The Dwyers
Droop Street was ideal for the dairy. It had a side entrance for customers and great large grounds at the back with stables. A big paved path, with grape vines on a trellis, lead right from the house to the stables. We used to keep the dairy and stables like a new pin. Andy used to fork up all the straw and put manure in the manure pit and I used to hose the bricks till they shone like a kitchen floor.
We used to sell clotted cream at the dairy - we could sell any amount of it - as well as ordinary cream. He used to buy most of his milk directly from the farmers and got it pasteurised at the ice house in Footscray.
We had 2 horses - Polly and Dolly. Polly was a chestnut, who was such a proud pony. She used to be looking at herself in the windows as she went along tossing her long mane in the process. Dolly, a black, used to be a trotter and was a beautiful animal.
Margaret (our first child) had been born previously (28 November 1921) in North Melbourne and was a very young baby when we first came to Footscray. However, Andy's health (never too robust) began to tell on him and he started to worry and thought "if I got sick, who would there be to do the run?" and he would lose everything. So he thought up the idea of selling out (to a man named RICH). He held on to Dolly, the black trotter, and bought an iron (dappled) grey and called her "Margie", after Margaret.
Andrew had actually been married once before and had a daughter named Violet, born in 1908. Read more about this first marriage.
He took Dolly over to Sydney by boat intending to get a start over there when he felt better. I do not know what went wrong but he eventually shipped the pony and ourselves back to Melbourne where he took a variety of jobs to keep us going. He was, however, a restless man and had his mind set on Sydney. (Would this have been because his daughter Violet was in Sydney? We do not know.)