A Fisherman’s Daughter (Lyne Marshall) – Part 2

My Mother’ Family (Ormiston)

My grandmother, Elsie Rose O’Sullivan, was just 14 when she married my grandfather, Jim Ormiston, who was then 25. Jim Ormiston had one of the first shops on Bribie. My mother, Eileen, was one of their five children. Her sister, Mavis, married Fred King, the baker. Jimmy, Eric, and Gordon Ormiston were her brothers. All the kids did it pretty rough because the father left and the mother raised them. They were often hungry and the kids would raid his farm for food. 

I grew up in Hall Avenue, but at some stage someone swapped the street signs over and I spent the rest of my time in Cottrell Avenue. No one ever changed them back. This is something that seems to follow me because since we came to live up here at Tallegalla, our address has changed six times and we have never moved!

My Early Life

I went to the Bribie Island State School. Mum put me in there when I was only four years old so I had finished primary school when I was barely twelve. I used to top the class. There was no High School at Bribie then, so the kids used to go by bus to Caboolture. Although it was illegal to finish school before the age of 14, I was never sent on to High School. However, it didn’t hold me back in the long run, because now I have two university degrees and three nursing qualifications. In that educational side of my life, I have always come in the back door, so to speak.

Lyne at 16 on the beach at Woorim, Bribie Island

So, after I left the Bribie School, I had several jobs on Bribie, and at 17, I moved to Brisbane and worked for Coles/Pennies. After I left the island – it was after the bridge was opened – I was very homesick for Bribie, and I would go home every weekend until I got married. My wage wasn’t wonderful but I’d have enough to get my bus ticket and go down to Bribie every weekend that I didn’t have to work on the Saturday morning. I never caught the Koopa to Bribie, but as a kid, I remember we used to meet it when it berthed at the jetty.

When I married someone from the air force, I lived interstate a bit. The marriage lasted nine years and I never got to live on Bribie during that time. Later I lived with the kids in Brisbane until I met and married Peter, my present husband. He always wanted to live in the country so we came up here to Tallegalla (not far from Rosewood). In a way, life at Tallegalla now is similar to the way Bribie was in the old days – no power (we now have solar power) and no water (we have to rely on tank water). 

My brother died in a car accident on Bribie in 1975 and I did get home to visit my mother there until my father’s death in 1977. After dad’s death, my mother left Bribie and often followed my sister Pam around to country towns where she and husband John Smith bought and managed pubs. Mum died at Beachmere just as Pam retired and would have now been living with them on Bribie Island in Cummings Street had she still been alive.

Life at Bribie

A student of one of my classes also remembers her visits to Bribie as very beautiful and free times. And that’s just how I feel about Bribie. I don’t think we Bribie kids were doing anything different from kids everywhere in those times. Kids from that era were freer. Looking at some of the things the kids have been doing in the floods today may seem crazy, but then we remember we used to do the same things in our younger days. Perhaps we are too over regimented today, but we do have a responsibility as parents now. So, we were just like kids everywhere at that time, except that when other kids from the mainland came to Bribie, they’d think we were so lucky because they had their bitumen covered playgrounds at school whereas we could walk around barefoot because our play area was just a big paddock.

A lot of holidaymakers used to stay in tents then along the waterfront on the Passage, and we kids used to like walking along at night and say hello to them and look at the canvas lit up with their lights. Of course, other visitors stayed in holiday houses or in huts left over from the war such as the Visitors’ Centre. We kids actually resented their intrusion into OUR island during holiday times, but we had the island to ourselves for the rest of the year. Of course, many of the locals depended on the visitors for their livelihood. For a number of years, the local ambulance used to put up a stage at Christmas near where the library is now at Bongaree and held a Christmas pageant there. 

The Bribie Bridge (photo courtesy Kgbo)

Another thing we kids used to do was to play sport against other schools, such as Humpybong, Caboolture, and Dayboro. It was always a big event when we met all these schools together at Caboolture. We had about a hundred kids at our school then and the whole school would climb aboard buses and go across on the barge to Caboolture for this big event. It would have required a lot of organizing for all the different grades involved. It was an athletics day and each school had its own colours. Bribie’s was a red top with a white skirt and it was tied up with a gold sash.

