Koopa Memories

Tags

Bribie Island, Koopa, Moreton Bay

Marilyn Carr writes…

When I was six, maybe even younger, my father used to take me down to the lowest deck on the SS “Koopa” to watch the two stokers at work shovelling in the coal; we would also pause further along the passage-way at the half-door which allowed a small child, partly hoisted up by their father, to peer down into the gleaming engine room. The engine was painted red and green; the brass plaque that would have said when and where the S.S. “Koopa” was built truly shone. It must be fifty years since the “Koopa” last sailed across the Bay to Bribie – after stopping at Redcliffe jetty. I can remember a Thursday trip in 1950 or 1951 which would have been close to when it stopped running, but my earliest recollections go back to before its service elsewhere during the Second World War.

However, if I shut my eyes, in my imagination I can curl my hands around the varnished, curved railings still.

‘Koopa’ at Bribie Jetty 1920s (photo courtesy Ian Hall)

What wonderful stories that “old girl” could have told! May I share a couple of stories that come to mind? First, we were told an enormous groper was supposed to have its home under the shelf just where the “Koopa” berthed at Bribie. Legend had it that once some foolhardy soul did not heed advice and dived into the water off the “Koopa”. He went straight into the jaws of the waiting groper!

There were bottles of oysters that could be purchased by passengers from a little kiosk (which was painted black and sat between the two runways that led out to the wharf) as they returned to the Koopa after their three hours’ stay on Bribie. Three short toots signalled the vessels immediate departure back to Brisbane. Life on Bribie revolved around the arrival and departure four times a week of the “Koopa”. (I think there may also have been some night trips at one time.)

One has to be a little careful here, though the lady of this story was most respected by my family. She still, I believe, would have many relatives around Moreton Bay. The lady grew carnations which she would take to the “Koopa” for them to be sold in Brisbane. She had also been left by her former employer a motor car (possibly one of the very few cars – not trucks – on the island. One needs to think “Model T” now) and driving this car she would automobile (“drive” as a word seems inadequate and there were not really roads anyway) to the jetty all dressed up in flowing white wearing a large hat and carrying her big, big bunch of carnations.

Occasionally, on her return home could one say the warmth of the day would overcome her and she would stop for a little snore!

Just before the final journey of the “Koopa” to Bribie, Bribie’s Lady of the Carnations made her last trip as well. She had passed away and the captain of the “Koopa” had the task of the dispersal of her ashes from the “Koopa”’s deck. Now, I only heard this story but it goes like this: there was a sudden wind change at the critical moment of the dispersal ceremony. Bribie’s Lady of the Carnations did not return immediately to the Bay but to the “Koopa”’s decks! Her spirit furious, that was the end of the “Koopa”!

Marilyn Carr

July 2002

Reference: Peter Ludlow ‘Moreton Bay Letters’

Bullets and Beans

Tags

Bribie Island, Moreton Bay, WWII

Marilyn Carr writes…

My father would comment that the shock waves from the explosions would lift “Torphins”, our beach house, momentarily off its high Queensland stumps and the windows would rattle, the iron bedsteads groan. There would be the loud, loud clatter of machine guns firing and sundry booms and cracks from high-powered rifles.  “Another practice landing,” my Father might have thought and, as the noises subsided, have calmly pumped up the “primus” to boil water for a very early cup of tea.

That was around 1944, during the Second World War in the Pacific.  The American marines had a large training base at Torbul Point, on the coast of Moreton Bay. There, American troops practised amphibious barge landings.  This was training for the island-hopping strategy to be used to retake the Pacific Islands then held by the Japanese.   The sounds that shook “Torphins” were just rehearsals for what was to be real later in the Solomon Islands and, too, on Iwo Jima.

So, barges filled with armed, invasion-ready marines would churn across the half-mile of Pumistone Passage, their bow-plates would be lowered and out the troops would storm onto the uninhabited northern part of Bribie Island with all guns truly firing. Then, Bribie Island had but few permanent residents and only land-owners with security passes could access the island. My family still went there for school holidays.  The trial invasions were regarded as very necessary and quite accepted.

On occasions troops would be moved around the island’s sandy tracks in trucks with the troops standing up on the tray behind. I have the distinct memory of a convoy passing our house and one of the troops falling off the truck. He picked himself up and ran alongside the truck to jump aboard again.  I watched from the verandah of “Torphins”. Other items seemed to get left behind as well.  Once, I found a well-balanced dagger.  George, a retired circus rouseabout who acted as our caretaker when we were not on Bribie, taught me how to throw it.  I have always regarded a dagger as my weapon of choice!

