From a Farm Beside the Sea with Pam Tickner – Part 2

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Tickner, Wellington Point

My family connection with the Wellington Point School began in 1913, when my Grandmother, Mrs. Skinner, became station mistress at Wellington Point, and her three children Letty (my mother) and her two brothers, Charlie and Jack, were enrolled. Some years later Letty married a local farmer, Jim Belford. They had seven children, of whom I was one, who also attended the school. I remained in the area, became a teacher, and married Ernie Tickner. We had four children, all of whom also attended the Wellington Point School, and when some of our grandchildren also attended – two of whom are still there – this made four generations of our family to have attended the Wellington Point School! 

When I was a pupil at the school it was a three-teacher school. I remember the roads were all dirt and gravel, and in very poor condition. Then, as more people moved into the area, the roads were gradually improved and they began to be bitumened. We children always went barefoot – heaven forbid today! – and one of our favourite past-times on the way home from school was to burst the bitumen bubbles with our big toes, so that we would arrive home with our toes all blackened. 

I started school in 1934 in the little old original school building. When the building of the new school – 4 rooms and an office–was underway, school was continued in the old A.H. & I. (Agricultural, Horticultural, and Industrial) Hall next door – all classes in together, blackboards along the Southern wall, and classes from year 1 to year 7 side by side. I would say it had to be the first and largest open area school ever. 

The A.H. & I. Hall had many uses over the years. Not only was it a gymnasium, it was the venue for many other social occasions. It was a dance hall and fetes and garden parties were held there. It became a movie theatre – with canvas reclining seats the caretaker was an old identity called, Bill Hopp and if the young people became noisy, on would go the lights and he’d tell them off in no uncertain manner. The school had its fancy-dress ball there every year and we had our wedding reception there in 1952. I can’t tell you when it was shut down and removed but the Education Department bought it when the school was extended. 

During World War II we had zigzag trenches dug in case of attack by the Japanese, and practiced regularly leaving our rooms in an orderly fashion to take shelter – fortunately they were not necessary. Incidentally, there was an American military camp right on the Point during the war. 

We walked a mile to school along Starkey Street, and quickly learned that if we could be at the gate by a certain time, we would get a ride with the new infant’s teacher, Miss Nancy Atkins, in her cute little two-seater auto with a dickey seat. We felt very important, rolling up when we were lucky enough to catch her. 

We had visits from the ‘Camel Man’, who would come to school from time to time, and we’d have rides from where the tennis courts were to where Pooley’s shop was, and back. Mr. Sam Martin came regularly to cut the boy’s hair under the school, and Eddie Edwards came weekly to teach the mouth organ – we marched in regularly to “Our Director March”, played by the mouth organ band. The school dentist had an annual visit using a foot treadle, which worried all of us – it was such a slow, noisy machine, and we waited in dread for our turn. 

Wellingto Point State School now (2021)

A highlight of each year was the fancy dress ball, and the grand parade was practiced until we could march through the whole parade without a mistake – all dressed up, and having tried so hard to keep secret what we were wearing. 

Most of the children would arrive at school bare-footed. It was rather difficult playing hopscotch without shoes. Every morning we would have a school parade, where we would recite Our Ritual, and salute the flag. The Ritual went thus: 

“I love this land which gave me birth,

And the great virtues of truth, justice

And freedom for which it stands.

I shall strive to be true to these ideals,

And shall try to be a credit to my family,

My school, and my country.”

High School

I went to high school at Wynnum then the teachers’ training college at Kelvin Grove. I used to get the train then – a rail motor that we called “The Rattler”. Most of the steam trains went as far as Manly, and then we’d have to get the Rattler. At High School, I used to leave home at 7:20 in the morning and get back at 5:30. It made for a very long day.  After graduating as a teacher, I taught all the middle grades (3 to 5) but I did go to a one-teacher school outside Gayndah where I had five grades. 

After moving back to the Redlands, I taught at Thornlands for two years before I got married, then for six years at Wellington Point afterwards. 

(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)

From a Farm Beside the Sea with Pam Tickner – Part 1

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Tickner, Wellington Point

Our Farm

I grew up on a farm in Starkey Street – now a vacant lot plus 2 houses on southern side now. It was always in kept in pristine condition without any rubbish in it. My dad was Jim Belford. We grew small crops, as did most farms in the area, with strawberries being our main crop. We kids weren’t that pleased with the strawberries because they always ripened in August and we had to spend our school holidays stemming strawberries so they would be ready to be sent away for jam-making. We sent all our crops to the Brisbane or Sydney markets. At the time there was the railway station just near our present house, which had a large goods shed where the farmers produce would be loaded. Eventually the farms were sold up for housing, so that we have the situation today where there are very few farms remaining here, which is a shame. Our old farm is now a vacant lot which the Council had fenced and designated a leash free area for exercising dogs, but the people living nearby complained because they said the dogs barked too much – although I never saw a dog there – so the area was converted to a park. 

