Recently the lovely ladies of the Alamein Learning Centre invited me to be a Living Book. This meant I got to give a little talk about my Ashburton book and people came by my table to ask me about it. It was another wonderful opportunity to meet new people around the neighbourhood.
A few days later, a gentleman called Ed Parker called me and said he’d seen me on the Centre’s social media. Would I be interested in a video project he did on the history of the Ashburton Support Services in 2015? I replied, ‘Absolutely!’ because I’m always interested in any local history work I haven’t done myself.
Now I didn’t talk much about the senior citizens culture in my Ashburton book. But I certainly thought about it. I decided that Samarinda Ashburton Aged Care Services, as Ashburton Support Services is now known, was a big enough enterprise with its own rich history that it deserved a dedicated book in its own right. I figured my book would be able to provide context for it should they ever get around to it.
Ed said he’d put the video up on YouTube. True to his word, he sent me the link later that day. It was three-and-a-half hours of interviews with various people involved in the establishment and operation of these essential community services.
I admit, it took me awhile to get through the video. It took a little longer to think of what I could do with the information within it. Eventually I realised that many of the interviewees were women who started out as Meals on Wheels drivers or ‘jockeys’ (the person who accompanied the driver). Since I’m always interested in documenting local women’s history, I decided to focus this post on the iconic Meals on Wheels service and its ongoing presence in Ashburton.
The story of Meals on Wheels
Meals on Wheels is a volunteer-based transport service that delivers a cooked meal to the home of a registered client. It began in Britain during World War II. Women provided meals to citizens who lost their homes in the Blitz (on a bike!). According to the National Archives of Australia, Mrs Nancy Dobson, the honorary secretary of the Ladies Auxiliary of the South Melbourne Council brought the idea to Australia in 1949.
I’d tell you more about Nancy but like most influential women in Australian history, there’s very little other information about her.
Until then, providing social welfare infrastructure, including services for elderly people, was not a priority for successive Australian governments. It seems they were too busy dealing with the financial consequences of two World Wars and a Depression. But even if it had been available, elderly people probably would not have advocated for government assistance anyway. Even today, they are not inclined to talk about the universal themes of trauma, loneliness and the devastating impact of living through such tumultuous times. Life was something you ‘got on’ with. They worked hard their whole lives and often died before they got close to what we would call ‘old’ today.
By 1949, Australia’s life expectancy was beginning to climb. With their children broken by World War II, many elderly people now had no-one to care for them and were left rattling around old homes, lonely and traumatised themselves.
Mrs Dodson started Meals on Wheels in Victoria as a practical service to ensure elderly people living at home received at least one hot meal a day. Many didn’t want this ‘charity’. But others came to depend on not just the meal but the pleasant and vital human interaction that came from the volunteers who delivered it.
Not that they would have admitted that of course.
Meals on Wheels in Ashburton
The push to provide services for the elderly began in Ashburton around 1951. The election of 29-year-old Ashburton resident Neville Lee to the City of Camberwell Council provided the impetus to push for more local government support. A young father of four, Neville was the first to admit he had no idea about the needs of elderly people. He became educated through the influence of the vocal advocacy of the well-to-do Canterbury Senior Citizens president. ‘I came to understand there was an unfulfilled need for Senior Citizens,’ Neville told the history project in his interview.
Things really moved along when Neville became the City of Camberwell Mayor in 1961. With this influence, a group of dedicated volunteers established working committees, secured land, funded and started building a Senior Citizens Club on the space on the corner of Warner Avenue and High Street. Plans for the famous Opportunity Shop on Welfare Parade were also underway to provide an ongoing source of income for it. At this time, the RSL hall sat on the corner too, so this space already had a long history of being dedicated to supporting people.
Although home-delivered meals already occurred, the Ashburton Meals on Wheels service began out of the Senior Citizens Club kitchen around 1963. It was not welcomed by the Club. “It was their kitchen and they didn’t want to share it,” long-term volunteer Anne McDonald told the history project.
The food was not made there, instead it came from the Canterbury Senior Citizens Club. “Sue, a staff member used to go in the van and pick it up,” said Val McFarlane. “She’d put the food in containers there and then bring them back. Then we would [use the kitchen] to put them in canisters while the volunteers waited outside.” Each canister contained three compartments for a meat, vegetables, and a dessert. Soup and orange juice accompanied it.
