in one of them). All in all I was a pretty busy bloke. Mates was a
family concern and after D.A. Thomson lost his only son during the Second
World War, I can remember him telling me one day that the store was on
the market and some people would be coming down from Sydney to inspect
it in a few weeks, so I had to get on everyone’s back and see that
it looked its best. When the sale was arranged with Burns Philp &
Co. D.A called me into his office and gave me a cheque for 100 hundred
pounds. This same man also left me two hundred pounds in his will after
he died. I was with Mates for about 24 ½ years, leaving there about
1952/53.
Looking back on what I have written to date it appears I have given a
rough outline of my life of about 50 years. Such a change has taken place
in our way of life over these years that maybe what I have outlined of
mine will be of interest to my grandchildren and great grandchildren.
It is almost 2 years since I lost a wonderful wife and mother of six.
We were married over 55 years. I don’t think any father has a better
family. How pleased I am with what they have done and are doing with their
lives. I pray thanks to our father in heaven above for six children, my
sons-in-law and all my grand children. How lucky I am too that I am able
to live in a home with my oldest son. He has devoted his efforts first
to the well-being of his mother, and now to his father, for some many
years.
I completed this history on the 30th of May 1988, also a genealogy of
what I know of the SKEENS origins so that my grandchildren will be able
to carry on with this if they so desire. How fortunate I am to have a
Barrister/Solicitor son with up-to-date office equipment. He has taken
on the job of printing copies of what I have done and in the near future
all my children will have them.
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