(1914-1969)

Early Life

John Lomman was born at Gorge Road, Athelstone, South Australia, on March 12^th 1914. His parents were Samuel James Lomman and Jessie Lomman (Nee Melville). John had five siblings, listed in order of birth, Mary Christine, Ronald, Allan, Maxwell and Mona of which he was the youngest in the family.

John went to the Athelstone Primary School and then went to Nailsworth Technical High School.  One of his subjects was carpentry. Before he went to school, he had to milk the cow, then ride his bicycle to Nailsworth for studies and return home and milk the cow again. Then help in the market garden and get his homework done before bedtime. During his early school years, he was involved in many team sports, including tennis, cricket, football and rifle shooting. He later became Master of Ceremonies (MC) at the local dances held at the Athelstone Institute. He was also involved in the local Methodist Church. John married Dorothy Victoria Hockley at Athelstone in 1937. Dorothy Victoria Lomman (nee Hockley) born at Gorge Road, Athelstone, South Australia, on 25^th February 1908, being the fifteenth child to William James and Elizabeth Hockley.

Market Garden and Family Life (1939-1945)

John purchased seventeen acres of land on Montacute Road, Campbelltown (now Newton), from Mr Smith on Newton Road. The land was covered with scotch thistles, which took him over a year to remove before he could cultivate the land and get it ready to plant vegetables. Then it was time to start building their home. At this time, World War Two (1939-1945) was starting and building materials became very scarce which extended the building time that the home would eventually be completed. In the meantime they lived on Bells Road (now Stradbroke Road), Athelstone.

While the land was being cleared, John had to ‘divine’ using a dowsing rod, to find where the water was located on the property. Having chosen an area and drilled down in the earth to find the water level that was plentiful enough to place a centrifugal pump over the bore to bring the water to the surface to fill the huge tank next to the pump shed. John often commented how difficult and devastating it was when the bore would collapse and they would have to begin the exercise again. Many a tear of frustration was had over the many mishaps that happened preparing the land for agriculture.

Starting their family in 1938, John and Dorothy had six children, Robert John, Thomas James, Richard Wallace, Barbara Joan, Dorothy Elizabeth, and Dennis Richard.  All born fifteen months apart with Dorothy breast nursing the babies up until they were two years of age. As it was wartime, many food items were unavailable everyone was on rations.

During the Second World War, our family lived on Montacute Road, Campbelltown. John, as a market gardener had to stay on his property and grow vegetables for the war effort. Our home was out in the rural areas about seven miles from the City of Adelaide. At night, we would have to pull down the blackout blinds on the windows and have the kerosene lamp to keep the light to a minimum. In the evening when darkness fell, we would go outside to watch the searchlights from Parafield Airport crisscross across the sky looking for approaching aircraft. In the winter, the wood stove grate would be opened-up to give enough light and heat for the family to be together in the kitchen. Mostly my father sat next to the wood stove with the oven door open and his feet placed in to keep warm while helping us to do our maths homework. We also played competitive marble games on the long runner that crossed the floor, skipping, and our father showing us how to make tennis nets for the tennis court. The wood stove had to be cleaned of ash each day and set again for cooking and heating. Black boot polish was used to keep the stove looking clean and neat.

The animals on the market garden were fowls, chickens, bantams, one rooster, four ducks, one billy goat and Jemima the female goat, cat, Lassie the Border collie dog that rounded up the chickens all day. When the oat grass was very high we would play hide and seek with Lassie. We would run and hide and Lassie would be jumping above the grass trying to find us all excited when she found us lying in the grass. The pigeons lived in the Pear tree. Bill the goat was a real character. He was tethered by a large log steel chain to a large steel peg in the block of land near the house. He would often work hard to pull the stake out of the ground. One day there was a knock on the front door and a man who was driving a large quarry truck said that the goat was standing in the middle of the road stopping his truck from get through. My father had to go and try and round up Bill and put him in the yard. This was no easy feat as when Bill got excited he would stand on his hind legs and be difficult to rope him with a lead.

The cow would be milked every day and we would separate the milk make butter and boil some milk to get nice thick cream to go on our jam sandwiches. Our draught horse Dolly was used to plough all the land after each crop had finished its season ready for the winter season plantings. Eventually Dolly was getting too old to work anymore so she had to be taken to the abattoirs. Watching her being taken away was very sad we were all very tearful that day. The chickens were free range and were fed wheat, bran pellets, vegetable scraps and green grasses. The eggs were pickled with a product called ‘KePeg’, which was rubbed over eggs to protect them and kept in a very cool place.

