MY STORY ON ALLAN LELLO AND FAMILY
by Noelin (his daughter)
Everyone knows my Dad was born in 1909, grew up and was educated in Queenstown, Tasmania.
He had a strict upbringing with a harsh father who demanded that children should be seen but not heard especially at the dinner table. However, all the family had a good education with Allan going on to the Queenstown Technical College before leaving for Hobart, to enter into an apprenticeship with Harold Millington who had an undertaker's business combined with a fine cabinet maker workshop. Dad had a photograph of himself posing standing in a coffin with a friend or workmate. It was this photo he used to kid the boys that he built his own coffin!
(It was pointed out to me by the chap from Millingtons that there is still a lot of furniture made by Mick Lello in around Hobart (Mick was dad’s nickname in Hobart but was never used in Devonport). He was I think Harold’s son-in-law as he remembered Dad quite well and said that some of Dad’s stuff was often pointed out to him. Glen (my son) has a dressing table and wardrobe that Dad made for his brother Tom’s wedding present.)
Dad boarded with Nana's sister and brother-in-law aunt Fan and Uncle Mal in Derwent Park. They had a nice little shop on the Main Road near the station (when travelling Dad struck up a friendship with Ray Cannon which lasted till Mum and Dad moved to Devonport).
One house we lived in, in Moonah, was in Springvale Avenue. There was an orphanage next door (which later became the Boarding School for the Boys of New Town High School). Dad used to sand off-cuts of wood and bring home boxes full for the children as toys.
Our next move was Peronne Avenue (no 2) still in Moonah. Rent 19/- (nineteen shillings) week. Dad's wages £3 10s (three pounds ten shillings) by this time. It was here Tom was born, Nana Lello being the midwife. Dad took me up Mt Wellington. We had a car by this time and I now realise It was to get me out of the way while things were happening. I don’t of course remember the Doctor's name but Nana was not allowed to deliver a baby without one, but I think her words were they were often too late anyway.
Tom was a healthy 11½ lbs and looked a good 3 months old according to Nana, and she would have seen a few in her time as midwife in Queenie.
We frequently went to Queenstown for holidays. In the days prior to our cars it was motorbike and side car but after that cars were the way to go. One car of Dad's had a dickie seat. How my friends and I loved sitting in it and Dad taking us to the beach etc.! We always went to Queenie for the Mt Lyell Picnics at Strahan; they were always the highlight of the year (in my eyes anyway). The train would always pick up passengers waiting on the side of the line and we mostly sat on flat trays. Nana and Papa’s house nearly last on line with only Vaughans next door.
Dad’s brother Tom and his wife Thurza were living in Somerset. They had a big house with fairly large grounds and we spent a few holidays there with them. Dad tried to teach me to swim on one of these holidays, which must have been the Cam river. He got quite snicky with me and gave up. I still can’t swim.
I can still recall once when we were to go to Queenie. Dad greased the gate and warned me not to swing on it. While he was loading the car, mother getting Tom ready, me in white pleated skirt, pretty angora jumper, grease everywhere, hiding under the kitchen table, Dad walloping, everyone screaming. Mum threatening to leave if you touch my little darling again. No doubt I did deserve it, as it was a very nice outfit. Mum did a lot of sewing and used to do very nice smocked frocks and little shepherd suits and sell them for a bit extra pocket money as they both smoked. Dad’s hobby was photography. He had the bathroom in Moonah set up as a darkroom. I don’t remember him doing any in Devonport though.
Dad made me a blackwood music stool about my sixth birthday as Papa had given me his piano and gave Tom a violin. I had lessons in Hobart. But these were interrupted by the move to Devonport and didn’t resume 'til some years later when Nana paid a friend to give me lessons. I hated them and wouldn’t concentrate. Something I now regret, the Piano was lost by accident when lent to a friend who moved and took the piano with them (we didn’t realise they had gone, thought they were only on holiday). I still have the blackwood jewel box Dad made for Mum’s 19th birthday.
We moved to Devonport in June 1940 although Dad had been gone for quite a while but couldn’t find accommodation for a family. Eventually he obtained 2 rooms and use of a kitchen where we stayed for 3-4 months till Mum found a house in the next street. After another move Dad was conscripted into the Civil Construction Corp (CCC). He had tried to enlist in the Air Force with Don, his brother, but was knocked back because of being a Carpenter – they were required for other essential work. He was sent to Katherine and Darwin in the Northern Territory and was away for a few years, then sent to Waddamana in the Highlands of Tasmania in the middle of winter. Snow everywhere and of course he contracted pneumonia! Mother was irate. She then contacted local MP who was Dame Enid Lyons – she obtained Dad’s release from CCC (strangely enough Keith arrived 9 months later….).
I think Dad must have received a lump sum remuneration when he was discharged, as I cannot see how he could have bought the block of land and built the house. It was poured concrete, for which he did all the boxing and pouring. He had also built the big shed at Chettle Street in the meantime.
