Edition 9 - October 2017

Hi Community Newsletter Team,

I am a volunteer at 99.9 Voice FM and a former Brown Hill resident, so I was interested to glance through some copies of your newsletter that had been left at the station.

I found the article about the Brown Hill Police Station in your latest edition quite interesting. After moving from Coburg at the very end of 1955, my brother and I attended Brown Hill State School from the first day of the 1956 school year. I attended until 1958, and then started at Ballarat East High School on what Don McLean would later call "The Day The Music Died" (3 February 1959), with my brother following two years later.

When we first attended the state school, we used to catch Barry Wilkins' ("Wilkins' Eastern Busways") bus to and from the corner of Humffray and Thompson Streets and I can remember the police station opposite the church. I seem to recall that it had a well-faded "Swallow's Ice Cream" sign painted directly onto the brickwork on the western wall. From memory, the lettering was white (or possibly silver) on a dark blue background. Swallow's Ice Cream was made by Swallow & Ariell, who still made biscuits in the late 1950s, but had discontinued their ice cream some years earlier.

Congratulations on your fantastic newsletter.

Kind regards

Ron Woods