For their ‘invasions’ the Yankie marines also took along food supplies.  These came in wooden boxes, holding  gold-coloured, squat tins on which, I think, was written two capitals letter ‘Ds’, with between them an arrow.    I had found a full box of such rations close to “Torphins”.  Do know that, for children (and I would have been eight in 1944) chocolate was a nearly unheard of dream. There was food rationing, but not for chocolate. Such sweetness had seemed to have ceased to exist. But I, with my find, had found a cache of chocolate!

The wooden box’s tins had three different contents: some were K rations (which I believe implied emergency food) some contained baked beans and others hash, rather like Australian camp pie – not particularly tempting but I am sure with meat rationed, every tin was used by my family. The K ration tins held chocolate, biscuits and some had cocoa, while some powdered coffee – unheard of in Australia then.  The chocolate in each K rations tin was consumed with relish.

However, the baked beans, heated up on the wood-fired stove, were mouth-wateringly delectable and are, to me, more remembered.  Every-day, so-ordinary baked beans were then quite unobtainable until after the war had ended.  Over seventy years later I still enjoy baked beans served on toast.  Breakfast at a five-star hotel holds a special delight as one spoons a serve of baked beans from a highly-polished silver serving dish onto one’s plate.  The memory of my first taste of baked beans comes back. And, for me, they are deserving of being served out of a silver dish.

One box of army rations discovered must have made my cousins and I decide to search for more after another invasion trial not too far up from “Torphins”.  There was Cousin George, Cousin June and I and it may have been the winter school holidays, in 1944.  Our Grandmother must have been in charge.  We were to keep to the beach – where we could be seen from the house for quite a distance.

We found the invasion spot where the vegetation was trampled, some trees tattered.  There we found another wooden box but this one was deeper and sturdier.  It had been opened.  It did not contain food tins.  Instead, it held machine-gun bullets about six inches long and held into a long chain of metal.  A disappointment, but we decided to take them home.  With George leading, and the bullet chain looped between us, we ambled back along the beach to “Torphins”.

Grandma saw what we were carrying. She was aghast.  Grandma gathered up some oars, made us take the bullets down to the beach and help her push out our rowing boat into the Pumicestone Passage. Into the rowing boat she clambered, fitted in the oars and rowed out to what she thought was the channel. There she dumped our find of machine gun bullets overboard. I do wonder, would over seventy years be enough for them to have disintegrated?

Pebble Beach Memorial, Toorbul Point

 

Marilyn Carr 

November 2016

The People of the Passage (Bribie in its Golden Era of the 1930s)

Tags

Bribie Island, Koopa, Moreton Bay

 

Camping at Bribie in the 1920s

In the semigloom of first light, a silhouette moves about hut number 4.  The wheezing breath identifies Dave King.  He was gassed in WWI and has spent much of his later life in Rosemount Hospital.  When they let him out, he comes to Bribie and rents one of these cottages – the locals call them the ‘Twelve Apostles’ – from the Moreton Bay Tug Company for 2/6 a week.  It’s a “Koopa” day, and Dave instinctively looks out beyond the beach and the jetty and the dark waters of the Passage across the bay to Redcliffe where the “Koopa” will call first.

Dave, a seaman of old, still splices the wire ropes for the “Koopa”.  Beer money.  There’ll be a few pots today.

Bribie is a bastion of isolation; the Passage its protective moat.  There are no bridges to connect with cities and bustle and people and the conformity of urban life.  The only timetable here belongs to the “Koopa” and her sister ships: arrive 12.30pm, depart 4.30 pm every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

It’s Saturday and Dave’s son, Eric, is here for the school holidays.  So are hundreds of campers in white tents that fill the foreshore beneath its thick mantle of trees.  With the approach of dawn, tent life stirs.  Hurricane lamps flicker silhouettes of dressing figures on the canvas.  Fires are being lit, twigs crack, people yawn, wind passes, billies boil.

Further up the Passage, beyond Dux Creek, the air reeks.  It’s the Campbell’s, Wally and Reg, preserving their nets.  They boil them in tar in a 44 gallon drum on an open fire. They’re aborigines descended from the Campbells of Dunwich.