I have always lived in Wellington Point except for some years when I went away teaching. While I was away, I met my husband, Ernie, and he wanted to live by the sea at Wellington Point, so we came back here and we have been in this house for 59 years. Ernie built it – the only one he has ever built. Ernie came from England and was a commercial artist by profession. Originally, he worked as a draughtsman for Qantas Empire Airways. Brisbane Airport was originally situated at Archerfield, but later moved to Eagle Farm. When Qantas’ Maintenance Unit was transferred to Sydney, Ernie went to work for Barrier Reef Airways at Colmslie. One of our memories of that time was the sinking of one of their Sandringham Flying Boats when a fishing boat accidentally slit one of the plane’s floats. We had just purchased our block of land at Wellington Point and we had an idea that we could move the Flying Boat hull to our land and use it as a house! The practicality of getting it there soon dashed this dream! 

As well as being a draughtsman for Barrier Reef Airways, Ernie also performed any other chores if required. One was to be boatman at their base at Redland Bay. Their loading vessel was the Ina and after a plane had been loaded and taken off, it was time for some water sports using the Ina to tow a door as a surf ski! The fun times came to an end when the seaplane operations were transferred from Redland Bay to Sydney. Ernie spent six months before resigning and coming back to Wellington Point and resuming his career as a commercial artist. What he was doing was commercial illustrations for newspapers and the like. Houses, furniture, hats, floor plans. The client would give him the floor plan and he’d have to draw the house. It was a bit like what a computer-generated image is today, and in fact he retired from work just as computers were coming in. These days he just paints for a hobby. 

Ernie Tickner’s painting of the old Wellington Point hotel

(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)

Wellington Point

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Wellington Point, Whepstead

Wellington Point was named by surveyors Robert Dixon and James Warner in 1842 after the Duke of Wellington who led the army of the United Kingdom in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The bay formed in part by Wellington Point was named Waterloo Bay. 

Today, the names most synonymous with Wellington Point’s early history are Gilbert Burnett, Fernbourne, and Whepstead 

Gilbert Burnett had been employed as overseer at Louis Hope’s sugar plantation at Ormiston, and when Hope decided to get out of the industry, Burnett took up land at Trafalgar Vale, Wellington Point and purchased much of Hope’s sugar machinery. Burnett set up his own mill about 1⁄4 mile west of Hilliard’s Creek, and by mid-1883, Burnett’s cane fields at Trafalgar Vale were well established, and he had operating the sugar mill, a sawmill, and a bone- mill, the latter providing fertiliser for the cane. Burnett also was buying up local cane for crushing. 

The sawmill at Trafalgar Vale was established initially to cut timber for extensions to Burnett’s sugar mill, but local orders for milled hardwood had encouraged him to expand his sawmilling operations. By November 1884 he had ceased the cultivation and manufacture of sugar at Trafalgar Vale, and had established in its place what he claimed was the largest country sawmill in the colony. The Eucalypta, an 85ft long steamer, was built for Burnett to transport cypress pine from the Moreton Bay islands (Amity Point on Stradbroke, Coochiemudlo and Macleay islands) and hardwood from the Tweed Heads, Nerang, Coomera and Logan districts to his mill, the timber being unloaded at Hilliard’s Creek. 

In the mid-1880s, Burnett entered into partnership with a number of Brisbane businessmen to subdivide much of the former Trafalgar Vale plantation as the Wellington Point Estate. The estate sold reasonably well, as the railway was about to be extended to Wellington Point and on to Cleveland. Further subdivision and sales were made by the syndicate in the late 1880s, by which time the railway had arrived. 

In 1889, he replaced his earlier and more modest home with the large timber house now known as Whepstead, but initially called Fernbourne. Fernbourne was built during the wave of boom-time investment and speculation, which characterised the late 1880s, but in 1891, as the boom burst and the credit squeeze tightened, Burnett was declared insolvent. When the Burnett family left Fernbourne, they erected a smaller house on the eastern side of the railway line at Wellington Point, still on part of their original Trafalgar Vale estate and near the sawmill. This, their third home in the Wellington Point area, they also named Fernbourne, and it is likely that the first Fernbourne was re-named Whepstead at this time. 

After the Burnett family left the first Fernbourne (now Whepstead), there followed a succession of owners and lessees. In 1943 Matron Ethel Dolley purchased the house and converted it into the Bay View Private Hospital. The property remained a hospital until 1973, when it reverted to a private residence. A number of owners since have maintained Whepstead as a restaurant and function centre, and finally today, as a private residence once more. 

Whepstead Manor in 2012 (photo Peter Ludlow)

(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)

William in Lockdown

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Covid 19, Richmal Crompton

The author of the ‘William’ books, Richmal Crompton, was born in Lancashire in 1890. The first story about William Brown appeared in ‘Home’ magazine in 1919, and the first collection of William stories was published in book form three years later. In all, thirty-eight William books were published, the last one in 1970, after Richmal Crompton’s death.

Like everybody else in 2020, I have been subjected to a lockdown due to the Corona virus. During my time at home, I have been revisiting many of my favourite books. One of my perennial fictional heroes has been William Brown, the eleven-year-old scamp who never ages. 