The locals were very ‘anti’ the bridge being built, and when they got it they were then ‘anti’ the toll. They said that it should only be visitors and not locals who should pay. However, the bridge gave us young people a lot more freedom. We could go off the island into Caboolture, which although it was a very small town then, was our ‘big city’. For our big night out we used to go to the Milky Way – a milk bar attached to a service station! Bribie did have a hall, which is still there today. It’s only small, but to me as a child it seemed huge. It served as a dance hall on Friday nights, where we’d do all the old fashioned dances such as the Pride of Erin. On Saturday nights it was the movie show, and on Sundays it was church. The hall was everything.  The movies were shown by Ivan Tesch who lived in a circular house, which is still there today. It was at Bongaree and was very innovative for Bribie when it was built.

There were other churches on Bribie – a Church of England further along the same street, I think. There was also a Catholic church, the Church of the Little Flower, down near the school. We kids were allowed to go to the movies on Saturdays and we’d walk up there as a group. In those days there were a lot more trees and the roads were a lot less defined but I was surprised to see the hall still there on a recent visit to Bribie.

Ian Fairweather was living on Bribie when I was a kid but I don’t think he had much influence on my later work as an artist. I knew he was a painter who lived in a bush hut, and we’d see him walking around town. He used to come down to get his groceries and used to come into the shop where my mother worked. So she knew him. The owners of the shop had some of his paintings. I don’t think the locals really understood how important he was. There were people from city galleries visiting him, but the locals saw him as a bit of a hobo. He always looked a bit derelict, and of course he was probably not all that young when I was there. But I think in later years when I was working with figures he may have had some influence on my painting. But I didn’t go to any of his exhibitions when I was young. He didn’t have any as such on Bribie but he did donate the occasional painting to local organisations. He didn’t shun the local community. 

Ian Fairweather and hut (colourised) (original photo courtesy Ron Powell)

For us, to go to Brisbane then was a major adventure. We would have to go down to the waterfront at 6 in the morning and wait for the barge. It would take us an hour to get across the Passage because the barge would have to come across and then take us back. So we never really felt as though we were off the island until the bus pulled off on the mainland. Even then it was quite a long way to Brisbane via Caboolture, so we didn’t go to town all that often. So, if Fairweather did have an exhibition in Brisbane, we kids wouldn’t have known anything about it. Then after he died, his living area wasn’t preserved, because the Council didn’t really understand, and weren’t interested.

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

Bayside Reminiscences – Bribie – Nell Birt (nee Covill)

In 1930, due to my father’s ill health my family moved to Bribie Island, and took a lease on the kiosk on the ocean beach side.  I stayed in Brisbane to attend school, and for the first year saw my family only on school holidays, then for the next two years, I went to Bribie each weekend.  We travelled on the Koopa (and a couple of times on the Doomba).  After leaving Brisbane the vessel would call in at Redcliffe to pick up more passengers, then sail on to Bribie.  Music was provided for the passengers in the form of gramophone records, played on an old wind-up gramophone – mostly waltzes as I recall.  There were many other children in my situation – one of them being Dorothy Shirley, whose reflections are mentioned in Moreton Bay People – and the trip was never boring.

On arrival at Bribie I caught the bus (driven by Dorothy’s father, Bill Shirley) to the ocean side – the island is three miles wide at this point. (My younger brother, who was seven at the time, would ride his bike across to school at Bongaree each day).  Apart from the kiosk, which apparently had been shifted further from the beach due to erosion, and the lifesavers’ shed, the only other buildings were a few ‘weekenders’ built on a narrow dirt road leading from the kiosk north for a few hundred metres.  The kiosk itself was comprised of a shop, large dining room and kitchen, and living quarters, with a couple of bedrooms for boarders or over-nighters. After we left the island – around 1933 – the kiosk was later renovated as a guesthouse, and the lease taken over by Bill Shirley.     

