Our family comprising Dad - Leo, Mum - Ursula and the kids - Terry (Ter), Michael (Mick), Marie (Re) and Kerin (Ker) lived in Progress Rd Hernes Oak near the top of the hill from about 1952 till about 1975, about 23 years. I was eight when we moved from Moe where I was born in the bush hospital on March 26th 1944.
Dad got a job as a house painter with the SEC which is why we moved to the area. He worked around Yallourn till he retired, his last work was painting road lines. Mum never worked outside the home but she worked hard to give us a happy and healthy life.
As a Catholic family we went to Mass and school at St Therese's in Yallourn. Father Walsh was the first priest I can remember there, and he was notable to me for being more interested in the races and other sports than spirituality. We were taught by nuns only, except for a foreign lady who took us for a kind of calisthenics. I felt sorry for her because some of the boys gave her a hard time. Sister Basil, the head teacher was tough and did not brook defiance. I felt sorry for her in later life for having to be so harsh with children, whom she as a nun could never herself bear and raise.
Terry (who was one year older than me) and I both went to the Tech school at Yallourn for one year, in 1956, then out to the new Tech at Newborough. I found the Tech amazing in that there were different teachers for each class, and they not only wasted short lengths of chalk but occasionally threw it at the kids. Terry left after form three to begin plumbing and I left after fourth form to start at the SEC as an apprentice sparky.
When I first married Lynda (Lauricella) we lived in a little house in Latrobe Ave. which I can almost see in the cover photo at the top of this web page (the second house up on the right side).
