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I only knew love and laughter.
My music,
piano,
laughter and happiness.
Well, I am Beryl Raby.
19...
I don’t know.
1919, I suppose.
I suppose.
I am healthy.
I have my own teeth.
Top and bottom.
I have no aches or pain.
And I could do the splits
if I was asked to do it.
if I was asked to do it.
I was born in Moonee Ponds.
like Edna Everage.
It’s true!
I lived in a very happy home.
Everyone laughed.
My mother was always happy playing music.
Everything went around music.
My mum used to play the piano
"and my father would be home
late from his work"
"because he was diddling around
with the men"
at the hotel having drinkies.
"She didn’t like it
because she never liked him drinking."
She would leave his meal sitting on top of
a plate covered over
on top of a pot of hot water,
and he'd arrive home
with all the sheets of music
"the men used to bring into the shop
to give him the latest"
jazz and all that kind of music.
"And she'd snatch the music off
him, "
and she’d let him sit down,
the passage into the kitchen.
And here he was, like a humble man,
just sitting on his own eating his dinner,
and she'd be up in the lounge,
as we used to call it,
and she'd be playing all the latest jazz.
My Mum and Dad would chase one another
up and down the passage, you know,
"if he said something she didn't like,
you know,"
she'd say, “Get out of here.”
Nobody was quarrelling.
It was good to know that we flowed along.
That's about the best way to say it.
It was a home of laughter, fun and love.
everyone played piano.
I learnt music.
I went for exams.
When I think of it now.
"I was sent to elocution
to learn to speak properly."
They did everything possible for me.
My mother was a seamstress.
She could make anything.
My father was a war veteran.
First World War.
First World War digger.
My father was a hairdresser.
He had a shop.
A small shop in the middle
of the Melbourne shopping center.
Manchester Lane just off Collins Street.
Very heart of the city.
He used to cut the hair of all the men
from The Age office and all those places.
"Because he had such a wonderful
personality, it would have made a film."
"He used to love tap dancing
and he'd come in and he do..."
de dum.
da da,
da da, da diddly dum de do.
de diddly dum de do.
"And it was only a little shop
and just enough"
"to have a bit of tobacco and,
you know, clothes there."
"To save money,
I used to go with my [mother], her"
"on a Saturday
instead of paying someone to come in"
"and scrub the floor of the shop,
I would get on a tram and go in"
and she'd scrub that floor of that shop.
I went to the South Preston State School
and then on to the girls’ high school.
Preston Girls High School.
I had a grey uniform.
We all had.
We had lovely uniforms when I think of it.
I used to talk and laugh too much.
“Beryl Burmeister, sit down!”
I had a brother
and he was six years younger than I.
My mother made all our clothes,
she even made the shirts my brother wore.
But there was never anything that we knew,
but nothing but happiness and laughter.
Now that’s us,
Beryl and Billy.
But he was a real devil.
"He’d wag it from school,
and I’d travel with my mother"
around the streets looking for him.
"She used to say when she's talking about
him, she'd say he was “a fair bugger”."
That's what she used to say he was.
"And they’d see us coming
and they’d sing out, "
“Are you looking for Billy, Mrs Burmeister?”
I used to hate it.
I'd be crying.
"I'd be saying, “Mummy,
where do you think he is?"
Oh, mummy where is he?”
And she’d shout at me and say, “Go home!
Go home”.
She was so uptight that she couldn't stand
"me bawling because no one could find
Billy Burmeister."
"We’d go to a film
on a Saturday morning in the city."
"It was always a special type of film
to suit the age group"
"and we’d be dressed up to catch
the Preston tram into the city and"
walking along, and they be singing out,
“Are you looking for Billy, Mrs Burmeister?”
Oh, and I'd be that ashamed.
Along the years rolled
"and I used to work at Manton’s,
a store in the city."
And I was a sales girl there.
We had to wear black
"No jewellery, no jewellery. Black,
black clothes,"
you know like a stylish clothes.
There’d be no jewellery or nail polish.
We had to sell.
Sell.
"You just didn’t stand around
and not bother to sell."
"And as long as you sold
the amount of money for the month"
"or whatever length
you were kept employed."
And we used to all stand outside the lift
"and when the women
that got out of the lift"
on the floor of the fashion floor,
we had the girls, the mannequins wearing the clothes.
"And we all gather around the lift
as it came up on our floor,"
"and when we saw the women getting out,
that used to say, "
"“Oh, I'll think about it, I'll come back
another time, dear”, "
"we’d all nearly knock one
another over running away from her."
That meant we were using time,
"wasting instead of a woman
that really meant to buy something"
that helped us keep our work in the store.
That’s how we worked.
They were pink.
They were dusty pink
flowers around the top of the hat.
