The YMCLC Oral History Group invites you to take a step back in time as they reach into their files each month to present a story from days gone by. This month’s article is taken from an interview conducted with Flo Foster on December 7, 2010.
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“I was born in Mulwala on the fifteenth of August 1923. We lived in Mulwala, just down from the Post Office and it was just an ordinary little old home and my mother was always there.
“My maiden name was Florence Sylvia Nicholson and my parents were Jack and Sylvia Lila Nicholson.
“My dad had the transport between Mulwala and Melbourne and he used to bring the goods for a lot of the shops in Yarrawonga. My father worked hard.
“My mother looked after us children. She was always there when we went to school and when we came home.
Flo Foster and Peter Nicholson.
“We were very lucky. I had a brother Jack and a sister Heather and we were always very close. We had a wonderful family home. I can see her now always cooking or scrubbing the floor. It was a lovely upbringing.
“I didn’t consider myself a very good scholar but I enjoyed school. I always had it in my mind that I wanted to be a nurse and, of course, at the age of fourteen I was sitting for my, I think the Intermediate was what it was called in those days.
“I knew I wouldn’t pass. So, I talked myself into getting appendicitis and four days before the exam I was in the hospital having my appendix out.
“The hospital in Yarrawonga was a big old home where the hospital now stands and Matron Lewis was the matron and she used to come and sit on my bed and talk to me and I told her that I wanted to be a nurse one day.
Matron said to my mother that when I left school to let me come over to the hospital and she would give me an insight into nursing. So when I was fifteen, I went to the hospital and I did the odd jobs.
“Then, of course the war came, the 2nd World War. Mr Kelly was the dentist in Yarrawonga and his nurse was Molly McCarthy.
“She wanted to go away to the war so I went and took over her job. I stayed with Mr Kelly from the age of, I think it was sixteen or seventeen, until I was twenty-two.
“He was the most wonderful boss. And I learnt a lot by being there.
Left to right Bev Nicholson, Flo Foster and Ivy Goodwin c.1948
“All I can remember about the war years is that you had to have petrol vouchers to get petrol. “This was when I was working with Mr Kelly and he used to go to Cobram all day Wednesday. “I would take his car to the service station, fill it with petrol, see that it was right for oil, that the tyres were right then pack him up and have him ready to be on his way every Wednesday. I would stay at the surgery and take appointments.
“I met up with Bert when I was twenty-two in 1945, the end of the war. We used to have dances and they’d come over from Tocumwal and of course all of the girls would be down at the halls but those days there wasn’t a lot of drink because the hotels closed at six o’clock.
“Most of us girls wouldn’t dance with any boy that had had a drink, we didn’t like the smell of it.
“The day that the war finished we did have a parade in the street at Mulwala and I can just remember I was on the back of a truck, I think I was Miss Something.
“I can’t even remember what it was but I know that we were all on the truck and having a wonderful time. It was wonderful entertainment for everybody. Everybody was so happy that the war was over.”
Flo’s early years with her family were a great foundation towards her long and fulfilling life.
In next month’s feature of “I Remember When” the oral history group will give an insight into Flo and Bert’s life together.
IN A BOX
The Yarrawonga Mulwala Community and Learning Centre Oral History Group are currently seeking new members to join their group. If you have skills in:
• Interviewing
• Basic IT and typing and/or
• Audio editing
please get in touch with the Community Centre on 03 5744 3911 for more information.
