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This is an extract from a booklet written by Charlie Hutchins in 1989 where inhabitants of Portsea give an impression of the life and times of the suburb in the1920's and 1930's, a neighbourhood that had great character and a wonderful comradeship.
As a young lad I lived in Portsea, and can remember some incidents that happened during that time. I can still vividly picture a woman who kept goats in Daniel Street, she had one that used to be harnessed to a small cart, a box with pram wheels fitted and a pair of shafts, which was used to pull her shopping around.
I used to go mud-larking on the Hard, but before I went home I always had to go for a swim so as to remove all the mud. Another thing I can remember is going to Cole's slaughter house and getting pig's bladders. We used to blow them up, and when they were dry we would play football with them on Bonfire corner, a corner of the West Dock Common field.
On election days, when Joe Davidson and Mr. Prince were putting up for Council, we used to get on a horse and cart and go round the streets singing 'Vote, vote, vote'. They were very popular councillors who did much good charity work for the people of Portsea.
Another thing we used to do was to get a cod's head from the fishmongers, then take out the eyes and thread a length of string through, then off to the Hard we would go, down the Fisherman's Walk and drop it in the water to catch crabs, sometimes we caught biggish ones and my mother used to cook them for tea. We used to suck the legs out and scrape out the shells. They were quite tasty
In the winter we used to find tins and make holes in the bottom, tie string round it, fill it with old rags and set fire to it, and when it started to smoulder we would run up and down the street swinging the tins, thus the smoke would plume out and we thought we were steam engines.
Once when cattle were being driven to the slaughter house, one cow ran away, and everybody scattered as it ran up Cumberland Street. My brother Jim was on his bike, he jumped off the bike and held it up in front of the cow and it stopped and was driven back to the slaughter house, fortunately no one was hurt.
When I left school I went to work at Flextella. This was a firm which made spiral springs and bones for the corsets, which of course were widely worn by females of all ages. I used to work from 8 am until 4.30 pm, five days a week and also on a Saturday morning.
I can still remember putting the steel bones in a machine to get the rounded ends clamped on. I got 4/6d, mother had the 4/- and I got the tanner for myself.
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