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been ruined, wrecked and destroyed; the ordered Ottoman and
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Austrian empires had been torn apart, and the new nations spawned by the war -Yugoslavia,
Palestine and the Irish Free State (in 1921) -were malformed.
About 350 of Footscray's young men had died in the war. Most of those who returned were
mentally and physically maimed and scarred, unable to adapt to the routines of work and family
life.
They sat silently at home, remembering what they had seen and done, and their wives and
children suffered. Repatriation hospitals, retraining and resettlement schemes that tried to
integrate returning soldiers in suburban and country life for the most part failed. They came back
to a land not fit for heroes, and fit themselves for little if anything other than existing from day to
day, as they had done in the war. Much as ageing Richard Honeycombe did in Albert Street,
cared for by his 70-year-old daughter Jane. His memories were of other, ancient times. But
most if not all of his friends were dead, as were his wife and three of his sons.
Some returning soldiers brought venereal diseases back with them, and this spread among
women like a plague, as it had in Europe. Others brought another European plague that became
an epidemic - so-called Spanish flu. Identified in Melbourne in January 1919, it spread
throughout Australia, killing over 11,500 people before the end of the year.
Strict precautions were taken to combat the invader, pneumonic influenza. Cinemas, theatres,
racecourses and schools were closed; church-goers and people on public transport wore white
gauze masks, as did office-workers and those in stores. No one was supposed to stay in a pub
for more than five minutes, and when together people were required to sit or stand one metre
apart. Ships from overseas were quarantined, and travel between the states curtailed.
No Honeycombes died in the epidemic, although some must have fallen ill. But their
acquaintances would have included two or more of those who now suffered further family
casualties at home after the military casualties inflicted on their sons and husbands overseas. 83
people died of pneumonic influenza in Footscray, almost as many as in Bendigo (87) and
Ballarat (91). Overall, about 3,500 people would die of influenza in Victoria that year.
Another disaster overwhelmed Footscray in March, soon after the flu epidemic began - a flood.
And this time the old man in Albert Street, who would be 90 in September that year, was very
much affected. Torrents of rain had fallen on the plains northwest of Melbourne, and before the
rainy dawn of a Wednesday, floodwaters spreading widely along the course of the Maribyrnong
poured into Footscray, surging through houses and bringing down fences, trees and telegraph
poles, and anything else battered loose by the water's weight, including rocks and sewage and
acres of mud. People awoke to find water swirling around their beds; some climbed onto their
roofs; a house in Swan Street was shifted by floodwater across the street, and the cellars of
stores and businesses were filled and overflowed in Garden Street, Barkly Street, Hopkins
Street, Hyde and Nichalson Streets. Geelong Road became a river, and balked by the railway
embankment, the stormwaters piled up in culverts and crashed
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through Errol and Raleigh Streets, through Pilgrim and Albert Streets, and via lower Hyde and
Whitehall Streets back to the overflowing Maribyrnong.
A local footballer rescued his horse from a stable in Albert Street. But a Mr Firth, also of Albert
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