MOST of those expected to cram into the Nar Nar Goon Community Centre to celebrate the 90th birthday of Bill ‘Doc’ Doherty this Sunday are likely to fit into one of three categories.
Spuds, footy or family – the constants in Doc’s fortunate life.
Doc does count himself as being fortunate to be in a position to toast the milestone with what most expect to be a few hundred of his closest friends.
“I’ve been very lucky – and luck does come into it – I have lost three of my best mates in the last three months (Royce ‘Pappy’ Collins, Greg Dore and Bill Brown) and two of them were younger than me,” he said.
“I’ve had a wonderful life and wouldn’t change a thing … you have your knocks but you have to overcome them.
“My biggest knock was losing my wife of 59 years, Dot, a few years back but you have to get on with life, don’t you?”
Doc grew up around Cora Lynn in 1923 and, apart from a short stint in Melbourne as a teenager and a couple of years in the armed forces after that, he has lived and worked within six miles of where he was born.
He couldn’t think of a better place to have his life play out.
“We live in the best part of the world, Victoria is the best part of Australia and we live in the best part of Victoria,” he said.
Things haven’t always been easy, particularly growing up during the years of the Great Depression.
One of six kids born to farming parents, Doc and his siblings would walk two and a half miles (four kilometres) to St Joseph’s school on Convent Road.
If running late they would break into a jog, each taking a turn at the lead like a cycling peloton.
The kids only had one pair of shoes and they had to take them off to kick the footy, so as not to ruin them.
Footballs were an extravagance and were hard earned in the Doherty household.
Back then a breakfast cereal called Easy Meal had a promotion to win a football.
“It was the worst stuff you could eat,” Doc recalls.
“If you didn’t get it down quick enough it set like concrete.
“But the more we ate the better chance you had of winning a footy, so we enlisted a bit of help.
“Mum and Dad couldn’t work out why the chooks were so fat by the time the footy arrived.”
“Life was hard back then but we didn’t know any better,” Doc recalls.
“We didn’t know how good things could have been until things picked up a bit, after the Second World War.”
Doc recalls the big flood of 1934, which he said was far worse than the more recent episodes.
He remembers cows being washed away and bellowing when stuck in the culvert at the 11 Mile Road bridge.
“There wasn’t a farm in the district that wasn’t covered by water,” he said.
Back then, most people who lived on the swamp milked cows and grew potatoes and asparagus.
They all pitched in to help each other out – one good turn beget another.
Doc remembers as a teenager milking the cows for champion Nar Nar Goon footballer Mart Reidy, even on that famous afternoon in 1937 when he kicked the winning goal after the siren in the West Gippsland grand final.
“I was never paid. All I ever got was an apple or an orange.”
There was the odd paid job, though, like when Doc and one of his brothers agreed to cart hay for a neighbour for two bob (20 cents) a day.
They did that happily for a while, until the Italian across the road offered them three bob, with morning and afternoon tea thrown in as well.
Doc left school after obtaining his merit certificate and jobs were pretty scarce.
Kids back then did what they could to get by – dug spuds, milked cows, picked peas – and he eventually got work with a wonderful man he still refers to as Mr Riley, the grandfather of brothers Jack and Tub Riley, for the grand sum of 15 shillings ($1.50) a week.
“He was a tremendous man,” Doc said.
“I would ask him, what are we doing today Mr Riley, and he would always reply ‘what we don’t do today, we’ll do tomorrow’.”
Doc spent two years boarding in Melbourne while working in a factory at Abbotsford and enlisted in the army towards the end of World War II, mainly helping out with the clean-up afterwards.
When his active duty was up, Doc returned to the area and landed a job with the Kinsella Brothers, one of the biggest growers of potatoes and asparagus on the swamp.
“They were terrific people to work for,” he said.
“They employed a lot of people and fed a lot of people.
“They had 160 acres of asparagus and their biggest potato crop was over 240 acres – and they only had two tractors, the rest was done by horse and cart!”
Doc worked at Kinsellas for 14 years – during which time he met, courted and married Dorothy Magrath from Nar Nar Goon.
They were together 59 years and raised a family of four boys and two girls (exactly the same mix as Doc’s family) – Dennis, Faye, Michael, Patricia, Peter and Gavin.
The extended family now includes 18 grandchildren and eight great grandchildren.
“She was a wonderful wife and mother,” Bill said of Dot.
“If I’ve ever had any success in my life it was because of her, she backed me all the way.”
After Kinsellas, Doc drove a milk truck for his brother and sister-in-law Dan and Bridie Cunningham.
He did that for a decade before making way for their kids to take over the round and worked briefly for Downes Transport.
Doc was then head-hunted by the new Nar Nar Goon Growers and Packers operation in 1968 as its production manager, a position he would hold for 23 years.
“I enjoyed every day I went to work,” he said.
“I got to mix with terrific people – potato growers, buyers, agents and the people in the factory – and it allowed me to visit every state in Australia, bar Perth.”
During his time there, the company operated under the banners of All State, Addamo Brothers and its current moniker Red Gem.
“When you think about it, my whole life has been centred around spuds.
“My parents grew spuds, then I worked for Kinsellas, Dan Cunningham was one of the biggest agents in Victoria and then the factory.”
Doc’s involvement in football has been well documented.
He initially played for Cora Lynn and crossed to Nar Nar Goon when he proposed to Dot.
Her father, Tom Magrath, was president of the club at the time and, as the story goes, he would only agree to the union if Doc switched clubs.
Doc was a handy footballer, but made his biggest impact off the field.
He was elected president of the club at the relatively young age of 33 and served in that post for eight years – from 1957 to ’59 and again from 1961 to ’65.
The crowning glory of that period was the 1965 flag, where Doc lured the great Bill Drake from Pakenham to coach for that one season and break a 28-year premiership drought.
Doc then switched to league duties and served as president of the West Gippsland Football League for eight years from 1973.
Again he finished on a high by presenting the Mort Kennedy Cup to Nar Nar Goon coach Jim Dore and captain Leo Kennelly after the Goon won the 1980 premiership.
Doc takes great pride in the fact that, during his years as league president, his daughter Faye Dempster also held the reins as president of the netball competition. Dot was also a past president of the netball league.
Their four sons all played football for the Goon and Faye and Patricia are life members of the netball club.
These days Doc’s sporting prowess is confined pretty much to the bowling green at Garfield and supporting his beloved Collingwood Magpies in the AFL.
“I’m a pretty ordinary bowler, but I really enjoy the company,” he said.
Even on the bowling green, there’s a fair focus on football.
His clubmates include four bowlers who have won six West Gippsland league best and fairest medals between them – Steve Bassed, Peter Lieshout, Joe Lenders (twice) and Tom Cleary (twice).
Doc doesn’t intend on making a speech on Sunday, he reckons he’s past that. Instead, media personality Tony Osler will interview him and they will invite a few questions from the floor.
“They can ask them, but it doesn’t mean I have to answer them,” Doc smiled.
“It’s my party, after all.”