John (also known as Wally) loved his nephew John of nine years, who he encouraged to come down from his home in Athelstone to help in the garden, binding carrots learning to drive the Farmall tractor and watch while John senior built the first pipeline watering system. This was constructed with a one hundred and sixty foot (160) pipeline with a sprinkler every six to eight feet. The water was pumped from a very large concrete tank along the pipe and controlled by a stopcock wheel at the end of the pipeline.

The watering had to be timed and controlled so that the plants would not become flooded. Then the pipes had to be moved to the next watering section. All this work was setup manually. After the land had been ploughed, rolled and scarified John would take the walking box full of seed which was used to sow the new season seeds such as onions, carrots, beetroot, and lettuce. Potato, peas, corn were planted by hand by poking a hole in the soil with a wooden handle hole maker and placing the seeds in and covering them over with soil. Acres of potatoes were planted and when their leaves had started to dry out it would be time to dig them up by fork and leave them to be collected in large hessian bag by the pickers. The bags were then collected on the back of the green ex-army Ford truck ready to be graded, weighed and bagged again for market. Eventually as time passed, a potato digger was bought to make the collecting and bagging the potatoes less time consuming. The potato bags were stencilled with black paint with John Lomman’s name and address as reference to the seller of the product.

The weighing machine was made of iron about five feet high with a side frame and a top rod where the weights were placed and slid along to assess the correct weight. The potato bags were placed on the metal base, when weighed the bag tops were then sewn up with a bag needle six inches long threaded with twine. John also used flax to bind other root vegetables for market e.g. beetroot, carrots, parsnips, swedes and turnips. The flax leaves had to be stripped into long ties this was done on a block of wood attached to the bench with three-inch nails placed in rows pointing upwards to make a shredder effect. The flax was placed over the nails and pressed down then pulled through the nails to make the ties about two feet in length then used to tie bunched root vegetables and also used to tie the Blue Iris flowers in spring that Dorothy, his wife, grew in her plot below the house.

During these hard times, John played competition tennis for Athelstone Tennis Club on each Saturday in summer. John, his brother Max and his nephews John and Len and his two sons Robert and Tom all set out to go fishing at Younghusband on the River Murray arriving there at 9pm at night to put up the Army tent 12 feet by 8 feet. All in together until the sun came up. John and Max took the canoe out in the middle of the lagoon to catch fish. Eventually they all gave up fishing with little success. The weekend was enjoyed by all the family members. Family get-togethers happened every weekend. Saturday nights, uncles, aunts and cousins visited to play table tennis on the dining room table and play cards in the kitchen. Sunday, family members also came to visit and Dorothy would spend all of Saturday baking and making cakes and biscuits. Sometimes Dorothy would go to get her afternoon tea ready and find the cake tins empty. Her two eldest sons, Robert and Tom came in late on their Saturday night out and would help themselves to the new baked cakes.

Home Life

In winter, the wood stove would keep everyone warm. The lounge and dining room had back-to-back chimneys and grates were filled with wood and were lit in the winter. It was all the children’s job to gather kindling from pruning the grape vines and the fruit trees to store for the wood stove. The only cooking facility we had in the house, until John bought an Adelec electric stove in the 1950s. Mallee root came in huge pieces, aged and very hard to chop into pieces with the axe. It was purchased in large quantities and stored under our old pear tree. When the wood was split-up, we stored the small pieces under an old galvanised tank cut in half and turned on the side. Wood chopping was an ongoing chore as it was a daily necessity. Sometimes when the wood in the house was low we would have to go out in the night time with a lantern to gather more logs. The lanterns were filled with kerosene and had a woven cotton wick that hung down the centre of the lamp that absorbed the kerosene and was then lit with a match to get the flame and adjusted to the correct size flame. In the summer, the lounge fireplace was used to store the fresh eggs covered with a product called ‘key peg’. This product was a consistency like Vaseline, which protected the eggs from the air affecting them preventing them from going bad. These eggs were used for cooking over the summer season, as the fowls only laid eggs in the laying season mainly winter and spring when the rains had come and grass was green. The green grass they ate made the yellow yolks a much brighter orange in colour.

Breakfast was always porridge and toast in the winter, and Weet-Bix and hot water, if the milk ran out in the summer. Lunch would usually be bread with butter and vegemite or bread, lard, and homemade tomato sauce.  Sunday was a lamb roast with roast vegetables, mint green peas freshly picked and shelled. The gravy was made with fat from the roast mixed with flour to make a paste then water to make smooth gravy, placed on the stove being stirred all the time to remove any lumps, and then brought to the boil. All this was prepared while the children were at Sunday school and church. Sunday afternoon was playing tennis on our tennis court in the summer or riding our bicycles to the foothills.