Tom was also in bad health with Mum travelling to Hobart quite frequently to Specialists with him, and also with other problems connected with her family. Anyway, Dad finished off the kitchen, bedroom, laundry and toilet which we used with him. Mum and Keith sleeping in the shed which he made quite comfortable until the rest of the house was finished. It didn’t take that long for him as they were in the main part when Keith contracted Poliomyelitis at about 20 months old (between 18 and 20 anyway).
We seemed to have lots of visitors. Jessie would come with Marion and Warren, Nana would be there en route to her Queenie friends who lived on the outskirts of Devonport. It was while there in Queenstown she contracted Diabetes and was in hospital while she was stabilised. She was known as the sugar lady as her reading was so high! She of course lived with us for quite a while after as Mum had to test the urine and administer her injections of insulin.
Dad sold the Parker Street home at quite a good profit but as he needed a vehicle (his Morris Gowley Van) there was a bit of a mortgage on the Forth property, and of course it wasn’t large enough to live off as it was virtually a hobby farm. Dad went to work for the Department of Main Roads in Ulverstone. He travelled while Mum milked, Tom separated and there were pigs to be fed. Due to his continuing ill health Tom left school in his second year of High School but finally found work at 18 as Linesman for a Surveyor with DMR, his health having improved enough by then. It was much to his credit to rise to Superintendent in the Police Force.
They were good years for Mum and Dad even if with a few ups and downs. Mum wanted to learn to drive. Dad reckoned he had to run after the Van to pick up the gears every time she had a practise. Tom finally gave her the license but luckily she never used it. Time went on. Mum went down to River to catch whitebait, slipped on river rocks, and this is what was thought to have started her bowel cancer for which she had a colostomy operation. As she was in and out of hospital so much, Dad decided to sell the farm and move to Ulverstone to be closer to work and Doctors as well. This proved to be beneficial when he developed cancer.
Initial reports were the cancer was now malignant from pathology reports from Sydney but 3 months later more nosebleeds and tests confirmed it had spread and Dad lost his eye, a large amount inside the socket and out towards his ear. Treatment later at the Ulverstone hospital was very scant and improperly done so that infection set in, resulting in Dad having a long stay in Wynyard Hospital till it was cleared up.
For several months Mum would catch the train to Wynyard in the morning. Then either Allan and I or Joe would need to bring her home of an evening. When Dad recovered Mum was taught how to clean it out herself which she did the rest of her life.
Mum died from an aneurism just as Dad had recovered enough to resume work. We were living in Luina on the West Coast at this time while Joe and Vicki were living in Devonport. Dad found it difficult to cope. After a while he went to the Doctor and was prescribed Valium which did not agree with him. Joe was at this time working at Savage River with his family and had to make a midnight trip to pick Dad up as he was hallucinating. He recovered to a certain stage and returned to Ulverstone but then spent some time with Keith and Marg then us, then went back to the Coast. It was after this, that Dad sold the Ulverstone house to Joe and Vicki. Dad went to Somerset to live with Tom and Ann, and had a room built on for himself. At this stage Tom sold Dad’s car, the Humber Snipe, as he couldn’t drive anymore. After a few months at Tom's, Dad came to us at Hobart where he stayed for the next 5 years up till his death from pneumonia in 1979. He always regretted not being able to go back to the North West Coast. He much preferred it to Hobart, probably felt closer to Mother. He had also been building a large boat as they both loved fishing. I doubt if Tom ever finished it anyway.
No doubt there is a lot left out, like Dad buying a new Holden van when they were on the farm, the fun at Pea Harvest time, some of the little things that everyone enjoyed, Mum knitting soft toys to wile away at the time. Dad out in his workshop doing things with his lathe, his going down the West Coast with trailer after some blackwood stumps and driving for miles after losing a wheel off said Trailer. Bits and pieces that happened which everyone has memories of.
Hobart 2005
NOTE by Noelin's brother, Keith on 'Joe', the family nickname for Allan junior
As a 5 year-old, my
memories of the occasion of Joe's birth are sketchy and not only
because I was so young, because the mystery of where babies come from
was confined to stories of (flying type) storks and fortuitous finds
under cabbage bushes. I can actually recall looking around our back
yard at the time trying to imagine where they might have found him
and concluding that there was no suitable nest anywhere for a baby to
be found in.
There was however, an episode of whispered
conspiracy when Mum was spirited away late one day wearing a long
black coat. There was a sense of urgency and concern which confused
and upset me. I recall my disquiet was caused by the actions of the
big people with their whispering to each other obviously in an
attempt to prevent me from finding something out and because it was
obvious Mum was going somewhere and she was going without me.
I
can't recall if Non was left to look after me or if it was one of the
neighbours. I have no recollection of visiting the hospital where Joe
was born, however that does not mean I didn't go there.
I have
virtually no recollection of Joe's presence at Devonport. He became
my companion in our very early exploits at the farm like when we
nearly gave Mum a heart attack when we went down to the river, a
place we were expressly forbidden to venture. We were throwing rocks
into the river and producing shrill laughter which Mum, in he
desperation to locate us, thought were screams of terror. We quickly
lost our euphoria when a very upset Mum came upon us.
Hobart 2005