By Casey Neill
Glue was a key tool of the trade when Debby Cheeseman worked for the Mountain Views Mail.
She recalled the stick and paste method for putting together advertisements and pages during her six-year tenure, as well as physically driving the completed pages to the printer at Wangaratta.
“We had an old bromide machine for the photos – if that broke down we were in big trouble,” she said.
Ms Cheeseman moved to the Yarra Valley and started working at the Lilydale Monbulk Post for Graham Colling, where she introduced the Horsing Around column.
“I sold the advertising as well as wrote the column and did the interviews,” she said.
“It was a lot of fun.
“Then Graham sold the paper. The new owners were pretty hard to get on with so a lot of us bailed.
“Eventually I got the job at Mountain Views with Mardie and Harry (Lambert) and took my horse column with me.
“I was employed as a sales rep, but still did the monthly horse column.
“I had my first baby and I was in hospital writing my column.
“It was a real family paper.
“Everybody chipped in.”
Ms Cheeseman said Fran Henke was the editor at the time.
“She was just lovely,” she said.
“She’d had polio. She didn’t let her disability interfere with what she was doing.
“She was very good to work for and work with.
“She left and Mardie took the job back on again, with Kath Gannaway.”
The paper was based in the little shop where Monroe’s Burgers and Beers is today when Ms Cheeseman started.
“We had a thunder box out the back that would get emptied every Monday,” she said.
She recalled dashing home to use the loo while she was pregnant and rejoicing when a proper toilet was finally installed.
Ms Cheeseman always picked up the Mail during her 35 years in Healesville and after moving to Tatura in February, still keeps in touch with her old home town through the online edition.
“My partner comes down once a week and he brought a copy home this week,” she said.
