By KATRINA BRANDON
TURNING over to triple digits, Tyers local John Henry turned 100 on Sunday.
John was born in Horsham on October 5, 1925.
Living in the Horsham area for four to five years, John’s family moved out of the area when his father, an insurance agent, found the insurance business challenging and relocated to Warrnambool.
Until John was 20, he lived on a farm in the Warrnambool area, where he worked on a farm and was involved with the local football club.
Not long after turning 20, John moved to Melbourne, where he attended Melbourne Tech in a course on weights and measures. Unfortunately, John told the Express that the course was unsatisfactory, with about 65 people initially enrolled and only five completing it.
In the 1950s, housing in Melbourne was quite expensive, making it challenging to rent or purchase a home. Thankfully for John, his sister lived in Melbourne, providing him with a place to stay until he found his own home.
Later, John moved into a home in Boola Boola, where he had a new job.
“It was quite a big camp there,” John said.
“There were 52 men’s huts; each hut was supposed to carry two men, two bucks, and all their gear. There were tractor workshops and machine workshops and a store room, and there’s a canteen there and cooks and so forth. There was an office there, and that was the available job.”
In the camp, John found himself befriending a fellow camper. Together, the duo brought a truck, and John began to load it with bulk wood.
After a while, his friend went off on his own.
Out of work, John found an opportunity in the APM forested plantations in Longford. Conducting thinning operations, John was roped into picking up the wood.
At the same time, John said there had been a pine board factory in Rosedale.
“I got to know the chap that was in charge of the operations (at the Rosedale facility),” John recalled.
“He showed me and told me how the table worked, because I didn’t know what a pine board was, but then they decided they wanted to take some, some of the locally grown timber, up to a pine board mill at Oberon, up in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.
“I took three loads up, on the first load which was cut to six foot long, we cut all the pine wood, but it didn’t suit the machinery up there. They debarked it and various other instruments that depend on the length of the piece of timber to bail themselves in the debarking business.”
During his time with the mill, John became very engrossed in the ‘goings-on’ surrounding the process. John also spent time at the Stockdale Pine Wood Factory.
From there, John has always worked in the timber industry. Working in the factory in Stockdale, John injured his back while clearing timber, leaving him unable to work.
“I was out of work for a while, and then I was applying to Morwell at the employment agency there for a job that I gather every couple of days and go through the list of names, places and jobs that were available,” he said.
“Somebody there said that I would be working in the bush, and asked if I knew much about timber. I didn’t know so much about timber, but about the logs and the pulp. The person there said that Maryvale Timber was just down the road, and they were looking for someone to manage their timber yard.”
The employment agent gave John a note to ask for ‘Mr Lazaris’ at the timber yard, which he soon found out was not one, but three brothers.
The Lazaris brothers ran a section each, with a large hardware store alongside the timber yard that John managed. Whilst John was unable to do heavy lifting, he started working in the hardware department, sorting through nuts and bolts.
After about six months, John was transferred to the timber yard as the next-in-charge to the foreman. John spent 17 years at the Marvyale Timber and Hardware.
Moving on from the mill, John ended up selling his truck and started working at Turners Timber and Hardware on Latrobe Road.
“I’d put in about six or seven years at Turner’s, and they went to so much trouble for me,” John said.
John lived in Tyers from 1951 until a couple of years ago.
According to John’s daughter, Jenny Tulau, her dad lived in Tyers for about 60 years, working with the community groups in the area.
For 25 years, John was a volunteer firefighter with the Tyers CFA, who gave him a medallion for his service.
John worked with the local school’s committee while his two daughters were at the school, where he was also appointed secretary for 12 months.
John also lived next door to the Jean Galbraith Reserve in Tyers, which he had bought from Jean Galbraith.
More recently, John had been awarded a road in the new estate being built in Tyers. The John Henry Drive is located off the Glengarry West Road.
Other roads affiliated with and named by John included the Bert Christensen Reserve, a local oval, and the road running into the oval, known as Community Lane. The name for the road was entered into a raffle, where school children helped create some suggestions.
Well-known in the community, John celebrated his birthday with about 200 friends and family.
