Model couple's lives on parallel lines

KATHLEEN DUCKETT

STORE OWNER

14-4-1926 31-10-2011

By PAUL NICHOLSON

PATRICIA Duckett, who for more than 30 years with her husband, Peter, operated Model Dockyard, the city's most popular shop specialising in model toys, has died of heart failure at a nursing home in South Caulfield. She was 85.

Peter died of the same cause four months earlier, aged 86.

The Model Dockyard, which was located first in the basement of 216-218 Swanston Street, specialised in model trains, aircraft and ships. It also provided supplies for model engineers, as well as books and publications on transport subjects.

In the 1970s, Model Dockyard moved to more spacious premises upstairs in the same building. It closed in 1984 when the couple retired.

Together they managed the shop as a united team, yet with distinctive styles: he was an old-school boss, very strict with his employees she had a more personal touch that warmed both customers and employees. She was the administrative and financial force of the business he established business contacts with model suppliers around the world.

The business gave them opportunities to travel overseas in the years before international travel was commonplace.

Born Patricia Sterling, into an air force family at Windsor in New South Wales, she spent most of her younger years moving around that state with her family. During those nomadic years she developed a great love of the outdoors something she was able to indulge after her marriage, travelling into the countryside on her husband's Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Her family eventually settled in Melbourne and she completed her secondary education at Mac.Robertson Girls' High School.

She got her first job, as a typist-stenographer, at the then powerhouse radio station 3DB, which had ratings of almost 40 per cent of Melbourne's listeners in the late 1940s. She worked with many of the famous radio stars of the day.

In a career shift, she moved to the National Cash Register company, where she demonstrated office machines to prospective clients. It was at that time she met her future husband in the early 1950s. Peter was working at another model shop (Meadmore's) in Exhibition Street, when he served Pat, a customer looking to buy a present for her brother, Jim. Their friendship blossomed into romance and they married in 1954.

About the same time they took over the Model Dockyard. The business took up most of their time but they enjoyed the theatre and took many holidays, often including their nieces and nephews.

After they married, they lived in the family home at North Caulfield that was built as a wedding present for his mother in the early 1920s.

The Model Dockyard grew out of Peter's lifetime fascination with trams and other forms of electric transport. In the early 1940s, he drew together a group of young men interested in trams, which led to the formation of the first formal association of tram enthusiasts in Australia.

Over more than 70 years, he built up one of the world's most comprehensive libraries on the subject of trams and electric transport, including many rare and valuable publications from the early years of the 20th century. Even the Smithsonian Institution in Washington would contact him for information from his library to fill gaps in its collection.

Fortunately for Victorians, Peter arranged for the Duckett collection to be left to the state government, and it is now housed in its own section of the Department of Transport library.

As a young man, Peter knew how to open doors in the public transport world. In the late 1940s, he organised for the chairman of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board to write to his counterpart in Brisbane asking him to afford Peter every hospitality on a forthcoming visit. The Brisbane general manager wrote back saying it was a pleasure to entertain such a fine young man who knew so much about trams.

The Ducketts cherished their privacy, yet were gracious hosts. Their home was always immaculate and they were avid, proud gardeners.

Her physical health declined in later years of retirement and he husband became her devoted carer until he suffered a serious health setback last year.

Although she was extremely frail in her final months she remained as bright as a button, always doing puzzles and word games. Her memory remained phenomenal and visitors were amazed that she knew about so many people and places always with a good word. But without Peter, her life wasn't the same.

They had no children and are survived by several nephews and nieces.