As Charlie Higson writes in a forward to ‘William the Conqueror’ William is essence of boy. He has everything a boy could want – a dog, a stick, a penknife, a gang, a den, trees to climb, stones to throw, sweets in his pocket …Today William would probably be put into therapy and made the subject of a TV documentary, except, of course, William always gets away with it. Despite the trail of chaos and anarchy he leaves behind, he always ends up as the only thing that any boy has ever wanted to be. A hero.

Here is the cover of the first William book: ‘Just William’

It’s hard to imagine how the eleven-year-old William would have coped with today’s lockdown: being kept indoors with his long-suffering family. I am sure he would have tried to invent a Covid cure: perhaps by raiding the cook’s pantry for ingredients, or the gardener’s greenhouse, or his elder sister’s silk stockings to strain off his finished concoction. Then who to try it on? His father or his older brother? Perhaps Jumble, his mongrel dog. Whatever the outcome, I know that author Richmal Crompton would somehow solve the chaos for the Brown family to live on to await the next crisis. Perhaps we all need another Richmal Crompton to come along and sort out this Covid mess.

(Author’s note: I have always had a hankering for William’s Edwardian times. They had an order to their society which is sadly missing in today’s world. I think I would like to have been a gardener then. My wife explodes with laughter when I reveal this, my innermost desire.)

A Visit to the Royal Flying Doctor Service (Queensland)

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Royal Flying Doctor Service

When the Friends of Peel Island Association Inc. was wound up in June this year, its remaining funds were dispersed to the Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS), Redland Museum and the Fort Lytton Historical Association. $10,000, which had been donated by Dr Ted Reye on behalf of Rosemary Opala, a former nurse at the Peel Island Lazaret, went to the Royal Flying Doctor Service to help buy a Hamilton Ventilator which has the capability of being used on patients ranging from premature babies right through to adults. The Ventilator – costing in the vicinity of $50,000 – is at the RFDS base at Brisbane Airport for use in any of the planes requiring the equipment.

RFDS Ventilator and Dr Ted Reye

On 15 May 1928, John Flynn’s dream became a reality with the opening of the Australian Inland Mission Aerial Medical Service in Cloncurry, Queensland (later to be renamed the Royal Flying Doctor Service). From the first flight in a single engine, fabric covered bi-plane, the RFDS steadily grew in size, scope and reach. 

Over the next few years, the RFDS began to expand across the country: The RFDS Brisbane Base commenced operations out of Queensland Ambulance’s Terminal at Brisbane Airport, on 3 July 1995, with the current base location commencing operations next door in 1998. The Base is exclusively an emergency aeromedical base, providing retrieval and inter-hospital transfers. The terminal facilitates receipt of patients transported to Brisbane by the RFDS, as well as receipt of patients transported by other aeromedical providers such as Queensland and NSW Ambulance Services. Clinical coordination is provided by Queensland Health employed doctors and aircraft tasking by RSQ.

Tours of the facility are available to the public with tour groups limited to 15 people maximum. For further details telephone 0428054990.

Conditions are cramped inside the Beechcraft Kingair

Three Moreton Bay Yarns with Bob Bartlett

1.The Sea Monster 

I used to take my two boys fishing from virtually when they first could talk. I had a small cabin boat and we used to go fishing every weekend. We always went down to Jacob’s Well where we’d put the boat in and go off around the islands. We’d always take something to eat and cold drinks. On one such occasion in about 1967/68, we were fishing just north of Jacob’s Well in about 3 or 4 metres of water, and not doing much – just sitting in the boat with hand lines, when suddenly – it wasn’t a head – this hump came out of the water, and behind it was another hump! And the first hump moved further along. So I said to the boys, “Put your life jackets on straight away!” 

Bob indicating the position of the sea monster sighting at Jacob’s Well

I’d never seen anything like it in my life – almost a foot (0.3metres) in diameter, but we never saw the bottom of the humps under the water. So the boys put their life jackets on, and both remember it starkly to this day. Young Terry who was the baby then is now 47 and it has stuck in his mind ever since. His brother Graham is now 55 and also remembers it. 

I have drawn a picture of how it appeared to us: 

Bob’s sketch of the sea monster

There were several humps and they were all in a straight line behind each other. We never saw the head. They couldn’t have been dolphins because there were no fins, and dolphins stick their nose out. Dolphins also blow. This was just a series of humps that kept going through the water. It was just like a worm wriggling along but instead of wriggling sideways like a snake it was doing it vertically. No fins on its tail, and we didn’t see its tail at all. It was a dirty grey-brown colour. 

It just kept going until it disappeared out of sight. I have never seen anything like it before or since. When we got back home, the boys immediately told their mum, and she said, “Oh! It’s no good telling anyone – they would never believe us.” 

But the boys said, “What would happen if we did tell people?”
I told them, “People would look at you and say you were crazy!” Anyway I told a couple of blokes at work, and they said, “Have you 

been drinking, Bob?” so I said to myself, “That’s it. I’m not telling anyone else about it.”
Unfortunately we didn’t take a camera round with us in those days. 