In the shop we sold basic groceries, sweets and drinks, and in season Boronia wildflowers and Christmas Bells, which my elder brother would collect from inland.  We would serve hot fish dinners for visitors.  I recall the kitchen with its very large wood stove and enormous frying pans where my mother would cook the freshly caught fish.  Mr. Shirley would phone from the bay side to tell us how many people from the Koopa were coming across, though this wasn’t always an indication of how many of them would want dinner, some bringing their own picnic lunch.

We had a couple of cows, and there was always plenty of milk. Our dog – a Blue Heeler – was trained to round up the cows and bring them home when they strayed.  There was no refrigeration so the problem of keeping eggs fresh was overcome by placing them in a large tin filled with a viscous substance called, I believe, “waterglass’, which would keep the eggs from contact with the air. There was no wireless, but I remember my dad and brother making what they called a crystal set. We had a piano, and on the weekends the lifesavers would often come over and one or two would bring instruments and we would have a very enjoyable evening.

The ocean beach at Bribie Island

The beach was, of course, beautiful – broad and white and clean.  We sometimes went by truck on the beach as far north as the point where Bribie almost touches Caloundra.  Eugary (known as ‘pippies’ to southerners) were plentiful and could be collected just by feeling in the sand with your toes at the water’s edge.  As for fishing – when I look at the size of the whiting served and sold today, I can’t help thinking of the whiting of over 12 inch (30 cm.) length the men caught by throwing a line in the surf in front of the kiosk.  Worms were the most used bait, which my brother was very adept at catching.  Apparently, this is not an easy task but I enjoyed watching him.  He would carry what was called a “stink bag”, filled with old fish heads and such. This he would drag along the sand until a worm popped its head up.  Then instead of just pulling it out quickly, in which case it would break off, he ‘stroked’ it until it relaxed, when it could be pulled out easily.  This was quite an art!

After about three years my family moved back to Brisbane, and it was many years before I visited the island again.  However, while speaking of Bribie, I was interested in a mention in Moreton Bay People of Fairweather’s The Drunken Buddha, the fascinating book he translated from the Chinese, and illustrated with his paintings.  My daughter, Cyrelle, who was Production Manager at the UQ Press, designed the cover and layout of the book, and with publisher Frank Thompson visited Fairweather on Bribie.  Frank was amazed to see many of the paintings in the open, at the mercy of bird droppings etc.

‘The Drunken Buddha’ book cover

Nell Birt (nee Covill)

February 2009

Reminders of Peoples Past – 09 – Ian Fairweather

In it’s early days – before the bridge was built – Bribie was a haven from the rat race of civilization. Its lifestyle was simple and close to Nature, where people could be themselves without undue interference. Personalities flourished and eccentrics were accepted as the norm. Bribie’s best-known eccentric was the reclusive artist, Ian Fairweather. At age 60 he went to Bribie and took up residence in a grass hut in the bush at Bongaree so that he could paint undisturbed.

Ian Fair-weather standing outside his hut at Bongaree on Bribie Island

It paid dividends and his art flourished to the point where he started winning prizes and he gained national attention from the galleries, from the newspapers, and from the general public. His grass hut became a bit of a tourist attraction and he was constantly visited by curious onlookers. Paradoxically, his success destroyed the very reason why he went to Bribie – to find a bit of peace and quiet!

Of course, when they built the bridge, that was the beginning of the end for his Eden. People visited the island in droves and neighbours began to encroach on his hut in the bush. There were complaints about rats and the Caboolture Shire Council was forced to intervene.

Eventually, Fairweather was forced to build a fibro hut on a cement base next door to his grass hut that he had occupied for so long. It was harsh and cold. He missed the sand between his toes, the smell of the thatching and the warmth of his kerosene lanterns. His art production all but stopped.

When he died, the grass hut was demolished amongst much controversy, and the fibro house was moved. Today the cement slab still remains in the pine grove where he once lived and worked. A large stone has been placed on the slab and an inscription reminding us that Ian Fairweather once lived there.

Ian Fairweather’s memorial at Bongaree

Th Plaque at the Fair-weather Memorial