GIANT LETTERED SHEDS -

The following is from a book called 'Giant Lettered Sheds' by Carl Edwards. The book is a great reminder of just how life has changed since the 1950s. My favourite chapter is worth repeating here and hopefully will encourage you to go out and get a copy of the book.

"It was a 'kick around' day in the August school holidays. It was too cold to go swimming and the likelihood of rain put a dampener on the bikes, so we headed off on foot in no particular direction. Being a weekday, there was plenty to see and do on the wharf; cranes would be carrying out their never-ending task of loading and unloading cargo, and there might even be a cattle ship in. Either way, we could always catch a lift over to North Wharf on one of Tilley's ferries.

It was a rainy day, so we all wore Wellington boots, and headed off down the hill kicking an old battered baked bean tin backwards and forwards. At the bottom of the hill we could see trucks lined up at the old weighbridge, so we poked our heads in to see what was happening. “G'day, Mr. Jenkins!” we chimed.

“Hello boys, What are you lot up to? Wagging school?”

“No. We're on holiday.”

“That'll mean someone's in for a prank, won't it boys?”

“Not us, Mr. Jenkins. We don't cause any trouble. Can we weigh in a truck?”

“Yeah. Why not? Do you remember how to do it?”

A truck rolled on to the weighbridge and Phil stood in front of the balance mechanism. He slid the counter weights along the bar.

“You've gone too far young lad. Back it off one. That's better. Now bring the other one along. Too far again – take it back one. That's it. That's got the hundred weights. Now do the quarters. That's better – now the pounds.”

Phil moved the final counterweight into position.

“That's it. Now let's get the weight down. Let's see now.” Taking out his pen, he noted,

“That's five ton, 17 hundredweight, three quarters and seven pounds. You lot will have me out of a job.”

He looked over to Johnnie and me. “Here, come on you two. You better have a go.” I lined up behind Johnnie and the process was repeated with the next two trucks. “I reckon you three are just about experts. Where are you off to today?”

Phil answered. “Nowhere. We're just muckin' around.”

“You want to go at 'C' shed.”

We all thought it was a good idea, so we piled out of the weighbridge and headed for the wharf. Phil suggested a detour as we headed over the railway line. “Let's go and see Fred the blacksmith. Then we can cut through to 'A' shed. A ferry might be in.” We changed direction and headed west through the Harbour Trust workshops. There were all sorts of jobs carried out in the workshop sheds. There were metal workers, carpenters, painters and electricians, to name but a few. Our favourites were the blacksmiths. Fred and Jack were always pleased to see us, so we kicked our baked bean tin in their direction. We passed by the lunchroom, where we could always pinch an old pack of playing cards hidden by the workers, then turned right and cut through to the blacksmiths' shop.

“Hi boys. I reckoned you'd turn up today,” said Fred.

“G'day Fred. G'day Jack.”

“G'day boys,” replied Jack, the quiet one. Fred did most of the talking. “What are you making today?” asked Johnnie.

“We're making a load of long bolts to hold the wharf together. Have a look at these.” We walked over to where a lathe was cutting long threads into oversized rods. The rods were close to an inch thick and over eight feet in length. White cooling fluid poured over the site where the die was cutting. It was a slow job but fascinating to watch.

Behind us, Jack was shaping the hexagonal heads of a bolt with a giant machine hammer. He placed the glowing bolt head on the anvil then activated the hammer to come down ever so gently and shape the head. When the metal cooled, he took the bolt back to the forge and re-heated it, turning on the electric bellows until it glowed white-hot. Then it was back to the hammer. It was great to watch, and we couldn't get enough of it. Sparks flew from the metal, as he hand-worked the bolt head with a finishing hammer.

“Have you found any more of those peanuts?” asked Jack.

“We're going on to the wharf this morning,” I replied. “We thought we would call in first to see what you were doing.”

“Drop in any time. If you get some more peanuts, call back and we'll roast them for you.”

“Righto,” we replied. We said our farewells and set out for the Ferry Landing.

Tilley's ferries went backwards and forwards all day when the wharf was working. If you were a waterside worker you didn't have to pay, but if you were a seaman or visitor, there was a fare of tuppence a trip. You had to have the cost of the fare for the return trip too or you could get stuck with a long walk back over the Fremantle Railway Bridge. Usually, we managed a free ride. We kicked our tin down to the wharf, grabbed a drink from the water fountain and made our way on to the ferry.

As usual, we went down to the back of the wide, open-hulled boat and perched ourselves on the stern out of the way. After a short wait, one of the ferry-men let go the ropes and we headed out across the harbour towards the first of the landings at the west end of North Wharf. Looking down the Victoria Quay side of the harbour, we could see the Australian warship, HMAS Anzac berthed at “C” Shed. We would call in later and have a look.