They weren’t digital like now. But if we had taken a picture of it then, it would have been wonderful. If this had been in Loch Ness, it would have caused a sensation! What we really needed was somebody, independent of our family, to have also seen it. 

Any takers? 

Editor: – By a strange coincidence, just after I had interviewed Bob Bartlett about the Moreton Bay sea serpent, I was reading Mark Twain, A Biography by Albert Paine in which Mark Twain made a similar observation on a visit to Australia: 

On the night of September 15th – a night so dark that from the ship’s deck one could not see the water – schools of porpoises surrounded the ship, setting the water alive with phosphorescent splendors: “Like glorified serpents thirty to fifty feet long. Every curve of the tapering long body perfect. The whole snake dazzlingly illumined. It was a weird sight to see this sparkling ghost come suddenly flashing along out of the solid gloom and stream past like a meteor.” 

They were in Sydney next morning, September 16, 1895… 

I had mentioned such an occurrence to Bob, but he was adamant that there were no heads, fins, or tails visible, which would have been the case if the serpent had been a line of dolphins (or ‘porpoises’ as reported by Mark). 

The mystery deepens. 

2. An Unfortunate Chain of Events 

I tipped a boat over once. I was in the water for three and a half hours – without a life jacket. I was chugging along in the dinghy off Coochiemudlo picking up crab pots when the propeller got caught in one of the lines and pulled the boat backwards. I went to the stern to try to release it, but what happened was that the stern went under water, the boat filled with water and turned upside down. I went in the water, and the life jacket floated off. So did the oars. 

I thought the easiest thing would be to ditch the motor so that I could get the boat the right way up again. So I undid the clamps. However, when a motor is upside down, it won’t ditch, and you can’t push it forward to let it go. So I swam around to the bow of the boat and held on by putting my finger through the eyelet used for pulling the boat onto the trailer. 

I wondered what on earth was going to happen. It was during the day, but there was nobody out on the water because it was a weekday. The ferry came by, and I kept waving, but they didn’t look. 

I kept drifting and drifting towards Redland Bay. Fortunately, my wife and I had a waterfront property and she was looking out. She realized the boat was upside down, but she couldn’t see me. So she rang my son in Brisbane and he rang his brother. They rang the Air Sea Rescue. They weren’t manned. They rang the Water Police. The Water Police were busy somewhere else. She ran over to our neighbour who was my age. He took his trousers off and was going to swim out but realized it was too far for him, so he ran down to Thompson’s Beach and took one of the fisherman’s dinghies with all their nets and fishing gear in it. They spotted him pinching it, and got one of their boats. So he’s heading off to find me, and they’re chasing him! 

Talk about a circus! He arrived where I was to pick me up, and they arrived at the same time ready to beat the hell out of him. When they saw me in the water, they picked me up. My neighbour couldn’t have picked me up anyway because he was in his 70’s and unfit – like me! 

So the fishermen got my boat, turned it up the right way, and took me back home. By then the Air Sea Rescue bloke had arrived; the local police had arrived; and the Air Sea Rescue bloke wanted to book me for not having a life jacket. I explained that my life jacket was now out in the bay somewhere, and the local copper used some very colourful language telling the Air Sea Rescue fellow where to go! 

The fishermen got our wheelie bin, tipped all the rubbish out, filled it up with water, put my motor in it upside down, and said they’d take it out the next day and it would start. This they did, and they were right. It did start! 

3. The Room 

On the farm property we had bought was a very old house and we had modernized it and put in air conditioning etc but there was one particular room at the end that was always cold. People would come to stay and they could feel the cold there. 

One day some friends of ours called in for a visit, and one of the women was sitting where she could see down the hall, and she suddenly said, “Oh I’m terribly sorry we called tonight. I didn’t know you had visitors.” 

“There’s no one here,” we assured her.
“But I saw someone going across the end room.” What followed was a VERY pregnant pause. 

On another occasion when our English friends came to visit, we said, “Look, the farmhouse is empty. You can stay in there.” 

So I put things in the fridge and made the place up nicely for them. 

Now Sally had contact lens, which she used to have to soak for an hour before she could go to bed. Her husband, Ray, had gone to bed and he was asleep, but Sally was sitting waiting for the hour to pass, when suddenly she heard loud music. Now we were on acres of land and were very isolated and when she mentioned it next morning nobody else had heard it, so where did it come from. Odd? 

“Oh, not again,” we groaned. 

Bob and Irene say that they had lived in the house for a while, but it never happened to them, but Bob adds, “I’ve got to admit that sometimes when I walked into that room, the hair on the back of my neck used to bristle!” 

When our daughter Trish stayed, she used to sleep on the put-up bed settee down in this room which we called the billiard room – Bob had this billiard table there – and when she stayed there she used to keep the light on all night – we didn’t know about this – because she was so worried. 

“I’d wake up at night and feel like someone was standing right there beside me.” 

I think the house has been pulled down now. 

