After WWI George Cotterill returned home to his parents, his wife Eva and his daughter May, in Beaconsfield, where, in 1922 his son, Harold was born.
Despite family connections to the West Tamar that went back close to 100 years, the family packed up and moved away. By 1928 Eva, George, May and Harold were living in Lutana, in the northern suburbs of Hobart in the south of the state.
This was the beginning of the family’s connection to Lutana that would last three generations.
The house that the young family lived in was at 5 Tasman Ave (now 5 Cox Ave). It was across the road from the Lutana Hall. Quite possibly, it was brand new, with the Cotterill family as the first people to have lived there.
The house was built by the Zinc Works as part of their “Village.” The Village stands out aesthetically in Tasmania, with its high pitched roofs, cement stucco. It’s a style not common in the southern hemisphere, and where it is seen, it’s on housing at the other end of the socio-economic scale. The sixty houses were the “garden suburb” to be rented to workers of the newly constructed, and rapidly expanding, Zinc Works, in an era when new large companies were increasingly providing social infrastructure for their staff.
I don’t have any photos from inside the Cotterill’s house, and it doesn’t seem to have changed hands in an era when real estate agents have put any on line, but this description from Instagram of one of the other houses in the Village, gives an idea of what it may have been like inside the Cotterill’s home in the 1920s and 30s.
It wasn’t just housing that the Zinc Works thought it should provide. Throughout Moonah and Lutana, the company provided 4 kindergartens. Harold was enrolled in the Lutana free kindergarten (which operated from the new, company funded hall across the road from his house). He was definitely a student in 1926 when a photographer came and took a photo of the children. Harold was about 4 years old, and wearing a brown cardigan.
The Lutana hall website gives includes historic reports of the kindergarten in the 1920s, which gives fascinating insight into childhood Mavis and Harold would have had in the suburb in the era. There’s talk of boys being formed into soldiers, and of children “of a good type.” That Lutana children mostly wear shoes was considered worth noting, which shows the economic circumstances of many others in the wider community at the time.
Children began school at age 7, but Harold may have left the Lutana Kindergarten at age 5 to join the kindergarten at Moonah that took slightly older children than the Lutana one. May would have walked to Moonah each day – perhaps accompanied by Eva – to attend the Moonah school.
Lutana was isolated from the nearest shops and so many of the family’s needs would have required this trek into Moonah. Harold – and possibly his sister – were heavily involved in activities such as the Scouts. The entire family were active in the Moonah Baptist Church. Harold sang in concerts, George helped out at fairs and in 1933 Eva organised the children’s Pedlars Parade. George and Eva had been married in 1919 by Methodist reverend George Wong, in their early years in Lutana, Harold and Mavis made donations to a Methodist Charity and the Hobart City Mission, and in her later years Eva attended the red brick Methodist church in Beaconsfield – and there was a Methodist church in Moonah – so I don’t know why the family were Baptists during this time.
In 1928 May finished Primary School at Moonah but wasn’t fully admitted to Hobart State High School, being 18th in line for a space if others dropped out. I don’t think she ever had the opportunity to take a place at High School. She may have taken on some domestic work outside of the home, but remained living with her family in their Lutana home. She appears on the 1937 electoral role as a 22 year old, not undertaking work outside the home.
Harold failed his own High School entrance exams, and went on to the Junior Technical School (as an Ogilvie Student myself I was so annoyed at him for this, as if he’d been to Ogilvie I’d have been third generation there, and been somewhat of a celebrity in the school 😉). I’m not sure if he was at the Bathurst St campus, or if the New Town one was operating at that time. With the growth of the Hydro, electrical engineering was all the rage and made a up a lot of the technical school curriculum, and even when he’d completed his three year course, Harold continued to study at night school with the aim of becoming an electrician. During the day he worked at T J Cane Hardware.
While Harold may not have been excelling academically, throughout the 1930s he took music and elocution lessons, being awarded certificates and having his name in the paper for his elocution – as well as singing on the radio.
Interestingly, his own version of the story of not getting into high school changed in his retelling and perhaps as his attitudes to education changed during the century. His own children were told that he’d not wanted to go to high school and had purposefully mucked-up the exam. His grandchildren knew their grandfather as having been sick on the day and having missed his opportunity for further education.
In 1939 he made the paper again, when he had a bicycle accident. An accident that bad must have been a worrying time for the whole family.
In 1940 things began to change. War had begun, and the Cotterill’s link with Lutana ended for a short period. May married that year and Harold enlisted soon after. Eva and George left Lutana and returned to Beaconsfield. George hadn’t retired, as he continued to work as a labourer – although he was also collecting a pension from his own war service, so perhaps was able to work less than he had in the Zinc Works. Both George and Eva had elderly parents in Beaconsfield, which may have been part of their decision making. George’s mother had died in 1940 leaving his father alone, while Eva, as her family’s only daughter, would also have had caring responsibilities in the town.
After the war, housing was again scarce, and like his own parents, Harold and his new wife, wanted to access to modern amenities, such as the best possible education for their own children, and Lutana once again beckoned. The family home on Lennox Ave, was built on land formerly owned by the Zinc Works, and Harold may have had access to a cheap loan through the company, as well, allowing the family to own the home.
Another generation become Zinc Works children. While I don’t know how invoked the first generation had been in the social life afforded by the works, Mum has no memory of attending company picnics etc, as a child (though says she may have them mixed up with church picnics which she does remember), but she does recall getting a pair of shoes from the company store. Better public amenities in the area, and owning a car, probably meant that this second generation were less reliant on what was offered locally. The idea that an employer would be responsible for providing all of the needs of their staff, was also going out of style.
However, almost thirty years of work at the Zinc Works, provided the family with holidays, a shack, camping gear and the rare holiday to the mainland. While none of their children chose to remain in Lutana, all three gained some sort of secondary education and then further technical education.
Books & websites:
https://www.lutanahall.com/index.php/lutana-free-kindergarten
And, one of my favourite books, Alison Alexander’s “A History of Welfare and Caring,” about the social side of the Zinc Works business.
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