HOLLOWAY, Pauline Margaret

Pauline Margaret Robinson was born on 19th September 1931 at her grandmother's house at Lal Lal.  The family was visiting and her arrival came unexpectedly while her grandmother was milking the farm cows.

Pauline, who had a brother and a sister, resided on a farm about two and a half miles from her grandparents.  Her mother was Laura and her father was John Robinson, who as well as farming worked in a clay mine and cut firewood and telephone poles.  She attended Lal Lal State School which then had about thirty students and completed her Merit Certificate at the Eighth Grade level, there then being only one teacher for all eight grades.  The school numbers had been assisted by the closure of the school at Clarendon and the older students assisted with the younger ones.

Pauline has many memories of the changes at Lal Lal with houses now everywhere compared to the farms of her youth.  As a farming community, Lal Lal had a grocery shop at the post office and the butcher calling from Buninyong.  Their farm was on the edge of the bush on Bungal Road and her father was the third person to get a car in Lal Lal.  After she left school she stayed at home for two and a half years before becoming a waitress at the Western Hotel in Ballarat which was conducted by an uncle and aunt.  After three years she went to Lucas's as a dress cutter until she married Graham Holloway in 1955.  She and Graham went on to have 5 children, Gary, Jeffrey, Debra, Paul, and Rodney.

Pauline had a keen interest in the history of Lal Lal, many of her relatives having worked in the local mines.  Their family farm backed onto the old race course and her only memories of attending as a child are of the fairy dolls on a stick and the delightful jam tarts.  Lal Lal was well known for its Picnic Race Meeting held annually on New Year's Day.  The newspaper reported in 1886 that, 'No fewer than 7740 persons left Ballarat on New Year's Day by the trains for Lal Lal races.  They were carried in trucks, like so many cattle, but put up with the roughness of the journey good-humoredly.' After 1936 the races were not held on New Year's Day due to the clash with the picnic races at Burrumbeet and the last meeting to be held at Lal Lal took place on 31st December 1939.

Pauline died on the 23rd May 2018 and her cremated remains are situated at the Ballarat New Cemetery, Rose Garden F Row 2 Tree 10 along with her husband Graham.