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Norman Finch provides a fascinating insight into the life of a young man growing up in Dubbo in the 1930s and 1940s. He left school early and worked in a number of industries around Dubbo, including the dairy and forestry industries, before finding employment as a mechanic at Bloomfield Bros. Garage. By the early 1950s he was married and living in North Dubbo with his wife and infant child. During this period he recalls the events leading up the 1955 flood, and the damage the family home sustained.
Transcript Excerpt
(I): So in 1955 you had been married for 3 years and living in Bourke Street?
(S): Yes
(I): What do you remember about the lead-up to the flood?
(S): Well it was raining pretty constant at the time and in the meantime I had taken me holidays from Bloomfield’s on the Saturday. We left on the Saturday to go to Sydney down to a friend’s place in Sydney. It was raining when we left and then…
(I): And that was the Saturday before the flood?
(S): That was the Saturday before the flood. I think the flood came on a Monday or something like that, Monday night or something like that, but then we…
(I): So how did you find out about the flood?
(S): Well we found out they'd got in touch with us, I think on the phone and told us that the flood was gone plus all the news on the radio. And then...
(I): So how did your mother-in-law survive?
(S): My mother-in-law, they were in the house, we had one room that we used to live in and they had the whole house. They had a 3 bedroom house and a lot of their - all their stuff got ruined by the flood. What happened to the mother-in-law was the other son lives around in Frith Street, that's only just behind Bourke Street, he come around, 2 o'clock in the morning and said to her, "Get out of bed you'll get washed away" and she said, "Go on Frank you're drunk.” He said, "No I'm not, I'm telling you get out." So she put her feet out on the floor and she was standing in a foot of water. And then they couldn't get much out because it was coming up so quick. They grabbed a few photos and put them up in the ceiling through the manhole but that so - and they were elderly people at the time, they were probably in the late 60's or early 70's. So they had to get out and they went around and went up to another son's place up in Fitzroy Street, back up to near the old Butcher Shop - up in Fitzroy Street there.
(I): Over past Cobra Street, south of Cobra Street?
(S): Yes, south of Cobra Street, yes they went up there, lived up there 'til the floods were gone. We tried to get home, we couldn't get home. The water was across the road at Wellington and all the places. So we came to, I don't think from memory I don't think we even tried. We waited until we could get home and then we got home. The bloke I was stopping with he came up with me and we had a look and we couldn't see nothing we could do. So we ended up going back to Sydney and then cut the holiday short and then coming back home, just the wife and I and the baby. And then we come home and we cleaned up and put everything on the footpath, all the old rubbish and everything, like the old furniture and stuff like that.
(I): How high did the water come up in Bourke Street?
(S): It was up between 3ft 6" and 4ft, probably a metre in today's measurements. It was coming through the window, in the bedroom windows and through the house. We were down the bottom end where the, North Dubbo, the water was bad down there. There was a garage on the corner that had a lot of oil drums in there. The oils were in drums in the garages in them day, we'd have them in 44 gallon drums or 200 litre drums with a hand pump on the top of them and pump the oil out when you serviced the car. The water woulda come up and tipped them over and tipped all the oil out and ran all over the place. Went through the houses, went through everything. So you had the water problem, plus the sewerage problem and you had no sewerage was all flooding back into the water, so you had all that problem and ah…
(I): Plus the oil.
(S): Yeah, when you look at it there were a few garages in North Dubbo plus all the garages downtown too. Everyone had the same problem when the flood was on because everyone complained about the oil - it caught everyone by surprise. They had no chance to get anything out.
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