Another aborigine from Stradbroke Island is Lottie Tripcony.  She’s Tom Welsby’s housekeeper and came with him when erosion forced him from his property at Amity.  It is said that Lottie was once married to a German named Eisler. During WWI she suspected him of spying so she had him interned.  End of marriage.

With the daylight Lottie is up and cooking breakfast for herself and Welsby, while he sits on the verandah overlooking the Passage and ponders the next chapter of his memoirs.  Welsby’s a quiet, shy bachelor who keeps to himself.  He saves his words for his books.  Later in the day Lottie plans to row up the Passage to collect Boronia flowers.  She does this for her own pleasure and not to sell them to passengers on the “Koopa” as do the other locals.

As morning progresses, the autumn chill melts.  On the beach Bribie pulses with passion: Freddie Crouch has just returned with a big haul of mullet.  He is packing them in ice for the “Koopa” to take to the Brisbane markets.   Fred, like everyone else on Bribie, depends on the “Koopa” for his livelihood.  Ned Bishop has come over from Toorbul.  He’s there every “Koopa” day with his oysters and meat, his boat tied up at the jetty waiting for his customers to arrive at noon.  He is a short plump oysterman who has a little shed just to the north of the jetty   Ned never wears shoes and has cracks on the bottom of his feet large enough ‘to put your fingers in’.  He’s been known to carry a 44 gallon drum of fuel from his half cabin cruiser up the soft sandy beach to his hut.  Not a task for the weak!

Someone has spotted the first smudge of smoke from the “Koopa”‘s funnels.  She’s left Redcliffe.  The day trippers will soon be here!  To the north of the jetty, Mrs Moyle prepares the china at her restaurant; to the south Bob Davies and his sisters lay places at their Gardens.  It’s fresh fish on every menu.

Across the island at the Ocean Beach, Bill Shirley and his drivers assemble their convoy of Tin Lizzies and set off for the “Koopa” jetty.  They’ll nab their share of customers for a hot fish dinner too.

Pumicestone Passage basks in the noon sun.  To the north, its waters are masked by fingers of mangroves prodding out into its banks of mud and sand.  Donneybrook is somewhere up there, too.  Billy Dux, the crab man, has made it his home.  He doesn’t like the fisherman coming up because they kill the muddies that get caught in their fish nets.  To a crab man, that’s just a waste.

But here comes the “Koopa”!  That speck of soot has now formed into a hull and superstructure.  People can be seen crowding the rails.  Looks like a full shipload – a thousand at least.  The jetty surges with locals.  This is their social highlight.  When the ship finally docks, passengers surge down the gangplank.  Bob Davies is there spruiking on the jetty at the top of his voice “Fresh fish dinners this way!” and Mrs Moyle rings a bell from her restaurant’s verandah.  Bill Shirley’s Tin Lizzies have now arrived and their motors idle in anticipation.  Aboard the “Koopa”, engines throb, steam hisses, passengers jostle, bells ring, whistles blow.  The trippers have found their release from the workaday world.

Soon everyone has disembarked and the crowd disperses to eat, swim, fish, or just laze on the beach and soak up the atmosphere.  Bribie obliges in all departments.

For some, the afternoon lapses into anticlimax.  They fill the emptiness with sleep.

Wally Campbell leases Clark’s oyster banks.  It’s low tide now, and his sisters, Millie and Rosie, are at the banks, chipping off oysters from the rocks with little hammers.  They load them into chaff bags and leave them on the banks for the tide to come in.  When it does they’ll bring the dinghy and load it up with the oyster bags.

It’s 2 o’clock and the water tanks are now open.  Mr Freeman, the Postmaster, is in charge of this precious commodity.  Unlike the city, there’s no reticulated water on Bribie, and drinking water is brought down on the “Koopa” then pumped into tanks at the end of the jetty.  When the taps are unlocked each day campers and locals line up with their empty kerosene tins which they fill for 2d each.

By 2.30 the sun hovers over the Passage waters which the afternoon breeze fans into a shimmering sheet.  A woman fishing on the beach throws her line into its midst while seagulls perch on the seawall and wait for results.  She watches the slow passage of time trek across the sky to leave a dazzling path across the water to Toorbul Point.  Still later, the sun touches the mountains in the distance.  Clouds have appeared, and into their pink billows the Glasshouse Mountains thrust their weird shapes.

