PAPER BOYS TELL THEIR TALES:
John Lewis YHS 1954
Confessions of a Paperboy: In the 1950s, most families in Yallourn had a daily paper delivered to their house early in the morning by a team of ten paper boys working for the newsagent located in the Rockman’s Store. For most of this time, there was a choice of three papers: the Sun, Argus or the Age, but the Argus went out of business in early 1957. I started my first paper round when I was in either grade four or five and it was cold work, especially having to get out of bed while it was still dark. The little briquettepowered heater we had in the kitchen at home would be set the night before so that when we staggered out of bed in the morning it was ready to light. Mum and I would hover around the silver painted heater and have a cup of tea and a light breakfast while we warmed up and wakened to the soulful country music offerings from 3TR Sale. These were mainly sad songs, such as one that began, “On a loneleeee railway station, a dog sat patientlleeee…”. My father constructed a small shelf that sat across the handle-bars of my 26 inch wheeler bike that was sturdied by two bars running down to the hub of the front wheel. I was not grown enough to warrant a full-sized 28 incher. It was on this shelf that my daily load of papers for delivery would be placed. The Yallourn paper boys met early each day at one of the Rockman’s Store garages in Service Road, near the old Methodist Church. Each morning, Monday to Saturday, the newsagent manager took the firm’s truck from the garage before we arrived, and drove it to the Moe railway station, where the early morning Melbourne-Sale train had dropped off Rockman’s bundles of daily papers and magazines. In my early days, the manager was Alex Goodwin, who always had his early morning trousers held up with a bit of sinewy white rope gleaned from that used to tie the newspaper bundles. He died when I was about eleven, and his was the first funeral I ever attended. The next manager was Ken Dolphin, who was active with his family in the local swimming club. Tom Doxford, the Rockman’s Store general manager would fill in for Ken when he was ill or away on holidays. None of us were fashionable at that early hour, as we dressed with the main aim of keeping warm. A lot of clothing was ex-army gear. On my head I wore a brown leather pilot’s helmet which was matched by an army surplus leather jacket. Scarves and gloves were also popular against the early morning frosts. I can’t remember there being much closeness in the team of paper boys. This is strange perhaps, and might be due to the high turn-over of boys, but also the emphasis was on getting your job done quickly before school started. There just wasn’t much time for fooling around or fun. Nevertheless, there were some characters in our crew over the years. When I first started, I recall the older boys of Ian Lawson and John Lawton. Barry Steffen was unique in that he delivered his papers with a large and aggressive bird, a beautiful Swamp Hawk, chained to his shoulder!
Sometimes we would take a bike’s chain off its drive wheel and wait for the owner to load his bike up with the heavy load of papers and attempt to pedal off. This would leave the hapless rider astride the bike pedalling fast, but going nowhere. If his papers all fell to the ground as part of his efforts to keep balanced, it only maximised both his difficulties and our enjoyment. There must have been about 1,000 houses in Yallourn, because the town was divided into ten newspaper rounds of about 100 houses each. Each of the ten paper boys selected the appropriate papers from the newly arrived bundles from Moe and made a pile in delivery order for his round. We used the truck’s garage for this purpose. The street name and house number was pencilled on each paper before the final heavy pile was placed on our bikes and we each made off to our starting house. Some of us used
to sneak an extra paper to read later – Thursday’s Age was a popular item, because it contained the weekly Green Guide with current info about radio stars and the then trendy hi-fi equipment available for sale. My round was No 9, which began with a quick delivery to the National Bank in Monash Square before heading to my first house, that of Yallourn High School principal Mr Ellis, at 2 Uplands Road. I then delivered papers in the block bound by Uplands and Valley Roads, between Parkway and Strzelecki Road. The best technique was to keep your bike moving and as you approached each household, steer with one hand and with the other hand roll up their paper from the bundle resting over your handlebars, then jam it in the ‘V’ between the gatepost and the gate as you went past. The more experienced and ‘gun’ paperboys could roll up a paper and deliver it on the move using either hand. I was always particularly careful with the papers of two girls I admired from school – Monica Fastenrath and Pam Adam, both of Church Street. No 9 was a good round as it was mainly flat. The worst was round No 10, which took in the very steep areas between Driffield and Coach Roads. This was the lot of Brian Murphy. Apart from the weather, there were other hazards, including vicious dogs and the occasional customer who always complained to staff back in the newsagency about both real and imagined inappropriate deliveries of their papers. These serial complainers were never happy. Their paper had arrived late, or wet, it was found on the ground, blew away, had a torn front page, a page was missing or perhaps the paper did not arrive at all. I think every paper boy had one customer who he could never satisfy. Delivery completed, it was back home for a change of clothes then off to school. For this I was paid 12/6d. per week – rising over the years to 17/6d. per week. I reckon Mr Murdoch and the other newspaper owners did all right out of we paper boys.