Don Roulston Buzzard

Appendix 7.0
15 Telegraph Road, Toodyay

New home at 15 Telegraph Road, Toodyay

15 Telegraph Road, Toodyay

Today, the owners of 15 Telegraph Road have still kept many of the original features of the home and have their house number displaying the telegraph key used in the times the home was a telegraph station.

Telegraph key on the right

The entrance hall to the home is the same as it was in 1952 and the kitchen still has the original stove.

Front Entrance

Wood Stove

The stove was also used as a house heater and there constantly boiling kettle of water on top in the winter. Don would place irons for pressing the creases in skirts and pants on top of the stove and the clothes were heavily starched to maintain crisp look. When a door was opened to the fire, the children used toasting forks, made of wire, to make toast or sometimes damper in the morning before school. Don also made bread and dripping snacks for after school.

Every Sunday for lunch, Don would serve a delicious roast. Lamb, hogget or mutton was the staple meat at the time, but Don would have most likely cooked mutton as it was a cheaper cut of a sheep and had more flavour than lamb or hogget.

The home was renovated by a group of Polish men who lived the other side of the show grounds in a railway worker’s camp. The additions included a new kitchen, bathroom, back verandah and a chook yard next to an almond tree behind goalposts of the football ground.

The Polish women helped mind the Buzzard children when Don was away. The children of the Polish women used to come over and play at 15 Telegraph.

David remembers that often on Sunday we’d have chicken for lunch, and before church they had to go out and catch chicken and chop head off and leave it hanging so it would bleed. And when we came back from church they had to pluck the chook so Don could cook it. If Marj and Rusty or others were coming for lunch, the children would have to catch two chooks.

The right hand side of the block had a vegetable garden and the land bordered Toodyay’s showground and football oval.

Showground and Football Oval

Don encouraged her children to return the footballs that came over the side fence, particularly those that ended up in the vegetable patch as football players, if they retrieved the balls, would do damage to the growing vegetables.

At the western end of the football ground was a grandstand. Brian remembers a particular day on which a player leapt up to grab a beam, about 8 feet above him, in the change rooms. He missed the beam and crashed down backwards, and head first, onto the concrete floor. “His skull cracked open, blood everywhere, and someone grabbed me and took me outside and explained he would be OK. Don’t worry just go home and come back next training session. Which we did. When I told Mum the story, she was pretty worried for the fella and made enquiries for me over the next few days. He lived, though he spent some time in Northam Hospital.”

The “offending” grandstand