The “Koopa” is getting up steam.  It’s whistle blows.  That’s the first sign to the passengers to get ready to embark.  It’s also a signal that the “Koopa”‘s bar is about to open.  (Its had to remain closed while in port).  There is no hotel on Bribie and the “Koopa”‘s bar run by Elsie Davis is eagerly sought by those locals who fancy a drink.  A second whistle blows and the drinkers gulp more quickly.  The passengers hurry aboard and the gangplanks are withdrawn.  Bill Shirley’s Tin Lizzies pull up at the jetty and the last of the passengers hurry aboard.  With the third whistle, the ropes are cast off and the “Koopa” is homeward bound.  The drinkers clamber off onto the jetty across the widening gap of water but one lingers in the bar too long.  He’ll come home on the next trip.

Soon the “Koopa” is once more a shrinking speck, a piece of soot on the horizon that is eventually whisked away on the cool evening breeze.  Mozzies descend with the evening and citronella mingles with the aroma of cooking fish and smoky fires.

Dave King sends his son, Eric, to the shop for sugar.  There the lad sees Wally Campbell about to leave for a few days fishing.  Wally consents to Eric’s pleas and to let him come along.  As the boat passes Dave King’s hut Eric sees his father looking out and does what any kid would do, waves.  The sugar will have to wait another four days until he returns.   So will his father’s anger.

Beneath the jetty, in the deep dark waters now left vacant by the “Koopa”‘s departure, giant Grouper lurk in mysterious caves.  Their mouths are so large they could swallow a child whole.   On the jetty, a young boy ponders the monsters lurking beneath the boards on which he stands.  He’s seen photos of Peter Rich, the “Grouper King”, and his monster catches.  The stuff of future dreams…..

Bribie Island – sunset across the Passage

Reference:Moreton Bay People – The Complete Collection

Stories from Bribie Island – 2

Tags

Aborigine, Bribie Island, Koopa, Moreton Bay

Bribie Island – koopa jetty, tents (Photo courtesy Marian Young)

 Peter Ludlow:

‘The Aborigines on Bribie would have been startled by the visit of Matthew Flinders in 1799. Gradually, after the settlement of the Moreton Bay district from 1824, Europeans began visiting the island, initially as escaped convicts, then as free settlers.

‘Fishing and oystering were the great attractions. In the 1890s fish canneries and oyster leases were set up. Recreational fishing had also become popular, and in 1911, the Koopa began bringing holidaymakers and day-trippers to the island. Camping was popular along the Passage foreshore and a plethora of boarding houses also sprang up.

‘When the bridge to Bribie was finally completed in 1963, Bribie came within easy reach of Brisbane’s motoring public, and an ever-increasing dormitory for the workers of Brisbane.

‘Today, Bribie is a popular destination for day-trippers, but also supports a growing population of both workers and retirees who find its easy going lifestyle a welcome alternative to the stress of modern city living.’

The Koopa, approaching Bribie Island, with the Pumicestone Passage in the background.(Photo courtesy Yvonne D’Arcy)

Jack Wheeler:

‘My memories of Bribie Island were when the Brisbane Tug Company who owned the Koopa and the Beaver had a lease of the island. There was a caretaker there, and little huts on the Passage side. I remember staying there with my grandmother. The huts were simple, one room, with beds, a wood stove and a sink. There was no running water. You had to use the pump at the caretaker’s house and carry the water in a kerosene tin back to your hut. I think the rent was two shillings and sixpence (25 cents) a week. That’s all there was at Bribie.’

Lyne Marshall:

‘At weekends we used to walk around from our house at Bongaree to Red Beach. It was quite a long hike. It was winter then, and by the time we got there – it was probably just gone daybreak – dad would had already been in the water twice up to his waist to pull in the nets because the fish would run early. He’d have all his wet flannels hanging up to dry.

‘My mother also went fishing on her own and she’d bring home buckets of whiting, but then dad would come in with his fish, and when they were fishing around Red Beach, they piled them all up on our front yard. They had these old army Blitzes – snub-nosed trucks left over from the war. They brought all their fish in, dumped it on our front yard, and then cased it in wooden cases. They were primarily mullet, which they sent off whole – no gutting. The fish were grouped according to size, and then sent to the Brisbane Fish Markets by boat. They left some for us and we ate a lot of fish and their roe (eggs) – white and yellow roe. When the trawlers were in dad also swapped some of his fish for prawns and crabs so we got a bit of everything. It was a good diet for growing kids.

