Sixty years have passed since Jeanette Berry, Melva Cook, Lorraine Kelly, Shirley Ingles, Rachele Cavallaro, Enid Noonan and Jan Ducat put on their blue buttoned-down uniforms and stepped through those factory doors.
"When we see each other, it’s as if no time has passed,” Ms Berry said.
“We get together at least once a year — when we had small children we’d go to each other’s house, then we started sharing a meal and decided on lunch.
“COVID stopped us, as it did with everyone in the world.
“It’s extra special this year because it’s the first time in the past two years we’ve been able to come together again.”
Their stories proved to be as enriching as their history, with each of the women sharing tales of troublemakers past.
“When we had Christmas parties, all the men would have alcoholic drinks and we’d get soft drink,” Ms Kelly said.
“This particular year we decided to have some mixed drinks, adding a bit of Marsala to our lemonade.
“Rachele had to ride her bike home, and I look over and she’s hopping and hopping trying to mount the bike.”
Back in the day, rather than having the legal protections of today, career and pregnancy were more commonly mutually exclusive.
Ms Cook recalls each of them concealing their baby bump for as long as possible, with Ms Cavallaro opting for a big fluffy jumper and continuing to ride the bike to work to avoid suspicion.
Whether it was filling cream jars, pouring the butter or making the boss’s tea, the women of the Butter Factory tackled each task with comradeship and humour.
“We had two national counting machines in the office — this was before computers, of course,” Ms Ingles said.
“We used to ride the bike with the little cloth bag filled with pounds in the basket, and it was about 3pm you’d go and ride past all the men having smoko with the weight of the basket scraping along the wheels.”
They all agreed the Butter Factory whistle was famous around Shepparton.
It signalled the start, break and end of the working day for themselves and for “the whole town (that) listened for that whistle”.
In addition to being a celebration of the ladies’ shared history, it is also a time to remember their former head girl, Margaret Ford.
When asked what drove the women to continue holding their annual luncheon, the answer was simple.
“We’ve always been friends, and we all seem to have a lot in common,” Ms Cavallaro said.
“It’s quite a blessing when you can look back on the past with the people you experienced it with and say: They really were the good old days, weren’t they?”
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