Sunshine District Historical Society John Willaton chats to Holly McGuinness about his love for Brimbank.
What is your connection to Brimbank?
I was in primary school in Sunshine for the whole of World War II starting in 1940 and finishing in 1945, and then in 1946 went to the Sunshine Technical School until 1949. MyfFather also desperately wanted me to follow him as a fitter and turner at the Sunshine Harvester works.
What did you like about living in Brimbank as a child?
We played together on the road because there were no cars, we played in the street until it was dark and we had to go in. We walked to school together. We played at school together, we all knew each other. Every family from Ballarat Road to Forest Street, every family knew each other.
Where did you spend most of your time?
We walked every Saturday afternoon without fail from wherever we live to the Sunshine picture theatre for the children’s matinee and it was always very noisy because when the newsreels were showing, they always showed the allies from the war in a favoured light, to which we would cheer like mad and stomp our feet on the wooden floor.
Another favourite pastime was taking a brown paper bag of sandwiches and biscuits down to the sunshine gardens and spending time and spending time there, running around in the gardens.
What’s something you didn’t like about the area?
We had to be on their best behaviour because we knew everybody, and worse still everybody knew us and they knew our fathers. I was stopped one night in the dark by a policeman and they all rode bikes back then and he said ‘what’s your name? What’s your address?’ and when I said John Willaton, he knew my father. The thing was my father was president of the Sunshine RSL. so he knew everybody, the thing was, that I couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong.
How did you become involved with the Sunshine District Historical Society?
This year will be our 50th anniversary, I joined it when it was formed in 1972. They called a public meeting in Albion Primary School and I read about it in the local paper so I went along as I’ve always been interested in history and English.