Bob Bartlett
23 September 2010 

(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)

Ralph Munro’s Reminiscences – Part 2 – Coral Dredging

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coral dredging, Ralph Munro

At this stage I joined Queensland Cement who were working from Ormiston and dredging coral from Raby Bay. We had our own private island, which we accessed via a causeway from the road next to the little church just down, from Ormiston House. The island was formed from ironstone that was pumped up while they were dredging. We closed it down for years but when they built the Gateway Bridge, we opened it up again. All the coral sent up river to make the cement used in the Gateway Bridge came from Raby Bay. We kept the dredging going for five years to get the stockpile up to build the gateway bridge. We put the old dredge Kawana into use for two years while the new dredge Amity was being built. The loading barge for it was the John Oxley, which could carry three and a half thousand tons. 

Coral Dredge in Raby Bay (photo courtesy Ralph Munro)

The Kawana was a suction dredge and had been used to cut channels and pump the sand up to raise the land level at Kawana Waters Estate. At Raby Bay there was a floating line out to the loader barge so that we could put a barge under either side, and get about 1200 tons in each. The sucker-cutter would work side to side pumping the coral back in through a 16-inch pipe. There were five 16-inch pipes on each side of the loader barge. 

We used the tide to help the tug take the barges upstream. By dredging at low tide, the tug would get the tide helping all the way up the Brisbane River to Darra and on the outgoing tide she would take the empty barge back to Raby Bay. Over the period of 5 to 7 years of the dredging that would save well over $1 million in fuel. The tug was the Moreton Tug and Lighters pusher, then later when we built the new dredge for Mud Island and St Helena it was the John Oxley, a giant split barge that was self-propelled. When it got up to Darra, the bottom opened and it dropped the load of coral into a clay hole and then it was grab loaded onto a conveyor belt into the kilns where it was crushed and burnt to form the lime that makes the Portland cement, the strongest engineering cement. The Gateway is made from the strongest engineering cement in the world. 

After coral dredging finished at Raby Bay, we went to Mud Island and St Helena. The prisoners at St Helena, of course, were the first to use the coral from the island in the kiln that still is to be seen on the island. The wash up coral travels up through the island and destroys the vegetation. It is very light and at Raby Bay at low tide you can see it washing towards the beach. 

I had gone back to yacht sailing by this stage, and was able to use my weekday dredging to benefit my yacht racing at the weekend. I was able to dig away at the coral on the Eastern side of St Helena to my benefit in yacht races because our vessel would know where to cut corners and thus give us an advantage. On Monday there might have been 2 feet at low tide but by Friday there might have been 38 feet. We could go down through the coral until we reached ironstone and then we would have to stop because we couldn’t have more than 4% ironstone otherwise it wouldn’t go through the kiln properly. On some spots off St   Helena we went down 65 feet. As we dredged closer into the island, we had to keep lifting our cutter when we hit ironstone. 

Coral dredging got traded off for a section of Mount Etna in Central Queensland but I think that too is now exhausted and Queensland Cement bought a new ship the Warden Point which goes to Whyalla to get the fly ash (90% pure lime) and to New Zealand on alternate trips to bring the lime to our Darra Cement works. 

My last job with Queensland Cement was the clean-up of the buildings at Southbank after the finish of Expo 1988. To save 2000 to 5000 truckloads of rubble from rebuilding the Expo site passing through the city, I suggested to Chris Sorrensen that we hire out our barges to Expo and take the material to the designated dump ground on the inside of Mud Island. This we did. 

After that I worked at the Prawn Farm and then ran a boat for Kerry Bell who owned Queensland Fasteners. The boat was a 52 footer and was called the Lady Bell. It was my job to take customers on Night River cruises, two or three times a week. Or weekend fishing parties. Kerry was building the company to make it more attractive for a takeover, and succeeded. This went on for three years until my mum got crook, so I came home. 

I was keen to get into houseboats in the NSW Northern Rivers, but the NSW Government banned live-aboard boats. (Living aboard was limited to 10 nights every 6 months unless it was a charter boat). I am still exploring the rivers there and a houseboat would have been the ideal way to do it. 

Coral Dredge cutting gear (photo courtesy Ralph Munro)

Ralph Munro 12 January 2008 

(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)

Ralph Munro’s Reminiscences – Part 1 – Early Days

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Ralph Munro, WWII

Right from when I was just three weeks old, I have had a close association with boats and the water. Our family boat was the Seamark. Dad bought it after World War II at the Government sale of commandeered boats. For some reason all the motors had been removed and these had to be bought separately at auction. Dad had to make do with a Grant petrol motor for the first few years until he could get his hands on a Grey marine diesel. We had the fuel tank on the footpath, which we used for ball games. Dad was always paranoid about the boat catching fire from the petrol motor.

We regularly went down the Bay for weekends or weeks at a time. The 18-foot skiffs club at Bulimba now owns our former house. While I was still a baby, dad used a wooden fruit crate which he lined inside and out with canvas to swim me ashore in. Seamark was known as dad’s nappy boat because he had bought it off the NAP at auction – and because it was always festooned with my nappies. (Editor’s note: – During WWII, inspired by the British small ships evacuation of stranded troops at Dunkirk, the Naval Auxiliary Association of Queensland (NAP) was formed. Its duties in Moreton Bay were mainly civilian patrol work, but it was limited by the small number of vessels left available after most had been commandeered by the Government. It continued after the war as a ‘men only’ club and is now the Little Ships Club at Dunwich). 

