Kel’s Corner

The circus in Drysdale

Holden Brothers or Perry Brothers circus would often come to Drysdale and set up on the common on the corner of Princess and Eversley Streets. During the show they’d ask for someone to come and ride the mule, wild horse or donkey. Guess who was the first to be nominated? “Get Kel Davis” was the call.

“The animals were bare backed and a donkey or mule doesn’t have much wither to hang on to. They’d hold the animal while you got on, then they’d let it go and you’d race flat chat across the arena. The animal would put its head down once it got to the other side of the arena and give a buck and you’d go flying through the air,” said Kel.

“Sometimes you’d do a double somersault in the air and land thinking that you’d broken every bone in your body. People would be roaring and clapping and carrying on while I limped off slowly waving to the crowd to get my prize – guess what it was – a granny smith apple. I’d suffer for weeks afterwards,” said Kel.

Kel tells me that sometimes he’d get on backwards “wrap my arms around its flanks and scissor my legs around his neck so I could hang on and not get hurt. If the circus had camels, we’d find out the word to get them to sit and stand and exercise the camel until it had enough” Kel stated. What will he tell us next.

Anne Brackley

My! how times have changed

Just imagine not having to mow the nature strip. In the Bellarine Shire, mowing the nature strip up to the 1940′s was free of charge. Most families had a cow and the cows were allowed to wander the streets overnight, so long as the cows had a medal issued by the Bellarine Shire. If the cow didn’t have a medal on a chain, of which Kel still has a few, the cow was ‘cut out’ by the Ranger on his horse and it was escorted to the pound.

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You may have wondered about Quarry Park, the reserve that is located on the way out of Drysdale heading towards Portarlington. Kel recalls the gravel being hand mined by Ron Fisher, Teddy Fisher and Rob Reynolds. The gravel was used to make footpaths around Drysdale and other parts of the Bellarine. In between layers of gravel there were seams of pipe clay. Kel says that you can still distinguish these layers at Quarry Park. The pipe clay was picked out and placed in piles. On Thursdays it was then loaded onto a big wagon pulled by George Wisbey’s Clydesdales. The wagon was weighed on the weighbridge near the Drysdale Train station and then hand loaded onto railway trucks and sent to Glassworks in Melbourne along with the shell grit from the local beaches.

The weighbridge, which is still near the Drysdale station had a small office about the size of a toilet. Ted Wisbey manned the weighbridge. The weighbridge was used until the 1960′s. Although it was built for horse drawn wagons which were approximately 5 feet wide, it was still used for trucks by weighing the front axle and then the rear one. To enable the weighbridge to be used once trucks had dual rear wheels there were planks of wood that could be placed under the inner wheels so the load could still be weighed.

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Kel, the entrepreneur, would like to pass on tips for earning money to make your lifestyle as good as it can be. Kel always tried to have the next job lined up before the last was finished. One of his first pocket money raising activities was placing the Ginger Meggs comic behind the first page of 100 copies of the Saturday Sun. Kel worked for Miss Ferguson in her Harness and Paper shop located where Hommy’s Butchers is now. It took about an hour and he earned 6 pence. Read more >>

One of the stories that Kel has been wanting to tell everyone will amaze the mechanics out there. Kel was driving a 34 foot long semi for RH Butcher Transport at the time that this adventure took place.

“My job was to drive to Wurrook North Farm near Skipton to pick up 20 prime bullocks and take them to the abattoirs near Newmarket – the largest sale yards in the world” Kel said. Read more >>

A few people have said that they would love to tour the Bellarine with Kel and see the sights and hear the stories first hand. What sort of things would we see? One of the first things Kel would show us is the house where the McKiernans lived and brought up 12 children. He might take us to the Peppercorn trees Read more >>

It was interesting to hear about one of Kel’s finds last month “but that was only one of many” says Kel.

“I would regularly cart cattle for Kayne and Shelton, carriers located in Mount Gambier. Brian Gallop and I would leave Drysdale at 1am in our semi trailers and arrive in Mount Gambier at about 7am. Read more >>