A former Williamstown resident of 85 years, who turned 100 last Thursday, has spent years writing his memoirs.
Now his recollections are making fascinating reading for George Aldersley’s family, among others.
Mr Aldersley, who now lives in Footscray, kept a diary from when he started work until his mid 90s. His memoir begins in his pre-school years, from 1915-1920, a small boy in South Melbourne who moves to Williamstown as a teenager.
It is a world punctuated by the milkmen’s cries of ‘Milki-o-o-oooo’ and the rabbit sellers’ shouts of ‘Rabbito, rabbito, fresh-killed rabbits, sixpence a pair’.
Mr Aldersley’s recollections form a fascinating series of vignettes, some of them quite unpleasant. One of his earliest memories is of hearing a neighbour, Rachel, screaming, “Don’t hit me Jimmy! Please don’t hit me again”.
“I once, at a later time, questioned an uncle who was acquainted with Jimmy: ‘What sort or character is Jimmy?’
“His answer surprised me somewhat: ‘Oh, he’s not a bad sort of fellow’. I am able to report that, at some time later, Jimmy’s body was found lying in a street in Port Melbourne.”
Mr Aldersley says he is astonished that his memory retains so many trivial incidents he can still recall vividly.
He says the Montague area had its own gang, or ‘push’ as it was called in earlier days, known as the ‘Monts’.
Mr Aldersley was apprenticed as a shipwright with the Melbourne Steamship Company and worked on the waterfront most of his life.
He married his wife, Edna, in 1942 and the couple subsequently had three children.
Mr Aldersley was involved in local cricket and tennis and has been an active member of the Williamstown Church of Christ since the 1930s.
After retirement, he spent many hours painting and many of his local scenes hang in offices and homes around Williamstown.
An avid Swans supporter, who almost always wore his team’s cap on his head, Mr Aldersley would walk twice a day around the Williamstown beach and gardens, often meeting Barry Round or Billy Williams and talking football.
He now lives at Westhaven nursing home in Footscray where he celebrated his 100th birthday last week with an afternoon tea surrounded by family and other residents.
Mr Aldersley has nine grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, with another one due in August.