‘Dad was be away for weeks at a time and the bread he took with him would go mouldy, but when he came home, it was a big event, and if I was at school at the time, I was allowed home for lunch with him and mum. He’d pick us up at school and we’d have our roast dinner, then he’d take us back to school. We fishing family kids were the only ones that did it. The others had to sit and eat their sandwiches at school. I always thought it was lovely to be included in our family’s homecoming meals, because it could be that he would be off again straight away, and if I were at school, I would miss out on seeing him.’

Hauling in the mullet (photo courtesy Lyne Marshall)

All References: Peter Ludlow ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’

Stories from Bribie Island – 1

Tags

Bribie Island, Bubonic Plague, Cormorant, Ian Fairweather, Moreton Bay

 

S.S.Cormorant (hulk at Bongaree)

Les Bax: 

‘I was on the fishing boat that towed the hulk of the ‘Cormorant’ to its final resting place on Bribie Island. The ‘Cormorant’ had been purchased by Bribie resident, George Sharp, with the object of using it to stop the erosion of Bongaree foreshore frontages. As planned we arrived at Bribie at 5:00pm at the top of the tide. Arrangements had been made to meet up with Council employees, who would help put the hull in place, but there was no sign of anyone from Council, after a short time, we decided to go ahead and beach the ‘Cormorant’ ourselves. We fitted ropes to the shore, attaching one to a tree and the fishing boat guided the hull into position. The ‘Cormorant’ rested on the bottom about half way up the beach. Billy Woods had been engaged for the following morning to blow a hole in the hull, ensuring it was stay where it was placed. He arrived as planned and assuming the hull was where the Council put it, proceeded to place the explosives in the hull and detonate them. The ‘Cormorant’ would remain exactly where me and my mate, Ron Duell, had beached her until 1990 when its remains were removed for safety reasons.’

Jim Ormiston:

‘I was four years old in 1919 and my family lived in Terrace Street, New Farm. It was just after WWI and Brisbane was in the grip of the Bubonic Plague. So bad was it that the authorities had a horse and wagon which used to go round the suburbs to collect the dead. It was reminiscent of the Black Plague in Europe centuries earlier.

‘One morning dad heard the wagon in the street outside our house and the call of “Bring out your dead.” When he looked out the window he saw four bodies from the house next door being loaded on the wagon. It was all he needed to make up his mind and he called to my mother, Elsie, to pack a port. Then our family caught the S.S. “Koopa” down to Bribie Island.

‘We had no money and nowhere to live, so we went up about a mile south of the jetty where the RSL Club now is. It was all bush then and dad had packed a small tomahawk in the port which he used to strip bark from the pine trees and build a little humpy for shelter. Fortunately food was plentiful. We’d put a lasso out with food to attract goannas, which we’d skin, fillet and cook. Or we would boil up a bucket of yabbies. Fish were also plentiful which we caught using bent pins on a line.’

Lisa West:

‘I visited Bribie’s reclusive artist, Ian Fairweather’s hut many times. If we happened to meet at the shops, I would have a cup of tea with him at Joe’s Jetty Café. Fairweather was then heavily involved with his translations of ancient Chinese novels, a task which required enormous concentration and perseverance.

‘So fine were his translations that the Buddhist Society of America, of which he was a member, honoured him by sending him an exquisite rectangular seal. Although Fairweather was not a man to receive honours gladly, But I remember that he was especially pleased with this seal, and the recognition of his Buddhist peers.

‘Best known of these translations was THE DRUNKEN BUDDHA, which had been accepted by University of Queensland Press for publication. Fairweather needed a typist and approached me to do the job for him. Although I couldn’t type myself, I did refer him to another resident of the island who proceeded with the task. However, as the work progressed the woman’s husband became alarmed with Fairweather’s accounts of the main character’s somewhat unorthodox personal habits and thought it best if his wife passed on the task to someone else. As Fairweather himself was a bit of a mystery to the other residents on Bribie, the typist’s husband was probably equating Fairweather’s habits with those of the drunken buddha!

‘Another typist was duly found.’

Ian Fairweather and hut (Photo courtesy Ron Powell)

References: Moreton Bay People – The Complete Collection