By KATH GANNAWAY
ARGUABLY, it’s the things that Ellena Biggs has resisted putting in the Mail over the past two decades, that would make the most amazing book … should she ever decide to write one.
The Mail’s extroadinarily happy, and mutually beneficial, association with Ellena started in 1983 when she and another Upper Yarra identity, Rosemary Crowley, were researching old newspaper articles for the Yarra Junction Primary School’s Centenary book.
She got the bug, and Mail readers have been enjoying her ‘illness’ ever since in Pages of the Past, and Retrospect.
“I would go into the State Library and I said to the editor of the time that I thought I could make up a sort of column drawing on the news from the local papers,” she recalls.
Her ‘column’ is eagerly anticipated at the Mail, arriving by snail-mail, addressed in Ellena’s own highly-legible handwriting. Inside are several weeks of ‘Pages’, from the Healesville Guardian of 80 years ago and Warburton Mail of just 50 years ago, likewise handwritten at the library.
The cycle of events is something that always strikes a chord as Ellena searches out the ‘news’.
“Some of the people’s stories of hardship here people were struggling in the depression in Healesville in the 30s, having a real battle of a time, and then you see fund-raisers to help them, and you see it again nowdays,” she said.
The 1929 story of Marysville’s lack of a GP, coincided with Yarra Glen’s plight after the fires, and there were the fires – 2009 coming 70 years and a month after the 1939 bushfires. Many of the stories of tragedy, bravery, resilience … coming to life again through Ellena’s ‘Pages’.
She admits to censoring some of the news “to protect the innocent” … and the not so innocent!
“You pick and choose a bit, you have to – there have been things like murders, court cases held in Warburton and in Healesville where everything came out, and weddings and birth announcements that don’t quite add up,” she said.
Stories of espionage and ‘dodgy’ businesses, political upheavals (don’t mention the Healesville Hospital debacle – the ’60s version, not the current one!)
Did you hear the one about the German spy??
Privacy was an absolute luxury back in the ‘old days’ of newspapers. “It had a whole different meaning,” Ellena laughs. “I had a real ripper coming up over (censored) and it was all there in the paper … no such thing as privacy then.”
You won’t see that in ‘Pages’. And , don’t bother asking Ellena – she is big on protecting her sources!
The parallels are interesting, and the way the towns have changed.
“After the Upper Yarra Dam closed lots of people moved out of Warburton, so there were less people helping, and that’s happening now,” she said. “Lots of people just doing their own thing rather than putting out to do community work.”
The importance of churches was seen in the newspaper reports, but Ellena says it’s waned a bit.
Some things have changed; towns had their own identities in those times – Badger Creek and Chum Creek, and Gilderoy that was really important because of the sawmilling communities, she says. And some things stay the same. “There was all the angst between the groups in the ’30s, the Tourism Association and the Progress Association.”
There were some really strong women, running businesses and leading in other ways, but Ellena says one of the things that has always stood out is the way in obituaries the woman’s life was always written in the story of the man. “Mrs James Brown, never Mrs Betty Brown, so you see those social etiquettes have changed over the years.
Then there were the larrikins – coming into Healesville and causing trouble! Vandalising Queen’s Park! The local shire councillor is so outraged he gets the assistance of someone else and drives them out.
Ellena says she loves the people stories, the Healesville Sanctuary stories tracing the fame that came with the breeding of the platypus, and the wonderfully entrepreneurial men who started films at Healesville Memorial Hall – they even had a ‘crying room’ for children while their parents watched the film.
There have been some ‘tricky’ situations when Ellena says she didn’t know that the Hatfields and the McCoys (not their real names) were still at it, and she didn’t know who was related to who; anniversaries of weddings that didn’t last the distance!
And there have been some funny deja vu moments where people have read ‘Pages’ as current news.
“A local guest house had people applying for a job that was in ‘Pages’, despite it paying seven shillings a week, and the bloke who went into the Yarra Junction Post Office and said he’d heard they were moving. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” said the owner as they realised it was moving – 50 years ago!
Pages has covered some major political and social changes over the time and invariably people love to have that connection with the past.
“I’d like to fill the whole page really,” Ellena said. “I love the round-up of social events, and the way people seemed to tolerate things – weather, road conditions, the lack of services.”
One thing that also recurs is the question of Ellena’s age.
“People when they meet me seem quite surprised. They think I must be at least 80, or 100,” she said.
She’s not. She’s just passionate about history and the Yarra Valley.
On behalf of the Mail and its readers, thank you Ellena for 20 great years of newspaper memories.
