Piece of paradise regained

By Paul Dunlop
MERLE McMillan has regained her own piece of paradise.
The widow of legendary ambo John McMillan last week received a cutting from the bird of paradise plant that has pride of place outside the ambulance station — the McMillans’ former home.
Mrs McMillan planted the original which she received as a gift from her mother when she and John moved into the station house in Main Street in 1967.
She was thrilled when Pakenham Ambulance team manager Simon Thompson presented her with a cutting last Monday.
John McMillan was Pakenham’s first — and for many years its only — ambulance officer.
An institution of the town and Pakenham’s Citizen of the Year in 1989, Mr McMillan died aged 76 in February this year.
He and his family’s life had revolved around his job with John on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week — except for a few hours on Monday afternoons.
“We might have got one weekend off in a few years and that was for a wedding,” Mrs McMillan said.
“He loved the job and that was it.”
Mr McMillan joined the ambulance as a volunteer and worked briefly at Chelsea before taking up the position of officer in charge at Pakenham.
For most of the next 30 years, he worked on his own with Merle taking emergency calls on the station telephone as well as looking after daughter Kerri. It was a busy time.
“There was always somebody in trouble,” she said.
When Mr McMillan retired in June, 1990, the family moved from the station house to a home in Marsden Court, Pakenham.
Mrs McMillan said she had kept an eye on the bird of paradise and other plants that continue to thrive at the station house.
It has grown and grown since then, as has the ambulance service.
“I’ll have to find a spot for it in the front yard. It makes a lovely show,” Mrs McMillan said.
Mr Thompson said John McMillan was synonymous with the Pakenham Ambulance service.
For years after he retired, people still inquired about him, he said.
“He was an institution, both in the ambulance service and the community,” Mr Thompson said.
“He got to know everyone.”
The bird of paradise is a hardy clumping plant with spoonshaped, greygreen leaves and magnificent orange and blue flowers.
It will serve as a living memorial to a great Pakenham citizen.