The washing and ironing was always done on a Monday. It was an early start and a very long day by the time the ironing was done for seven family members. We would have to have the kindling and small wood pieces to place under the copper to boil the water. A box of wood would always be kept next to the copper. The white sheets and bedding were always washed first then the clothes followed and the work clothes. As each load was washed, it would be wrung out by hand and placed in the blue bag rinse water then wrung out again and placed on the line. The line was two large poles with heavy-duty wire attached between the two poles held in the centre by a Y-shaped stick to hold the washing up off the ground. Eventually we got a Tray Way Wringer for the clothes and a Hills Hoist clothesline, which made washing day a lot easier to control the washing on windy days. The brass copper used for laundry was also used in the summer to prepare the plums and apricots to be placed on drying trays in the sun to dry. This was prepared with a mixture of water and monaglutamine powder to help preserve the fruit from going mouldy. Each day the fruit would be turned-over to allow the other side to dry. This happened until the fruit was ready for storage in jars.

As all the fruit and summer grown vegetable came into season it was all-hands-on-deck to make plum, apricot, fig, marmalade jams. Having to stand over the hot stove and take turns stirring the jam. When it started boiling, the jam would spit out onto our arms and hands and we would complain to try and get out of stirring the jam. Then it was heating all the jam jars in the oven ready for the jam to go into them while they were still hot. Once the jam cooled we needed to put the cellophane covers on the jars, label and date them. The stock of jams took us through the winter month until the next summer season crop. We would stone and slice fruit to be placed neatly in the preserving jars ready to be cooked in the special preserving unit. Also pickles made of cauliflower, green tomatoes, gherkin, and pickle onions.

The biggest threat for the summer harvest was the locusts, which came over the property as a black cloud and devoured everything in their path leaving nothing behind them. The noise of them eating the crops was like a low thunder rumbling across the paddocks.

Retirement

In retirement, John and Dorothy played bowls at the Payneham Bowls club and travelled in their caravan to many bowls tournaments around the country. John also built his own lawn bowling green next to the house on Montacute Road, Newton, so all the male club members could play bowls with him on ladies’ day at the club, which was Tuesday and Thursday.

Men played at the club the other days of the week and competitive men’s teams on Saturdays. In the early years of bowls, men and women’s teams were all segregated, but the women always had to prepare the lunches for the men’s teams at the club on their chosen days.

In the late 1950s, when John decided to retire. He auctioned off all the contents of the huge shed, truck, tractors and implements as well as the glass houses, John pulled the huge sheds down, cleared the area and removed the galvanise sheets of iron and started to organise the subdivision of the land. In 1959, the subdivision was underway leaving the house and front blocks including the bowling green and tennis courts that he had built in their ownership so they did not feel closed in with all the new building around them.

After all his hard years of work, John passed away on 20^th October 1969 at the age of 55 years. Dorothy lived on the property until her death on the 20^th July 1993, aged 85 years.

History of Happenings to John Lomman:

• 1944, 8.45am, August 24^th 1944, J. W. L. had an accident when at the Glynde corner a cyclist ran into the truck John as he was driving home from the East End Market. John felt a bump under his tyre. Tuesday September 5^th 1944 Advertiser Newspaper Adelaide SA, J. W. L. went to court in relation to the accident.
• Wednesday September 1944, a speeding motor cycle ran into the rear of John’s truck.
• A.W. Nelligan, the father of the deceased requested that a stop sign be erected at that corner as it had become very dangerous.
• Thursday September 5^th 1944, Richard Wallace Lomman passed away from Diphtheria at 3 years of age.
• Death Notice in the Advertiser Newspaper on the 8^th September 1944. Funeral Notice 8^th September 1944. Richard was buried at the Athelstone Independent Cemetery, Athelstone, by Wellington & Sons Funeral Parlour, Wellington Road, Payneham. Adelaide Advertiser South Australia, Friday 16^th March 1963, page 70.
• Custom Credit Corporation Limited - LOST. Corporation to issue a new stock Certificate in respect of 600 ordinary stock units registered in the name of John Wallace Lomman and Dorothy Victoria Lomman advertised upon a statement that the original Certificate No:  AB3129, AB3130, AB3131,have been lost or destroyed.
• Notice is hereby given unless there is received some objection within 21 days from the date of this notice the directors will proceed with the application for a new Certificates from the Secretary General Registered Office, New Road, Edgecliff, NSW. – 1 pound and eighty-five pence.

John's Parents

Grandparents

Personal reminiscences of life in Campbelltown by Barbara Titheradge (nee Lomman), from the Campbelltown Library “Digital Diggers” group.

If you have any comments or questions regarding the information in this local history article, please contact the Local History officer on 8366 9357 or hthiselton@campbelltown.sa.gov.au