“You usually had four sets of five canisters in your car per round plus the large soup canister,” said Anne. Clients were expected to provide their own mug and the volunteer would ladle the soup into it. “I thought it was very unhygienic!” said Kay Johnston. “They had to supply their own mug and yuck, they were awful! I would go into the kitchen and wash it for them before putting the soup in.”
In those early days, there were no real food handling and safety regulations and keeping the food hot was the volunteers’ main concern. “The aluminum canister had an airlock around it,” said Jean Sloman. “It stayed warm but people would still reheat it because no-one had microwaves then. Other times, you’d deliver and they would have the oven on ready! Sometimes they put it away and had it for the evening meal.”
“Some people needed your visit,” continued Jean. “Others met you at the door and wouldn’t let you step over the doorstep.” Jean sometimes found herself doing minor chores around the house, collecting letters from the letterbox, witnessing documents, all sorts of things.
At its peak, Ashburton’s Meals on Wheels volunteers operated on nine routes, sometimes ten. No-one interviewed described the geographic range of the service except to say each client’s house was pinpointed in a Melways. “We had little blue dots on where they all lived,” said Marie Rosendale.
The volunteers delivered in pairs and got to know the clients on their route. “There were some people who I felt should have been in care already,” said Jean. “But they were stubborn. Their house would be so cluttered, we used to have to clear a path to get to the kitchen.” Sometimes the volunteer would discover several uneaten meals in the fridge. “If we knew they were inside but they wouldn’t let us in, we would sometimes leave the meal on the doorstep,” said Kay. “But it was always hard to find somewhere to leave it where cats and insects wouldn’t get it.”
“Sometimes the house would smell awful,” she continued. “You had to learn to be non-judgmental.” Most just wanted to be independent and the volunteers committed themselves to supporting them.
They would collect up the used containers on their rounds and take them back to the Senior Citizens Club kitchen for washing. “It would all have to be washed by hand, it was a huge job,” said Kay.
The volunteers all came from the local area. Of the ladies interviewed, most began in the mid-1980s after their children went off to school and they were looking for something to do with their time. They stayed on and began including work at the Opportunity Shop or paid employment with the support services with their delivery schedule.
After a time, the food provision moved to Royal Southern Memorial Hospital in Caulfield.[1] No-one interviewed explained why this happened but it was probably because the advent of more official food and safety regulations warranted a more professionalised service. “The food was very good from there,” said Val. “It remained very affordable. Even now [2015], it’s very well priced.”
The giant soup canister and ladle disappeared, replaced with packet soup. “They didn’t like that, it was too salty,” said Jean. Next came a thermos. “The heat would expand the thing and they couldn’t get the lid off!”
The canisters turned into disposable aluminium trays with a cardboard lid. But this was a generation that wasn’t about to waste anything. “The clients used to keep the foil, wash it and send it back with the jockey,” said Marie. “We had an old ringer and we used to flatten out the foil, bag them and send them off to some charity.”
Meals and Wheels has always relied on the unpaid labour of women and their commitment to supporting the community. But over time, as more returned to paid work, it became harder to recruit volunteers and food regulations became stricter.
“Back then, it was about keeping the meal hot. Now it’s about keeping it cold!” said Jean.
Yet despite these challenges, the Ashburton Meals on Wheels Service managed to continue. The building of the Ashburton Senior Citizens Centre to accompany the aged care accommodation available at Samarinda Lodge means Ashburton’s Meals on Wheels service now operates out of the kitchen there. As the Federal Government invests more in keeping elderly people at home for as long as possible and Ashburton’s residents are some of the longest living in the country, no doubt Ashburton’s Meals on Wheels service will continue to provide valuable assistance to our community.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ed Parker, Neville Lee (RIP-2024), Val McFarlane (RIP-2023), Marie Rosendale (RIP-2020), Anne McDonald (RIP-2019), Kay Johnston and Jean Sloman who are quoted in this article.
Link to the Ashburton Support Services History Project on YouTube.
If you would like to volunteer for Meals on Wheels delivery or other projects run by Samarinda Aged Care Services, please contact them on 1300 591 464.
[1] The hospital was merged into the Alfred Hospital Service in 1987.
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