August 2003

Remembering the day when meals got wheels

Australia’s first meals-on-wheels service has celebrated its 50th anniversary at the South Melbourne Senior Citizens’ Centre.

There, on June 24, 1953, the first meals were prepared for delivery by a tricycle painted in the South Melbourne Council colours of red and white.

The service was officially launched a week later with photographs of Mrs E. Watts setting off on the tricycle to deliver a meal to Mrs Catherine Meehan, 82, of Dorcas Street, appearing in a Melbourne newspaper.

The three-course meal cost 1/3 (15 cents).

Hosting the 50th anniversary celebrations, Port Phillip Mayor Liz Johnstone said both the former South Melbourne Council and South Melbourne voluntary organisations had been way ahead of their times in establishing the meals-on-wheels service.

‘In 1947, South Melbourne Council became the first municipality in Victoria to employ a social worker.

‘The same year, the needs of elderly citizens came to community attention through the work of a remarkable band of women who formed the Home Help Auxiliary at the invitation of the council.

‘The service was formed to provide live-in emergency housekeeping but was soon extended to sick or elderly residents on an hourly basis.

‘This was eventually the springboard for the meals-on-wheels service.

‘The services pioneered in South Melbourne became the model for local government throughout Victoria and even Australia,’ Cr Johnstone said.

In 1947, the South Melbourne Community Chest—which is still going—allocated money to a centre for senior citizens.

Together, the council and the Community Chest bought two military huts from the army camp at Bandiana near Albury and transported them to Ferrars Street in 1948.

For the next 12 years, Mary Kehoe, the honorary secretary of the Canteen Auxiliary took most of the day-today responsibility for running the canteen.

No funding was available to operate it so the canteen charged a shilling a meal to the frail and elderly people who turned up for meals.

By March 1950, it was serving daily meals to between 40 and 50 people.

The Community Chest provided a subsidy of £500 per annum.

Up to 60 volunteers were rostered to operate the canteen with the help of a cook.

Kath Kehoe, one of Mary’s six children, recalls that many of the elderly were World War 1 or even Boer War veterans who lived in rooming houses and otherwise spent their days on park benches.

‘These men really objected to the meals service extending to women but the volunteer cooks—who were all women—stood their ground and said they would not cook unless women could get fed too.

‘As a child, I remember delivering meals on a pushbike or in the baby pram to people who were too sick or frail to come into the canteen.

‘We carried the soup in a billy,’ Ms Kehoe said.

‘My mother then read an article in one of my father’s accountancy magazines about a meals-on-wheels service operating in England.

‘It was an extension of a scheme developed during World War 11 when the authorities trucked in meals to bombed-out areas.

In January 1952, the Canteen Auxiliary sent a letter to the Town Clerk of the South Melbourne Council proposing a formal meals-on-wheels service.

The auxiliary’s minutes of November 1952 record that Mrs Dobson and Miss Fitzpatrick visited Bruce Small’s shop where they purchased a tricycle with a delivery box for £20.

Sister Harvey, the matron of the Dalkeith Private Hospital arranged for her nephew to insulate the box carrier and paid for the steel delivery containers.

When the service first began, it delivered only seven meals but numbers soon boomed.

The auxiliary advertised for ‘a fit gentlemen pensioner’ to ride the tricycle but, not surprisingly, none came forth.

Finally, a young woman, Mrs E Watts, took on the job for a small wage.

According to Kath Kehoe, the tricycle was very heavy and difficult to ride, even when later fitted with gears.

‘And Mrs Watts soon complained that she couldn’t manage to carry the number of meals to be delivered.

‘In 1954, the Red Cross agreed to supply a car and volunteers to deliver the meals,’ Ms Kehoe said.

Frances Donovan, who was the South Melbourne Council social worker for five years from 1954, said initially there were great problems getting the right containers and finding volunteers who knew their way around South Melbourne.

‘But we saw it as a service providing much more than meals.

‘It was a vital community link.

‘For some older people, the only person they saw was the one delivering the meals.’

As the numbers requiring council-subsidised meals increased, the facilities at the Elderly Citizens’ Club couldn’t cope.

From May 1971, the meals were bought from the Southern Memorial Hospital and then transported in bulk to the club where they were plated for delivery.

For three decades, from 1970 to 2000, a group of young women who came to be known as the ‘Middle Park Mums’ helped deliver the meals.

In 1998, the City of Port Phillip led the way in introducing an á la carte service—the soup of the day, a choice of three main courses, including a vegetarian option, and the choice of two desserts.

In 2003, anecdotal evidence suggests people may want more choice than the meals-on-wheels service currently provides—more vegetarian options and a greater emphasis on healthier eating with more salads and low-fat, low-salt food.

Others may want to eat food cooked according to their ethnic or cultural traditions.

‘The current delivery service may need to be more flexible,’ Port Phillip Mayor Liz Johnstone said.

‘Some people have told us that they shouldn’t have to be at home to receive the meals.

‘Others have said they want the food less predictable than provided for under the current four-weekly rotation,’ she said.

Last financial year, the council delivered 110,826 meals-on-wheels to homes and another 8,085 to the South Melbourne Senior Citizens’ Centre, Cora Graves Centre and Betty Day Centre.

Mary Kehoe’s work is immortalised in the name of the Mary Kehoe Senior Citizens’ Centre in Albert Park.

On June 13, 1981, she was awarded the British Empire Medal for ‘outstanding service in many charitable fields and, in particular, to the elderly citizens of South Melbourne.’