That’s me.
But that is me, yeah.
And actually, I think I’ve got the same teeth.
Max.
His name was Max.
Actually, there was a big store
on the corner of Bourke and Collins Street.
He worked there
behind the counter in menswear.
And along comes the War.
"He was in the Middle East
and Italy, in the Air Force."
I never saw him for four years.
"And while he was away,
I turned into what I called a bad woman."
I became sophisticated. I still loved him.
"I still expected that when he came home,
we would get married."
"Most of the men were
at the war in our age group,"
and I used to go
"out with the women
and they were all from the store."
And I'd be like a junior.
I'd tag along with them,
and see, I'd be drinking,
smoking
and my father used to bring the cigarettes
home from his shop,
and my Mum & I, he'd go to bed,
he got sick of us and he’d go to bed,
and my Mum and I would just sit over a little fire place.
About that big.
"And she'd sit one side and smoke
and I'd sit the other."
And the two of us...
my poor dad, we didn't care where he was.
We loved him dearly.
"Fiancé, if you’d like to say,
came back safe from the war."
"It was the day he was coming home,
and I'm scared"
"out of my wits because I had to tell him
I was a bad woman."
Smoked.
I had to tell him I was drinking.
"And, I had to come and confess
I was a bad woman."
"He told me he would have drank
methylated spirits if he could've got it."
"But we still kept our love
with each other."
Imagine not seeing someone you love dearly
and four years have gone by
"and you go and I could see him
arriving in his uniform"
and, you know, it's just amazing.
Oh, it’s the day he arrived back!
"That was a pink, a rosy coloured
pink linen suit,"
you know with a skirt and a jacket.
And that’s Max.
And that’s the first time
that I saw him after four years
"Anyone in Melbourne
knew my husband, because he had a brain."
"He became the managing director, though,
of the Leviathan stores in the city."
"He was known as the king of Bourke
Street.."
He was a ‘yes and no’ man.
You didn't get very far with him.
"You could
say that Max was in charge of Melbourne."
He had that strength, that personality.
"And if anyone got in his way,
you know, they’d be squashed."
He ruled Melbourne.
All the directors of Myer
and all those places pandered around him
"because he more or less
ruled Bourke Street,"
with his brain and fashion.
"Manufacturers
would crawl around at Christmas time."
We had boxes coming with drinks in,
all Christmas presents, you know.
"And the manufacturers,
they were riding around"
"in the best cars and we couldn't
afford a car when we had..."
"probably had a tram
fare to get into the city."
They has all the money.
I never had, we never had the money.
But my husband wore the best...
"We had not enough money to go around and
keep my husband clothed and socialized."
"I used to have hardly any clothes,
we had hardly any money to put on my back"
"and he'd be walking around,
stalking around in the best suit,"
and I’d have something that was dragged together.
But we got there.
He came first in everything.
"I was just madly in love with him,
when I think of it."
Well you see,
"I worked in this store, Manton’s,
I’ve spoken about."
"See, because I worked in the wedding
advisory,"
I had all the gowns.
And this was all beaded, you know.
And
this girl was my husband's sister,
like she became my sister-in-law.
This other girl was my best girlfriend.
These girls have died since then,
“and I'm still traveling along,
singing a song,
side by side”.
...side by side.
Don't know what's coming tomorrow.
Maybe it's trouble and sorrow.
But we travel the road.
Here on our own.
Side by side.
I had two boys: Mac and Geoff.
"Mac lives around the corner here
and Geoff’s our ambassador in Beijing."
Those boys were wonderful.
We'll be the same as we started.
Just travelling along.
Singing a song.
Side by side.
"I loved cleaning the house
and polishing the silver."
And all got polished and I love my garden.
Garden?
I can't keep the garden going, you know.
“Well, get somebody!
Just go and get somebody”.
"You see I'd be afraid of the money
it’d cost "
to pay the people.
He’s a Boogie Woogie Bugle boy.
Thanks To
Lisa Biviano
Beryl Raby
"I could do the splits if I was asked to do it!"
105 and still tap dancing!
Piano music, fun and laughter were central to Beryl’s childhood. Born in Melbourne’s Moonee Ponds (well before Dame Edna Everage), she grew up in a creative household in Preston with a seamstress mother and a tap-dancing hairdresser father. Her journey took a turn during the war when she was separated from her fiancé for four long years. Thankfully their love prevailed and they married happily. Beryl became a ‘lady in black’ at Manton’s department store in the city of Melbourne where she worked in fashion. Now, at 105, Beryl’s infectious laughter and zeal for life continue to inspire those around her.
Age in Video
105 yearsDate of Birth
20th September 1919Place of Birth
Moonee Ponds, Victoria, AustraliaThanks To
Lisa Biviano