By Kirsty Ross
A MARIBYRNONG historian is patiently waiting to immortalise a collection of stories belonging to those hearts and souls woven into one of Melbourne’s oldest Housing Commission estates.
Damian Veltri, through the Victorian Government, recently received a local history grant of $10,000 to undertake a five-year study into a 50-year period, titled Braybrook 1945-2005: The Many Voices of a Victorian Housing Commission Estate.
Mr Veltri, who was born in Argentina, said Braybrook was considered a transition area in the period after World War II.
He said Braybrook used to be a migrant’s first step because there was substantial government housing in which they could initially settle.
Families eventually saved enough to move out of the largely industrialised suburb to somewhere quieter, and less noxious.
It is this migration that propelled Mr Veltri into acting fast, to try to uncover where this ageing group is living, before their stories are lost forever.
“I want to act before we lose that, and strike while the iron’s hot,” said the full-time history teacher at Sunbury’s Salesian College.
Mr Veltri said the idea is to “rescue a diverse range of personal and group memories and stories, objects and other documentary material for posterity”.
However, the project is reliant on a number of current and former Braybrook residents volunteering to share their recollections of life in a recorded interview.
The record of the interview will be transcribed and edited before it is stored permanently on CD-ROM for the public.
Mr Veltri grew to love the neglected western area, where he moved with his family at the age of three, before growing up and completing a master’s degree on industrial and suburban beginnings from the late 19th century to 1950s.
“In the 19th century it offered a lot of attractions to the wrong sort of traders,” Mr Veltri said.
He said it was the perfect location for slaughterhouses, which flourished in the suburb.
The nearby river was ideal for discarding carcasses, the flat land for setting up the infrastructure and advanced road network for transporting meat to the city.
Mr Veltri said the area between Maidstone and Sunshine was untouched for about 100 years before the Victorian Housing Commission acquired it.
Mr Veltri hopes to get all the interviews done this year, and later hopes to weave some historical references alongside the personal accounts to see how the intentions of the government compared with tenant’s actual experiences.
“But the real challenge … will be getting it done during full time work,” he said.
If you lived at the Braybrook Housing Commission Estate between 1945 and 2005 and would like to take part in this unique history project, you can contact Mr Veltri on 0417 088 531.
