A photograph of two men pruning a tree on the Grant family orchard in Drouin in the 1930s.
The man on the higher ladder (right) is Donald Grant. The man on the shorter ladder is his son Keith.
The Grant family owned land on the north of Drouin, east of Hopetoun Rd, which they cultivated as an orchard.
The original property, bought by Donald Grant in 1899, was called "Balnageith" and spread across 40 acres in the course of time.
Ducks were kept and their eggs sent to Melbourne by train to provide income until the orchard started producing fruit. A packing shed was built, and machinery installed for grading fruit into sizes.
Local men were employed to pick the fruit and girls to wrap the fruit in tissue paper and pack into cases. The fruit was exported to England under a Commonwealth scheme.
The Grant orchard ran adjacent to what was, at the time, the Drouin Golf Course. As a result, the pruners got to see some of the golfers in action - particularly some of those very slow to tee off on a few of the holes. In fact, one player was so slow that it provoked very colourful language from one of the pruners.
The golf club and the adjacent dairy farm was 103 acres in total, stretching from Walker Drv up to McNeilly Rd.
Keith later purchased the dairy farm/golf course. When they had need to clean out the creek, which still flows through the area today, they would pull out many lost golf balls.
The orchard was later pulled out and Keith became a dairy farmer. It was sold in 1989 for residential development.
Today the land is part of the Two Towns Trail between Drouin and Warragul as well as several housing developments.
Information and photograph courtesy of Keith's son Don Grant as told to the Stories of Drouin.
Stories of Drouin is a cooperative oral history project between The Committee for Drouin, Drouin History Group and 3BBR FM to preserve local stories.
Visit storiesofdrouin.com.au to listen to Don's story or other recorded stories with links to Drouin or the old Buln Buln Shire.