IT’S a vintage building with more than a dose of history and character and a recent visit to the premises now known as Casterton Farm Supplies, has brought to light some brilliant memories of Number One, Henty Street, Casterton.

Laird McAllister is the son of Murray McAllister, who built the existing premises at the entrance to Casterton’s main street and ran it as McAllister Motors.

Laird left Casterton when he was 13 and lives in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, but recently paid a visit to the town to revisit his father’s legacy, now owned and operated by Pat and Denise Gill.

“I met up with Mr Gill and his wife and they took me around and showed me around the old building that my father built,” he said.

“As a young kid I remember it was huge, but when I went back to it now I’m fully grown, it’s a good-sized building.”

The building has kept many of its own memories as well, including a plaque near its front entrance which describes the history of the premises leading up to its own construction.

“There was a room there with all the names of the people who used to work there … names that I remember quite well, going back a long time,” Laid said.

Where it all began

TOM Blair has a treasured photo of Casterton – taken from Blueberry Hill in 1867 – and it shows the premises on which the former McAllister building now sits, was once home to nothing more than a haystack.

The plaque at Casterton Farm Supplies’ front entrance tells the first building on the site was a shoeing forge in 1875, run by Alex McBean.

In 1882, it was purchased by John Illingworth and his sons and became a coach building and buggy factory.

Motor vehicle sales and repairs became part of the business around 1920 when the Little brothers owned it and it traded as Little, Kent & Co soon after, when Barry Kent partnered with them.

Murray McAllister bought the premises in the 1940s and went on to transform it into the building which stands today.

Tom started working for him in 1951 and was part of the building’s construction, alongside his co-workers and many others.

“Quite a big staff – at the most I think he had 42 working there,” he said.

“There were carpenters and mechanics, panel beaters … it was locally built by local people.

“(Building McAllister Motors) was a big operation.”

Even the sand in the bricks came from the Glenelg River.

Works to construct the building also unearthed discarded relics of the premises’ past.

“When they were digging the foundation trenches, they dug up tonnes of old horseshoes,” Tom said.

“There were bloody hundreds and hundreds of them.

“They used to just bury them in those days – dig a big, long trench, put them in and just fill them over and as the trench filled up, they’d go and dig another one.”

That was the easy method for disposing of even household goods before the rubbish bins and trucks of the modern age.

Once it was ready in the mid-1950s, most of the town was welcomed to the opening party for McAllister Motors.

“Every man and his dog there, I think – and the pups too,” Tom said.

He completed an apprenticeship at McAllister Motors as a motor mechanic and put in more than 17 years there, aside from time in the army.

He said working could be “rough” on a frosty morning when cold spanners required handling and there were other hazards to manage.

“We had a couple floods, but they didn’t do great damage to us,” Tom said.

“We had to sandbag the workshop a couple of times.

“You had to kill the snakes after the flood had gone – it was exciting.”

While the business changed hands several times after McAllister sold it in 1965, Tom moved on to continue his mechanic work elsewhere but saw many businesses collapse during financial crises of the 1970s.

Friends and colleagues

CHRISTMAS time was something special for the staff at McAllister Motors.

After the showroom was cleared and the concrete floor coated in candlewax, the workers, their families and other invited guests engaged in “absolutely fabulous” scenes at the annual party and dance.

“We’d have a ball,” Tom said.

“That was back in the days when you never had much entertainment, apart from pictures and dancing,” Mr Blair said.

The parties also offered the best of local charms, with a large supper and a live band.

But he noted alcohol had a way of making things interesting, even when the party was already over.

“When the 18-gallon ran out, we’d just drive across the road and load another one to the back of the ute, bring it over,” Tom said.

“Quite a few blokes used to get legless – there was a few crashes going home.

“There was one bloke, took off from the garage there over near the riverbank and he forgot to turn his wheel to go up the main street – he went across the road and crashed into the bloody shop.

“There was another bloke, he was the BP rep … he got drunk and got out to the Wando Vale dirt there and rolled his bloody car over.”

Mr Blair laughed as he remembered half the battle for those who ended up “drunk as a monkey” was finding home – the other half, making sure not to flip the car.

“They never got hurt – they were too drunk,” he said.

“You could hop in your car, blind as a bat, drive home and hope you got there.”

The times they are a-changin’

MURRAY McAllister sold his business to Tony Tuohy and Frank Cleary in 1965, but it went bust just three years later, before eventually Peter and Bruce Kellett bought it.

The building itself changed very little under their ownership – aside from the usual maintenance – but the business was different.

“We didn’t have a car agency – we just did repairs and we put mowers and chainsaws in,” Bruce said.

Roy McCallum was one colleague of Bruce’s who went on to work under him as a mechanic and the next generation would also ply their trade at the business.

“We would’ve had different people, young apprentices there that came and went,” Bruce said.

“We had two or three apprentices at different times.”

He also saw a mark of evolution for how petrol was served.

“There were two bowsers out on the street and then they got shifted in on the island,” he said.

“We put the canopy there too.”

Bruce had started out as a bowser boy himself, when fuelling up customers’ vehicles for them was far more common.

“It was always (like this) from when I was a boy – it’s only changed really in the last few years,” he said.

Number one Henty Street first became Casterton Farm Supplies when Kelletts sold the premises to Graham Coventry, who originally established the business on Mount Gambier Road, Casterton.

While the business of farming and gardening supplies and other hardware continues under the name of Casterton Farm Supplies and the ownership of Pat and Denise Gill – they bought it in 2010 – it retains a hint of the Kelletts’ time there – small engine servicing still has a home in the number one and two bays of the building.