Summary

Padded flat topped cap used by Ron Graham during his work as a nightsoil or sanitary pan collector, circa 1965-1995.

Ron commenced his career in the nightsoil or sewage collection business in 1964, with the father and son team Pat & Danny Walker, who were operating as P. & D. Walker from a depot in Western Avenue, Sunshine, near Kororoit Creek. The Walkers had a contract to service un-sewered properties in the City of Sunshine, collecting full nightsoil pans from outhouses once a week and replacing them with empties. After clipping on a sealed lid to secure the contents in transit, the full pans were loaded into a specially designed truck, which transported them to the M.M.B.W. Sanitary Pan Depot in Boundary Road, Brooklyn, where an automatic conveyor line emptied the pans directly into the fast flowing Western Outfall Sewer, before washing and disinfecting them.

Ron's father John William (Jack) Graham had originally used the cap as part of his military uniform while serving in the Australian Army during the 1950s. After John died at the age of just 46 in January 1965, Ron found the cap while clearing his father's possessions out of an old wardrobe. He thought it would serve as a perfect nightman's cap. While some sanitary collectors carried the pans on one or other shoulder, Ron preferred to hoist the full pans onto the top of his head. He stuffed a wad of clean toilet paper into the cap to provide padding protecting his head from the load of the pans, which could weigh up to 26 kgs when full. The padding had the additional advantage of soaking up any leakage or spills from the pans.

Two years later, in about 1966, Ron Graham transferred to the employment of Percy and Harry Brown, two brothers who had a contract for sanitary pan collection with the City of Altona, and other neighbouring municipalities. At its peak Brown Bros. were operating six trucks, each equipped with a purposed-designed rear body that could accommodate up to 120 pans in compartments with hinged trap doors. Each truck was carting up to nine loads, or 1,080 pans in total, to the depot across the five day working week. Pan collection stated around 3 am, finishing at the depot by 9 or 10 am. Then it was off to the pub for many of the workers to spend much of the afternoon drinking.

As Melbourne's sewer network was progressively extended during the 1970s, the number of un-sewered properties declined. Then the move towards chemical toilets reduced the demand for weekly collections from portable toilets at building sites and many councils began winding up their sanitary service contracts. In 1988, the Brown Bros decided to retire from the business and Ron Graham made the decision to start his own business, G. & S. Graham, cartage contractors, with his wife Shirley as a non-working partner. He purchased one of the Brown Bros trucks and transferred the rear body from its old Bedford chassis to a newer Dodge D5N chassis. Ron continued collecting sanitary pans until the City of Sunshine closed down Victoria's last sanitary pan service in November 1995, making him officially the last nightsoil carter to operate in Victoria.

Significance

This object provides an evocative and unique insight into the nature of work in one of Victoria's most unpopular jobs and now a 'lost job' - the profession once euphemistically known as 'nightman' or 'nightsoil collector' and in later years as a 'sanitary contractor', or just 'cartage contractor', because the real nature of the business was too embarrassing to describe. The donor has been associated with the sewage disposal or 'shit business' for over half a century and cheerfully proclaims that he has lifted more 'dunny cans' and sucked out more 'septic tanks' than any other person in Australia.

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