FORMER milkman Des Dent fondly remembers the days when money could be left in a billy can on the front verandah.
Des and his father Roy delivered milk to the Port Elliot and Victor Harbor regions for 47 years, from 1950, with Des starting work after leaving school at 13.
Des and Roy had their own rounds, each covering one side of the town, with horses in the early days.
The rounds would take each of them three or four hours and they’d also have to pick up milk from the dairies at night and in the morning.
“People would hang their billy cans on the gate as near as they could to the footpath, with the money in it, and we’d then leave the loose milk in the billies,” Des said.
That honesty system worked well for a time.
“We never lost a cent until about 1970, when money started being stolen,” he said.
With the concern about losing money, people were wary of home deliveries and began to go out to buy milk.
“It was disappointing when we could no longer go to the houses,” Des said.
“We had good relationships with our customers.
“Quite often they’d forget to turn their sprinkler off so we’d turn it off, or we’d take the paper in and put it on the verandah.
“Often people would leave letters in their milk cans for us to post for them.”
The business didn’t have an official name until in the 1960s, when they started using cartons and later bottling milk.
“We came upon ‘Lentara’, which is an Aboriginal word for early morning,” Des said.
“We thought that was applicable.”
Des’ wife Marg became the “backbone” of the business after they married in 1960.
“I used to get woken up in the morning because he’d run out of petrol or the tyre had gone flat and I’d have to go and rescue him,” Marg said.
The pair retired in Victor Harbor after selling the business in 1997, although they kept active providing horse-drawn wedding carriages.
Des remains connected to the dairy industry through his involvement in the Port Elliot museum and its plans for a display to celebrate 100 years of dairying in the area.