NAP 582 exploding a depth charge off Mud Island (photo courtesy Ralph Munro)

My first recollection was of porpoises. We never called them dolphins then; always porpoises, and I thought a porpoise was a truck tyre with 5 or 6 fins, because this is the way they looked rolling through the water. 

About the age of three, I was diagnosed with nock knees and put in steel braces, but when dad found me hanging off the stern plate of the boat unable to clamber aboard, he took them off, never to be seen again. They’re still on the bottom off Peel Island. Dad had polio when he was four years old and had a massively built-up boot and steel leg support but he still took me sailing in a little 9 foot open dinghy then training in 20 knot breezes. If we had of capsized, the weight of his steel boot and leg would have taken him straight down to the bottom. But this didn’t stop him. Nor did it stop him taking me fishing. At Point Lookout on the south side of the gorge there was a one-inch cable strung out to the outer rock and he would go hand in hand along it with his fishing creels and me around his neck. There was also the added problem, if there was a good catch of fish, of getting them back again. Once Lennie and Wendy Goebbels caught 64 big ones and it took them all afternoon to take them back, four or five fish at a time, across the rocks and up cliffs to where they live in North Street. 

Life at Work

I started work in the family typewriter business but soon after my father died, I parted ways and went to Olivetti who sent me to North Queensland. Later I went on to Papua New Guinea and got into the prawn trawling on two American boats Bulolo I and Bulolo II. After New Guinea I moved back to North Queensland to Port Douglas then to Townsville. Then I went to the Gulf of Carpentaria prawning for three seasons where I worked on the bigger boats. That’s where they brought in skipper tickets in 1974/5. Because they couldn’t shut down the entire industry for the want of tickets, the test they brought in was originally quite simple. We all had to go into Cairns, do a one-day course, then answer a verbal questionnaire, and we got our tickets. Captain Bauer did the verbals because some of the fishermen couldn’t read or write. The forms were printed, “can/cannot read or write” and of course we all ticket “cannot” to get the easy exam. 

Most people thus employed started working in Brisbane and slowly worked their way up the coast, but I started at the top and worked down the coast. 

In the 1980s I was working a prawn trawler out of Southport when my right arm was caught in a winch and I spent the next 33 months in the Gold Coast Hospital. I was one of the first patients to get the infection Golden Staph. What an honour! While my arm was healing, I came home to Thornlands and went to work at the firm of Golden Cockerel. 

Later I helped Joe Dryberg run schools to teach people going into the fishing industry as deck hands. Joe would teach the engineering theory and I would teach the practical side such as making nets, rope splicing etc. Most of them came from CES (Commonwealth Employment Service). 

Although the trawlers where primarily prawn trawlers, they were fishing boats and prawns would be about 60% of the catch and the rest would be the off catch such as crabs, squid, fish, and returnable soft drink bottles, but politics have slowly banned the off catch. Then I got back into yacht racing in the 1986 Brisbane to Gladstone with Ron Doolan for whom I worked at Golden Cockerel. He had been desperately looking for crew and when he was told that I had the experience, he told me that I was racing for him! His yacht was the 28- foot Bolero and we were the smallest in the race. We won on handicap that year. In the five races I went on that boat, we never came in lower than sixth on handicap. 

Ralph Munro 12 January 2008 

(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)

Wartime Brisbane, Through the Eyes of a Lad (by John Thornton)

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Brisbane, WWII

The definitive histories of Brisbane during World War II have all been long written, sometimes accurately, so these are just the recollections, often inaccurate, of what Brisbane looked like to a schoolboy and youth of that era.

We lived in New Farm from the early 1930’s. New Farm was a very river-oriented suburb; the wharves and warehouses were a big part of life. Big liners like the Strathnaver and Strathaird seemed to tower over the whole suburb. Each year the Navy sent the Canberra and Sydney at Ekka time, and we would visit them at New Farm wharf. It was a personal thing when each in turn was lost during the war.

Things were looking up in the late 30’s, the Depression was over, buildings were going up, and I could watch progress on the Storey Bridge from my classroom at St James in Boundary St. But war was obviously coming, there was no euphoria about it, just dread, an attitude of “oh no, not again”. And so, it started, slowly at first. Evans, Deakin finished their Storey bridge, and were persuaded that ships were not much different from other tanks and silos, so Kangaroo Point got its shipyard.

            At Nudgee in 1941, we farewelled two members of the previous senior class, and within 6 months had memorial services for them. Things then got really bad. Sydney was lost with all hands, then Parramatta with heavy loss, then came the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the fall of Singapore, and their repeated attacks on Darwin – all within a few months. Current history writers talk of cover-ups, that’s nonsense, information was plentiful, it’s just that disasters were unremarkable, there were so many.

It was a bit of a worry as all our trained forces were half way around the world. Us school kids were sent bush, heaven knows why. But sanity prevailed and by Easter we were back home. The digging of slit trenches was begun around the schoolyard, but boys turned practice drills into a re-run of WW1 trench warfare, so they were stopped.

