Remembering Minto: Life and Memories of a Community

Margaret Ilic
I was determined to be the last one to leave Minto

I’m 67 and it’ll be 30 years on New Year’s Eve that I have been in Minto.

The place used to get flooded in those days, and you couldn’t get on the train as the water would be over the railway line. We always had a lot of open space; kids used to play where the little church is on the corner across the road. They used to slide down the grassy hills on bits of cardboard. They’d climb trees, they’d go over the road, and you only had one or two cars a day that went down Guernsey Avenue.

I’ve always felt safe here in Minto, and the devil you know is always better than the devil you don’t know. I’ve got my friends, we all live further away than we used to but we’re still friends. And I’ve got family so I’m never lonely.

I’m one of these people who have always been treated fairly by Department of Housing, never had a skerrick of trouble with them. I’ve got nothing mean to say except, I was upset [about the relocation]. This was a big thing to move after you’d been told you’d be here for the rest of your life.

First of all, we were told we weren’t going because there wasn’t anything wrong with the townhouses [on Guernsey Avenue], and the people who lived in them looked after them. Then the Housing Commission didn’t know if we were going or not. But, as it turned out, we had to go. I was determined to be the last one to leave Minto. People were sleeping in the [empty houses] next to me even though they boarded the windows up. I wasn’t scared about who was sleeping in them, but it’s not nice. The other people that moved out hadn’t been there very long. Some of us had been there the whole time the houses had been there. I thought it was morally wrong to knock down people’s houses when there was nothing wrong with them.