Max's musical life
• Jetsonville’s Max Hodgetts with his wood working display.
By Daisy Baker,
November 16, 2022
Singing was commonplace in the Hodgetts household when Max was young and he remembers his disbelief when he realised other people didn’t sing at home.
“We’d always be singing and larking about,” he said.
“Mum and Dad were beautiful singers and my sister Dawn is too.”
An appreciation for music has flowed throughout his life and continues to be a source of joy on a daily basis.
Mr Hodgetts spent his early years living between the family farm at Winkleigh and Weldborough.
Come winter they would leave their cows, orchard and a thriving vegetable garden, to relocate to the North-East where his dad trapped rabbits for pelts.
After attending school at Exeter for a short time, the family shifted to Lilydale where Mr Hodgetts’ grandfather imparted many valuable building skills which would go on to shape his future career in carpentry.
“He taught me how to put shingles on at that very early age and I’ve still got the pattern there and I used that pattern a lot of times in forestry, putting shingle rooves on picnic shelters,” he said.
The Hodgetts came to Scottsdale when he was seven years old, to run Killerton Guest House in Arthur Street, which slept up to 35 guests.
Many of the guests, Mr Hodgetts recalled, were from Italy and the Ukraine, among them mechanics, scientists, and tractor drivers who were working on Waterhouse and other local soldier settlements.
“One night about 12 o’clock, there was a ruckus out in the kitchen,” he said.
“Me being a sticky beak went to see what was going on. Mum was cooking flat out and there were four maybe five Italians out in the backyard and Joe from the Ukraine, who became a real good friend.
“They’d been travelling all day and they couldn’t speak a word of English.
“Mum went out with a piece of bread and held it up so they came inside and had a feed.
Then she held a pillow up to show them to their beds.”
Of a Saturday afternoon, his mum let the boarders have free run of the kitchen to cook their own cuisine.
Occasionally of a weekend, Mr Hodgetts would tag along when his uncle would take the men from the boarding house away for a weekend.
“We’d be going down the Bridport Road, sitting in the back of this ute and there’d be dust flying everywhere because it was all gravel.
“We used to go out to Waterhouse fishing and they used to cut me some ferns to lay on.
“I think the nicest music that I’ve ever heard…I woke up on the Forester River down the marshes, which they’ve drained now, but the birds, frogs, bettongs, the noise was beautiful,” he smiled.
“I was very fortunate to do all those things with those people. I learned a lot of respect and a lot of other skills from these people from all over the place.”
After completing his education at Scottsdale High School, Mr Hodgetts secured a carpentry apprenticeship when he was 15, which took him to Queenstown to build the school and to Rosebery where he worked on a hospital.
At the same time, his mum took over the running of the Beehive, which was in the family for some years.
“Working on the West Coast was an experience for me at that young age,” he said.
“It was only one road into it. The Murchison Highway wasn’t there at that stage, it was a gravel road.
“It took seven hours to get there on the bus when I first went down with a box of tools and a case.”
He said the close-knit community of Queenstown included people from all over the world.
“They were very nice people down there. They knew all your business, but they looked out for you.”
Shortly after finishing his apprenticeship Mr Hodgetts got married and took a more predictable job as a carpenter working for forestry, doing building around parks, including bridges, fire towers and lookouts.
Working in forestry meant he was based in the North-East, where the couple raised their two children Katrina and Royce.
“I worked for the forestry for 43 years and my first wife died with complications from breast cancer when we were three weeks off 50 years married,” he said.
“She told me not to live by myself. I was singing in the choir at the time and I thought, ‘that second soprano’s nice’.
“This was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life I think, I rang Beryl up and asked her for a date.
“She’d been widowed for 19 years and brought up two boys on her own.”
After some hesitation she agreed to go out for a meal but when she asked when, Mr Hodgetts panicked and hung up the phone.
Nevertheless, their relationship blossomed and in 2013 they got married and have continued singing together in the choir.
Mr Hodgetts sung in the barbershop quartet for 12 years and in the choir for around 20 years.
Among their biggest performances was singing on opening night at Junction Arts Festival, with Max first up with a solo.
Mr Hodgetts built their Jetsonville home in the 1990s, on a block that now bears a flourishing garden and chickens.
It is one of eight houses he said he built during his spare time.
Upon retirement, Mr Hodgetts decided he needed a hobby to keep him active so he took up scroll sawing.
He spent several days in Devonport learning from a man he knew who was proficient at the craft.
In the years since, he’s spent countless hours in his workshop, creating intricate pieces from chairs to chests of draws with inlayed designs, through to a trail of wooden rabbits and wombats that increase ever so slightly in size as the line goes on.
Throughout his life he’s collected and restored historic bush working tools, including squaring axes, saws and his grandfather’s shingle knife that was made in Scottsdale at the Nugget Sellers’ blacksmith shop.
“For the last three years I’ve been going to adult education which has helped me write my life story and I’ve been writing stories about the friends of the bush,” he said.
“That’s been really good for me because my education wasn’t that flash. I’ve had a lot of fun and tutors are wonderful.
“Oh, and I died last year for twenty minutes,” he added casually with a laugh.
After a heart attack Mr Hodgetts had a cardiac arrest during the angiogram.
He came to nearly 24 hours later, thinking he’d only been out a few hours.
Mr Hodgetts has made a full recovery and his jovial storytelling spirit remains.
His days are filled with woodwork, gardening, singing and time with his beloved Beryl.
“So now I’m onto writing my second life story,” he laughed.