One day I was watching two fighters stunting over Sandgate, when one nosedived, followed by a thump. He was gone.

            There was a big anti-aircraft unit, searchlights and guns, near Nudgee Station, and for most of 1942 they practiced on aircraft, we thought this more fun than homework. I left school and started work as an apprentice Toolmaker at the Rocklea ammunition factory in early 1943. They were making 3.5 million .303 shells per week plus .38 and .455, and 25 pounder shells. And this was the smallest of 7 factories in Australia! Where did they all go? At the end of 1943 they had enough, and switched to rebuilding aircraft engines, with test bays in the bush at the end of Compo Rd, now Evans Rd. The factory hadn’t really get going properly when the war moved too far north to make it worthwhile, so it closed and I shifted to Evans-Deakin shipyard.

Brisbane was a real mess by this time. It was the first decent port this side of the troubles, so things tended to concentrate here. Macarthur turned up, Canungra was set up for jungle training, all wharves were occupied and other temporary piers were put in wherever possible, USS Benson (or was it Benton) arrived at New Farm with its submarines, Eagle Farm grew new hangars and became the major bomber base, Archerfield housed fighters, and light bombers. I think the river could dock over 1000 ships, and the Bay was thick with others waiting.

I recall watching the arrival of a spectacular mass ferry flight into Eagle Farm of light bombers, mainly Mitchells and Bostons that took most of one day to get in and down. Crashed aircraft were stripped and piled four high in dumps at Eagle Farm, Bulimba, Enoggera, and Meeandah, each of 20 or 30 acres – a lot of grief there.

All this stressed Brisbane quite heavily. The civilian population was only about 250 thousand, and I was told once that about 1 million troops were quartered within 50 miles, a 4 to 1 ratio. All these fit and trained men were very toey, so the brawls were legendary. It was almost an entertainment to go into the Valley to watch the fights. The best riot, because it was harmless, was by the entire 7^th Division. They had been overseas since 1940, did Kokoda, and were not allowed beer in camp. They all marched out of Enoggera, down Queen St, acquired a large keg from a pub near the Post Office, broached it there, and went back to camp. They got their wet canteens.

Brisbane was dim and gloomy, and not pretty. The combination of aboveground water mains, ugly concrete blast shelters, blackout lighting, lack of upkeep, and shabby austerity made for a general run-down look, and it did not really brighten up for another 20 years. The Americans kept their black troops, who were mainly labour battalions, segregated on the south side, and they were quite severe on any transgressions. A workmate told me that he saw a Negro shot on Victoria Bridge over this. In fact, the treatment of their blacks probably did more harm to our opinion of them than any other single factor. Actually, the individual American was usually a very nice bloke, but in the mass, they were a lot more foreign than Hollywood had led us to expect. Just in odd little ways. Macarthur himself was too flamboyant for our taste and his army was not much respected, but the air force and navy, and especially the Marines were highly regarded.

I joined the Evans Deakin shipyard late in 1945, installing the main engines in HMAS Murchison, a sister ship to the frigate now permanently on display at Southbank. I was thus a little late to be personally involved in their wartime work, but I knew and heard much about it and it was magnificent. There were few trained tradesmen, so apprentices matured early and it was nothing to see a handful of 17 year-old’s under one or two tradesmen heading off to Colmslie Dock to do a major job on a crippled ship. The submarine flotilla could provide some nasty jobs, like flooded compartments with dead crew, and one had its whole forward compartment blown off, which Evans Deakin rebuilt.

Shipbuilding was very satisfying: to see a pile of rusty steel take shape, get launched, fitted out, and then come alive as the boilers fire up and the engines turn over, is one of life’s great experiences. Sea trials were always a great day, I was out with Murchison, then Dalby, Dubbo, Binburra and Bilkurra – all good ships that gave no trouble. It was a pity that the yard could not last, but too much of inefficient work practices, demarcations, and union restrictions had been inherited from the Clyde so it had to go.

            Even though the Mirimar had been impressed for wartime service, it continued to service Amity and even in the black days of 1943 a group of fellow apprentices introduced me to beautiful Pt Lookout. Not that it was any picnic getting across the island, I recall midnight in winter, pouring rain, on the back of an Army FWD truck, bashing through bush. On a later visit we were standing on the beach looking at the half of the Rufus King wreck, then quite close inshore, when some air force planes turned up for target practice. First came a Spitfire, very pretty and interesting to watch. Then a Mosquito. Lots of guns, its speed would check noticeably when firing. Then a Liberator bomber. Gun turrets all over, all firing. Now there were spurts of sand kicking up not far away, so time to drop the rods and run.

One day it was all over, they all left, and we wondered at the quiet. Brisbane slept for years.

