In the years immediately after
World War Two the Milk Board decided to extend regular home delivery of milk
into Oak Flats. Regular consumption of
milk was considered essential for public health and the Board had an obligation
to ensure it was readily available to as many people as possible.
Keith Grey farmed jersey cows
which produced lots of cream and after a good deal of persuading he started
deliveries in July 1947. The first day
he sold a total of 23 litres. It was all
unpasteurised, direct from the farm.
When the run grew a bit, Keith’s son Bob started helping him before
school and at weekends. When Bob left school he started working full time for
the milkman.
Oak Flats in the late forties was
the original Struggletown. No one had
much money. There were a couple of small
shops and not much else. No school, no
other facilities at all. A lot of the
‘houses’ were just fibro garages which people would build and live in until
they could get enough money together to start on the main building. Despite (or because of) all this, the town
had a great sense of community. Everyone
knew everyone else and everyone was prepared to help their neighbour.
Apart from Central Avenue, the
roads were either just lines on a map or at best, a narrow strip of blue metal
meandering through the trees. Delivering
milk the Grey’s would mostly just head along one of the many tracks which left
the gazetted road and dodge through the trees until they met up with another
road.
During one long spell of wet
weather they could not get the truck into most of the area west of what is now
Moore Street. They would drive in as far
as they could, then Bob would put about 25 litres of milk into two small cans
and deliver it to homes in the inaccessible areas while his father would drive
back out and meet him at the next accessible spot.
When they celebrated a wedding or other major event, some of them could
also celebrate with gusto. When delivering milk in the early hours of the
morning the last thing you needed was to be pulled into a party for a drink or
two. For this reason the Greys were always very very quiet when they were delivering anywhere near a celebration. It
wasn't that they didn’t appreciate their hospitality, it was just that they
were very hospitable and they Grey’s had a job to do and they did it better
while sober.
It is easy to remember the hard things about those days. Working seven
days a week in all weathers. The rain that saturated you for days on end, the
westerly winds, the heat, the flies. Carrying heavy cans of milk for a nasty
customer.
The memories that linger for Bob the longest are of the friendliness of
people their open hearted acceptance of life and their toughness and tenacity
in building a place for themselves and their family.
As the town grew the business grew with it. They Grey’s were able to
take on an employee. This meant that after years of working seven days a week
they could have a day off. Deliveries
were still seven days a week, 365 days a year, but they were each able to sleep
in one day a week.
Gradually the town changed. New shops, better roads, a school and lots
more people. The business grew it until one day Bob realized that he no longer
knew every customer. That was when he realized that Oak Flats had grown up.
Bob spent
more than thirty years delivering milk around Oak Flats. He made a lot of
friends, some of them are still his friends today. But in his opinion the
toughest and the best years were when the town and he were both young.
‘Grey’s Milk Run’ story and image of Keith Grey, contributed to Tongarra
Museum, by Bob Grey 2007.
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| Keith Grey on the milk run in Central Avenue Oak Flats. Shellharbour Images Shellharbour City Libraries. |