Now came the tricky bit. One of the ferrymen made the rounds of the passengers with an oversized money tin. He was collecting the fares. We kept facing aft and, once again, the fare collector never bothered us. That meant we had something to spend on lollies later on. Off we hopped at a North Wharf ferry landing then we headed over to the sheds. There were hundreds of bags of potatoes stacked in the first shed, so we prised a few out between the rope ties. We cut off the dirty skin with the knife Johnnie always carried and made a meal of raw potatoes as we continued on our way.

North Wharf was never as interesting as Victoria Quay, as most of the foodstuffs ended up on the south side. It was the ferry trip that made the north side worthwhile. We worked our way east, checking the ferry landings as we went. There were usually a few people fishing from the landings and we were always keen to see what they were catching. We checked out a few more sheds then caught the ferry over to 'F' Shed down towards the eastern end of Victoria Quay. Things began to look up. As we walked through the shed we noticed that the 'cage', a wired-off enclosure inside the shed, was being stacked with cartons of damaged tins. Something had obviously gone wrong with the loading, and the damaged items would be subject to an insurance claim. Of course, not all of the damaged tins would end up in the cage, and there were more than a few 'purposeful accidents' on the wharf.

“Have you got any spares, mate?” Johnnie asked one of the lumpers.

“Aren't you the Gillan kids?” came the reply. It was happening again. Being a 'Gillan kid' was like shouting 'open sesame!' in front of giant stone doors.

“Yeah. Our dad's Don Gillan. He drives the cranes.” Phil and Johnnie had answered as one.

One of the lumpers turned to the other and said: “Hey, Pete, I reckon these bent tins aren't much good to anyone, are they?”

“Nah, they're buggered. Let 'em have a few,” came the reply. The lumper handed over some battered tins and added, “They're peaches, but you never got them from us, right?”

“We'll hide 'em and say we pinched 'em if anyone asks,” said Phil.

“That's the shot. No one knows a thing.”

We thanked the two lumpers and took off with the cans inside our shirts. A little further on we climbed down under the wharf and set to basing Johnnie's knife through the lids. We prised the cans open and lunch was served. A few dings in the side of a tin doesn't affect the taste of the contents one little bit.

We came up on 'C' Shed just as the wharf's siren sounded the lunch break. In front of us was a trim little warship, the destroyer HMAS Anzac. It looked very smart and would look even smarter when it was open for inspection the following weekend. There were a few sailors on deck taking a break, so we tried it on. “Have you got any old hats you don't want?” we chimed.

“What do you want hats for?” one of the sailors asked, knowing full well that we wanted to wear them.

“To wear,” we all said, predictably. It didn't pay to be a smart-arse with the sailors as they usually kept their old hats for pretty girls.

“I'll go and have a look,” said one.

He was gone for ages and we thought he was wasting our time, but we carried on chatting to the other two just in case. We asked all the right questions, as you never knew when it might pay off. The missing sailor came back on deck and was carrying not one, but three old hats. He had a big smile. “I asked around amongst the boys and you got lucky. Here you are,” he said, and threw the hats down to us. They all had gold hatbands proudly proclaiming 'HMAS ANZAC'. We had got lucky and, after buckets of 'thank-yous', we headed further west through 'B' Shed. We were almost back where we had started but were now proudly attired in new headgear.

'B' Shed was fairly quiet. It was between ships and there were lumpers sitting around smoking and talking. It was this shed that had paid off for us a week earlier when we discovered great stacks of peanuts in their shells. The stacks were still there. We worked our way around the piled bags of nuts to where we had helped ourselves. The opened bag was just as we had left it, so we ratted it again, pulling handfuls of nuts into our jumpers. As we snuck out the quietest end of the shed it looked as if we had all put on weight. Laughing, we headed down past 'A' Shed eating the raw peanuts. We cut through to the blacksmiths' shop just as it started to rain. “We're back!” we announced.

“I can see that,” said Fred. “And I can see you've got some new hats. How did you go with the peanuts?”

“We got 'em,” said Johnnie, as he emptied out his jumper. Phil and I added our nuts to the pile as Jack made his way over with a broad shovel.

“You'll be needing this,” he said.

Rain fell heavily on the tin roof as we warmed ourselves near the forge. We had only just made it in time. Jack loaded up the shovel with peanuts and placed it on to the coals. The smell of roasting peanuts filled the blacksmiths' shop, and we all sat around talking and filling ourselves with roasted nuts. It was a nothing sort of day."

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