By Mikayla van Loon
Allan’s Cakes and Bakery in Kilsyth has been a well known institution in the community as both a supplier of cakes and as a meeting place for over three decades.
Murray Allan, the man behind the name, celebrated his 70th birthday on Friday 24 May, and along with it, 55 years as a baker.
“When I started at 15, I thought I’d be retired at 40,” he said jokingly.
But the love and passion for the industry, for his skill and for his community has kept him going well beyond.
“I don’t like not working and not coming to work. I enjoy it. It keeps me healthy, keeps me fit,” he said.
Despite cutting back his days and hours in the bakery, Murray said the thought of retiring completely isn’t a pleasant one but with his trusted children taking care of the baking and business, it’s easy to take a step back.
At the age of 15, in a small province in New Zealand, Murray left school with the plan of becoming a carpenter.
“My cousin had worked at a local bakery and said they had an apprenticeship going. I had just done our school exams and I didn’t need to wait for the results, I just took the apprenticeship,” he said.
“It was quite a big wholesale bakery in the whole province and that was it. I loved it from day one. It’s a very satisfying trade.”
By the time he was 18 and a half, Murray had finished his apprenticeship completing the required 10,000 hours of training, working 60 hours a week.
“Back then there was no weekend bread, no hot bread bakeries. On a Thursday we started at four in the morning and we’d go through the night and finish at four or six the next morning, working 24 to 26 hours straight.”
Murray and his wife Daphne were married young and by the time they were 23-years-old, they had welcomed their first son Shane and were making the big move to Australia.
“We came to Australia for three years and we’re still here,” Murray said.
First living at the Pine Hill Caravan Park in Lilydale, Murray said the family never strayed too far, always choosing the eastern suburbs to call home.
With a dream of always setting up his own bakery, that goal was achieved in 1981 with his first shop front at the Burnt Bridge Shops in Croydon.
“My parents were very poor and I wasn’t going to be poor, I decided that when I was very young. I was going to work hard and work long hours, whatever it took to get my own business and have my own house but at the end of the day that’s not the be-all and end-all.”
Allan’s Cakes and Bakery started in a different location, then was split in two before being combined into the Kilsyth shop it is now.
For a while there, Murray said he owned a bakery in Doncaster as well, which would see his wife often ferrying items back and forth.
Over the decades, Murray said he’s seen trends come and go but the evolution ingredients used in cakes has been one of the biggest shifts of all.
“One of the overriding trends has been the richness of the products people use. Once upon a time, cakes were fairly basic and they didn’t have the creams and the icings, they were basically butter, sugar, eggs and flour.
“Nowadays, there’s so much cream and custard and sugar and chocolate.”
Pastry sales, although they went through a lull a few years ago, Murray said “are really booming today”.
But one thing that stays constant is the support of his three children, Shane, Jason and Kirsten, despite his every effort to steer them onto different paths.
“My eldest son went to university and I didn’t want any of them to come into the bakery. I wanted them all to do something else. I thought there were better ways to make a living but Shane was helping me from the age of 13,” he said.
“They’ve all had other jobs but they come back because they enjoy it.”
While it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, with Murray having to make many sacrifices to keep the business afloat, now he is able to give back to the community that supported him by sponsoring local sports clubs making bread and pies for them to sell each week.
And with a new generation of grandchildren, as well as a great grandchild on the way, Murray is proud to see them taking on his passion for the bakery.
