Gelateria Arena

She was working full time at the age of 11, travelled alone by ship from Genoa (Italy) to Sydney to marry a man she had not seen for five years, and cooked meals for 60 diners a night in a cafe in Beaumont Street, Hamilton. And by the way, Silvia Saccaro raised three children.

Missing from Beaumont Street

'All these shops, but nowhere to buy a nail!'

This was my husband’s recurring lament, after we moved to live in Hamilton. We love being in close walking distance to a wide range of shops and services. It wasn’t long, though, before we discovered some serious gaps in the retail mix.

The romance of timber

'Timber is the thing,' Frank Standen told his daughter Jan. 'It’s all in the taste.'
Years later, her father long gone, Jan Pilcher wishes she had asked him what he meant.

'My beloved Beaumont Street'

'I was so happy growing up there, and have tried to recall the events and experiences that made it so. I want others to be happy there, in the future.'

So wrote Margaret Colditz, in May 1990. The earthquake in December, 1989 had changed Hamilton’s main street irrevocably. People who had lived there all their lives told her they felt that with the terrible carnage to the street, 'part of them had died.'

Hamilton Chinese - the Mook family

'I could wrap you up in newspaper and there wouldn’t be a gap anywhere!'

This somewhat startling skill comes from working in Mook’s Fruit Shop after school in 1960s Hamilton. Along with wielding an alarming knife to slice up the tough Queensland Blue pumpkins, it is one of the many skills of Teresa Purnell.

'So who are the other Chinese who came to Hamilton in the earliest days?' I ask Teresa.

'We are the Hamilton Chinese', is the rapid reply.

The Miller’s legacy

'You can sit next to him. He’s one of those'.

George Yanis was 8 years old, in 3^rd class at Tighes Hill Primary School. The boy told to sit next to George was Vancho Jovanovski, a Macedonian from what was then Yugoslavia. Since George could speak Greek, Macedonian and English, his teacher thought George could take Vancho under his wing. They spoke Macedonian to each other at first, and Vancho learned English.

George always remembers being dubbed one of those.

Greater stories to be told

'I rushed out the front door - everyone was coming out of their homes. I looked towards Beaumont Street from our elevated front driveway. I could see the Greater tower – it was leaning to the left side, not vertical, it appeared to be wavering, and I thought, This is not good!'

Why does a blacksmith have a shop?

It was his private retreat, even though the sound of hammer against anvil blasted my five year old eardrums. I loved crouching against the slab timber wall at a safe distance, watching my father lean into the silken shoulder of one of his beloved horses, the animal lifting its front leg as a magical reflex.

Survival of a stately home

It means 'a pile of rough stones'. One of Hamilton’s rare surviving late Victorian homes, Fettercairn is truly a survivor. Over the past 110 years, it has reinvented itself time and time again. Built in 1903 for Mr and Mrs Ramsay Gow, the imposing two storey, 50 square house was an unambiguous statement by its owners of achievement and prosperity.

Who’s been sleeping in my house?

The popularity of the television series of this name shows how keen many of us are discover the human dramas that might have played out in the house we now occupy. One of the quests of this blog is to find out much more about the history and the secrets of the land, the buildings and the people around my home in Hamilton.