The Genev family at their home on Scarborough Beach Road, Innaloo

The below story was entered with this photograph into the 2018 History and Heritage Awards:

I am the granddaughter of Ilia and Nedela Genev/Geneve/Geneff family. Ilia migrated from Bulgaria in 1909 and his wife Nedela followed later with their four children. In later years, the family had nine children, one passed away in Russia. My father was Mick Geneve. George Geneff was an original owner of the Nookenburra Hotel.

 The family made their seven-mile journey over the rough sandy roads, the exhausting heat making it more difficult. Their property of three acres was situated along the main road of sand, which stretched from Perth to the beach, now known as Scarborough Beach Road, just west of where the Nookenburra Hotel stands today.

The land cleared only in parts and holding small iron shacks was mainly owned by Chinese market gardeners who had come to Australia ten years prior to the Genev family. Due to "white Australian policy", Chinese people were not officially admitted into the nation since 1901, in order to reduce on cheap labour competition. 

The house that Ilia had built for his family consisted of rough white timber walls lined with old bags and an iron roof. There were no amenities and water had to be carted from a creek close by. The family found the heat quite unbearable, but struggled on to maintain their market garden in the loose black soil.

They lived on a diet of small portions of meat and home-grown vegetables, but within a few months Ilia realised that this was not sufficient to support his family. He had little choice but to take his family to Day Dawn, 400 miles away, where he would resume cutting wood for the Fingal gold mine.

Ilia spent long hours working to save money and Nedela budgeted carefully, with free offal from a nearby slaughterhouse supporting their cause.

Later Ilia purchased a property on the northern side of Scarborough Beach Road between King Edward Road and Oswald Street. It had a creek running through it, which drained into the nearby Herdsman Lake, and on this creek Ilia constructed a water wheel used to irrigate the market garden.

In 1922, the family purchased seven acres at 21 King Edward Road which was resumed in 1974 to make way for the Mitchell Freeway. That was the home that Mick, Rene and his five children lived in after Ilia passed in 1950, then Nedela in 1957.