USS Chicago in Brisbane River (photo courtesy Ralph Munro)

John Thornton

21.8.2007

(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)

Signalling Ships (with Kevin Mohr) – Part 2

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Aldis Light, Bishop Island

Bishop Island

We used to communicate with the ships using a four-inch Aldis Light using Morse code. The Light had two triggers – the bottom trigger was to put the power on and the top trigger was to flick the light on and off. It was the same principle that the Navy used to communicate between ships except that the Navy blokes were faster than us. The Aldis Light was battery operated and we had a bank of batteries that we charged with a little diesel generator. It was very noisy and used to rattle the signal box when it was operating, but that’s all we had to communicate with in those days. We were linked up with Brisbane Harbour by radio. I think it was an old Bendix valve radio. There was a repeater station for it at the quarantine station at Lytton. We had set radio times between the pilot boat, Bishop Island, and the Port Office. These were all the people we could talk to – we couldn’t talk to ships. For ships we had to use the Aldis Light and Morse code.

Kevin Mohr with Aldis Light (photo Peter Ludlow)

We had tide signals too at Bishop Island. They were done with two red cones and a black ball in various combinations. At night they had coloured lights for the tide lights. When the Pile Light was knocked over in 1949 the signal station was transferred to Bishop Island in about 1952 or 3. It was only a temporary turnout there, but they still called the station at Bishop Island the Pile Light. The signals we used at Bishop Island were the same as the ones they used at the Pile Light. A red flag, for example, meant that the tide was rising. The signal station was at the western end of Bishop Island, and nearby were the three signalmen’s houses – the Ford, Tottenham, and Devonshire families. Tottenham was the third generation to work with Harbours and Marine – just on one hundred years. That was fairly common in those days. 

Bishop Island in May 1979

To get our tucker, we had wheelbarrows, which we used to take up to the jetty at the other end of the island. The track was all sand but when the tide was out, we’d go via the mud flats because the mud was a bit harder at low tide. Every Tuesday we’d go up for our provisions. Also at the other end of the island was a kiosk and we had quite a bit to do with the people who ran that for the tourists. Harry Sullivan and his family had it when we were there.

We used to get our meat off Redbank Meatworks in those days and they classed Bishop Island as overseas trade so we got the best quality meat. Water was always a problem and when our tanks would run dry, they’d send a ship tank full from Cairncross Dock for us. The women had it tough. Wood coppers and all. My wife hated every minute of it but she never complained. To pass the time she enrolled in a Correspondence school. It wasn’t a bad sort of life on Bishop Island – except for the mosquitoes. They were pretty savage. It was fairly primitive – all the lights were kerosene, there were wood combustion stoves, and wood coppers for washing. But it was a privilege to work for the old Harbours and Marine. They were good to work for, and there was a lot of loyalty there.

Ships used to go aground fairly regularly in fogs so they’d anchor when they got stuck in the mud. One day I was going back to Bishop Island in a thick fog and there was a coastal freighter stuck straight across the river at the Pelican Banks Cutting. When a ship went aground, they put ten black balls in a vertical line to show that they were not under command. At night they used two red lights. Such occurrences were a major problem for the port because they blocked the main channel. Depending on what the pilot wanted, they would contact us using Morse code by light, and we would then arrange tugs to come and pull them off or they would wait for the ship to float off with the tide.

The signalmen’s houses on Bishop Island came from Bulwer Island just across the river. Our house ended up being burnt down when a cat knocked over a kerosene lantern. The kitchen and bathroom were out the back but they couldn’t get enough water out of the tank.  So, someone got a shotgun and blew a hole in it. They got all the water they wanted but it went too quick! The houses were all flyscreened. They had a lot of louvers in those newer keepers’ houses but the noise from them at night with the wind would drive you mad. Also, when the China Navigation ships used to go past the island, the windows in our house used to rattle because the whole island was only built on mud dredged from the river. 

The signal station on Bishop Island closed in 1968. They couldn’t sell the Harbours and Marine houses there so they had to bulldoze them. They sent two signalmen to Caloundra and two to Lytton. There was little remaining of the signal station itself after the louts had got to it. 

After Bishop Island

I was on Bishop Island for three years, then they sent me to Townsville in charge of the explosives at Brook Hill. I was there for three years and by the time I got back, the Bishop Island Signal Station had closed and they had opened up at Lytton Hill. It was a modern facility for those days, it had radar and VHF radio – there was no Morse code. They opened the same type of set-up at Caloundra.  We talked to the ships by radio then. It’s all closed down now.

I had twelve years at Lytton Hill, and I went to Caloundra and had twelve years up there. This was at the lighthouse there. They still called us signalmen but we didn’t do any Morse code or signal with flags. It was all radio. Then in January 1992 they brought us all down to Whyte Island. I retired in 1997. 

At Whyte Island we still did pretty much the same thing. We used to report ships in. We had state of the art radar – we could identify a ship and give it a mark and that identification stayed with the ship to show us the course and speed of the ship right across the Bay. Basically, we just tracked ships and spoke to them. And we contacted the agent, tugs and line ships as before. Now Whyte Island has finished and they’re at the Harbours and Marine Depot Pinkenba. It’s just across the river. In the old Bishop Island and Cowan days you had to be within sight of a ship to signal it. I don’t know whether they can even see a ship now. That’s progress.

Kevin Mohr

22.2.2008

(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)