Originally published in the Dandenong Journal from 10 March to 22nd September, 1932.
This copy is taken from the original published then, not the book version now used by others.
In attempting to set down my impressions of the “Early Days of Dandenong,” I am fully aware of the difficulties I am liable to encounter, the errors I most probably will make, and the multiplicity of other shortcomings my readers will discover if they venture to follow me in my wanderings along the back track to the days when Dandenong was a very small spot upon the map. And, another most important matter, and one that it is extremely likely there will be some argument over, is the question of age, and what really constitutes the “Early Days” of any place.
The boys and girls now growing up can have no personal idea of what the town looked like in those early times, say, beyond 50 years ago, so I think that if I ramble along from the earliest times, and conclude my scribblings with the erection of the latest building in Lonsdale street, or some other equally important event, I will have told all, or nearly all, about the growth of the town from the time during which the original buildings on the main street were erected, occupied, and were gradually superseded by new and much finer edifices, and almost all the earlier landmarks had vanished, until, say, 1880 or there-abouts.
In addition to my own impressions, I am indebted to quite a number of old friends for help in fixing the incidents and descriptions of the earliest activities of the pioneers in their building up of the town and district of Dandenong. Also, I am deeply in the debt of officials of various public departments through which I wandered gleaning here and there scraps of information on this and that subject. Officials in these departments must have thought me a queer fish, bothering them with seemingly irelevant questions; but in no instance did I meet with discourtesy or rebuff, all doing their best to “see me through” the departments of which they were in charge, and going to no end of trouble to help me in my quest for dates and other information to help in the verification of details of incidents related to me by those of a generation all too swiftly passing away.
But what an opportunity I missed when, as a boy, I hunted, fished and skylarked around the country, instead of settling down, as I then had opportunity of doing; the tales of the old pioneers, and of their early struggles against the primitive bush, and other equally interesting events, and so given readers of today columns upon columns of history it is now beyond reason to hope will ever be detailed. But perhaps there may be those who, scanning these reminiscences, will be able to supplement or amend them in some manner. I sincerely hope so, even to the extent of a friendly controversy; and, if it be so, there might be an opportunity for the publication of a “second edition” — that is, if the printing machines can stand the strain, and subscribers are not driven out of their minds reading my laborious attempt at recording ancient history.
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