Bill wrote - 'most of Carrum was bush land when I was a kid. In the 1950's there were white flowering tea trees and bracken ferns everywhere. They were even growing in Tennyson Street next to my Mum and Dad's house. He said - most of the streets in Carrum were unmade, they were just dirt and pot holes. Other boyhood memories of Bills include the times when the 1952 floods came to Carrum. He remembers looking from the McLeod Road Bridge toward Dandenong, where the water was as far as the eye could see. He wrote... the flooded Kananook Creek, Patterson River and swamps caused Carrum to be turned into an island. [1]

1952 floods. View from Priestley's farm.

1952 floods - army duck on Mcleod Road.

In the 1950's there used to be a creek at the back of Emma, Smith and Tennyson streets which flowed out into the Patterson River. Bill stated the creek was part of the Kananook Creek system with even the locals calling it Kananook. He described it as beautiful in those days, clean, wild and full of reeds, he said it had fish, large eels, native water rats and magnificent bird life. Bill said, 'some days I would just sit there for hours watching the eels sliding through the water and reeds.' [1}

Kananook Creek, Seaford. ca 1933 Reminiscent of how the creek

at Carrum looked before being diverted through a pipe!

Author

Carole Ross

1. Ross C. Interview Bill Illman. 2009

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Photo courtesy of

Barry Priestley

Picture Collection, State Library Victoria