Kevin Norton obituary in his own words

As told by Kevin Norton, transcribed by Lyn Eadie.

I was born in Mooroopna North and lived at Hazeldene, our family farm, for 90-odd years.

I was the youngest of five children; there were two girls and two boys ahead of me, but one died at four.

Mooroopna North was a lively little country area.

It had a hall and hotel on the corner of the Echuca and Ardmona Rds, they called it the ‘Plough and Harrow’.

There was a creamery where people would take their cans of cream as there wasn’t any refrigeration.

A bit further down there was a blacksmith shop where they shod all the horses and did the iron and street work for the district; no welding in those days.

I started schooling in Mooroopna North, the original old school has been kept - it is still there.

I then went to the old high school which is where TAFE is now, for three years or more and then they shifted us out to Verney Rd to the new school.

There were three of us who rode from Mooroopna North each day. There were a lot of children that rode from Tatura but they would board in Shepparton during the week and ride home for the weekend.

I took over the farm from my father who was a butcher.

He would do a round all through Ardmona and Mooroopna North. There were saleyards in the back of the hotel at Undera in those days.

He only sent out his accounts once a year as all his customers only got their income once a year - when the wool, wheat or lambs were sold.

He was a wonderful buyer of weight, with his background as a butcher, so he then got a job with W. Angliss & Company, a large abattoir based in Melbourne.

He bought thousands of spring lambs around the area through to Violet Town and Benalla.

I was always a farmer — we had beef cattle and sheep and I grew hay of course.

We also grew wheat, oats and barley. I was never a dairyman, in fact when I was young there wasn’t a lot of dairying in the district.

People only milked eight or 10 cows for their own benefit. In those days there was no pick-up of whole milk - you had to separate your milk to get the cream.

We sold the cream to the butter factory. There were no milking machines in those days, you had to do it all by hand and we turned the separator by hand to get the cream.

When I first started going to the sales, they started at 1 pm and it was all over in an hour.

There would’ve been about 350 cattle sold - that was an enormous number back then.

We would buy a few cattle at the saleyards, then walk them back to Hazeldene.

The blacksmith not only shod the horses, he would clip them, too.

ln the winter they would grow a long shaggy coat and they’d perspire a lot unless you spent a long time grooming them.

He had horse clippers where you turned the handle like a separator and the clippers were on the other end of a cable.

The blacksmith used to cut the hair of at least a dozen of the local boys with the same machine.

He’d dip the clippers into a little tin of kerosene between each child in case they had nits. We got our hair cut like that for ages.

Kerosene was a great cure. A lot of people took it for a cold - a spoonful of sugar with a bit of kero.

When winter came we would all wear a little hanky soaked with eucalyptus to ward off colds.

All farmers in those days were self-sufficient. Most families had six or eight children.

You had your own eggs, poultry and all sorts of food. Sheep were shorn once a year, spring lambs and calves were grown into young bullocks.

We tried to avoid rearing heifers. ln those days you could buy jersey bull calves for one shilling from the saleyards in Shepparton you’d buy them to feed your dogs.

When I first started selling cattle we had to drive them from home with the horse and the dogs.

There was no way of loading them and there were no trucks anyway. I’d leave home about 7 o’clock and get to the saleyards in Welsford St about half past 11.

If it wasn’t flooded between Mooroopna and Shepparton we could go in at the back of the Mooroopna Cemetery and come out the last bridge in Shepparton.

That saved us three miles. lf it was all flooded we had to come into Mooroopna and across ‘the high road’ as everyone called it.The main bridge was right up against Welsford St as that was where the river originally ran.

You had to go into Fryer St and then up Welsford St and then turn into High St. Cr Roy Baglan had a crazy idea to fill in the river.

Lots of people boohooed the idea but when the river was filled in, it was a huge success.

The lake was just a jungle back then . . . tins and rubbish and kerbungi. No-one would go near it or want to live there in those days.

Farmers’ sons like myself would go and pick fruit for money on the Ardmona orchards for a few months each year.

I worked for Mr Cornish. He had two sons, one of whom, John Cornish, got SPC out of trouble.

Farming was a hard life as we could never afford to bring in any labour. We had to do it all ourselves.

There wasn’t any electricity in Mooroopna North until the middle of the 1950s.

Prior to electricity we had the old ice chest. The cream man would bring the big ice blocks in on his shoulder.

Before that there was a Coolgardie safe with the hessian sides. Most of the things that held food had to have the legs in tins of water to stop the ants.

The ants would drive us mad on the farm, they would always find the food.

I was married to Jess for 60-odd years. I met her at the dances, we did a lot of dancing in those days.

She was the second-eldest of nine children and had to work to help the family out. She did a lot of work on the farm and also helped with the younger children.

When we first got married Jess bought a babywear business in Shepparton.

The lease ran out so she moved her business across to Mooroopna to one of the new shops.It went alright until Fairleys came along.

She sold the business but they closed down in about 12 months. She also ran a taxi business in Tatura.

She bought a single taxi and eventually got three mail runs and delivered all the mail around the area. Jess loved cooking and was a wonderful cook.

She had many parties out at Hazeldene for charity. Including Miss Goulburn Valley.

We had two children, Shayne and Marcia.

Mr Norton died on September 25 at Acacia House in Shepparton and was interred in Mooroopna Cemetery on October 3. He was predeceased by his wife, Jess (2012).