Jeannie (with the Light Brown Hair)

 Among the outstanding diversity of the 8.2 billion people who inhabit this planet, there is just one certain thing we all have in common. We are all mortal.

I have always had a picture of life as a moving footway, like one of those things that you see at airports – only longer.  We are all on it, all 8.2 billion of us. Some have only recently stepped on it, like our grandchildren, and some of us, me included, are getting closer and closer to the end.

Now before I become accused of painting a morbid picture, in my defence let me just say that it is what we do while we are on that travellator that is so much more important than when we get on and when we get off.

My lovely sister stepped off it on Sunday, 83 years and 10 months after she started her journey, in Nottingham, England in 1941 and I need to share just one or two of the memories I have of those early years when the bonds between brothers and sisters are first shaped.

In May 1941 an event occurred in Britain known as the Nottingham Blitz. Taking place over a couple of nights nearly 500 high explosive bombs were dropped on Nottingham by the German Luftwaffe during a dozen raids. Nearly 200 people were killed, and Nottingham was on fire.

This then was the setting that greeted Jean Anne Williamson when she arrived in July of that year. Her mother Eileen was 25. Arthur (later known always as John) was 28. He volunteered for active service but was refused because he was working in an essential industry. He was head mechanic at Chilwell Ordinance Depot a mile down the road from our family home in Beeston. He was also a member of the Fire Service and the Home Guard.

The city was regularly bombed throughout the war, and it is hard for most of us to imagine just how difficult it would have been for John, Eileen and baby Jean during those times.

We have only to look at early photos to see that Jean was a beautiful child. Her smile and her sunny personality lit up the room – it was something that characterised her life.

During her first six years, Jean was the livewire who kept Dad and Mum on their toes. She tore around the house and the yard on her three-wheeled bike, she ran as fast as a hare and was a mean hand behind the wheel of a dodgem car.

Then came the winter of 1948. One of the worst with persistent ice and snow, transport chaos, power outages, air pollution and food rationing. It was during this time that Jean first started to have breathing difficulties and developed a chronic cough. It turned into a chest infection and hospitalisation, where she was diagnosed with a lung condition known as bronchiectasis. She had surgery which included removal of parts of both lungs.

It was while she was in hospital that she contracted polio, an infectious disease which was rising to epidemic proportions in children. There was no cure and until the vaccine came along a few years later there was no way of providing immunity.

The polio caused paralysis which affected her lower limbs and chest muscles. For many months, she was only able to breathe by being placed in a huge metal box attached to bellows known as an iron lung.

The prognosis was not good, but she was strong-willed and in due course she started to recover. She regained strength in her breathing but the paralysis in her left leg remained with her for the rest of her life and she wore an iron caliper for many years.

Jean was indomitable. She started school in Beeston and despite the caliper and the shortness of breath, I have clear memories of walking from school every day (7-year old Mike and 11-year old Jean) from Beeston High Street, past the rubble of bombed out buildings, through the local park and to our home in Queens Road.

I remember it in summer rain. I remember it as we scuffed through brown Autumn leaves, and I remember slipping on icy pavements in dark winters. Jean was always there, and I would follow her all the way home.

But the English winters were not kind to her and the advice from her doctors was to consider moving to a warmer climate.

Australia was the destination of choice. Jean said to me, “we’re going to Queensland.”  It meant nothing to me, but it must be OK, if it was the Queen’s land. Maybe the Queen lived there.

In 1955, Eileen and John and the kids, 13-year-old Jean, 9-year-old Mike and 5-year old Phillip boarded SS Strathaird, Ten Pound Poms, bound for Australia.

After arriving in Brisbane, and with a job already lined up, Dad flew north where he was to start work as a garage mechanic in the small Far North Queensland town of Mossman. His first task was to find a home for us to live in. The rest of followed by train a few weeks later.

The trip was an introduction to Australia for my mother that she would never forget. Fresh off the boat, having left a comfortable life in England, she was on a train with three kids in tow travelling 1,000 miles to God knows where.

The air-conditioned Sunlander was still a few years in the future, as we headed north on a clattering old train into the North Queensland wet season. Stopping at sidings and stations for hours at a time, it was a slow, uncomfortable trip with Mum doing her best to look after and feed three kids. There were no sleeper cars, just sitting up all the way, with the kids trying to get some sleep on the floor when they could.

At the Burdekin, the old bridge was under several feet of water. Everyone lined up in the rain and waited their turn to be crammed into a tiny boat, not much bigger than a “tinnie” to be ferried across to the other shore. Once there we were put in an even older train for the remaining 300 miles of the journey north.

Our home was a tiny single-storey fibro dwelling a very long way from Beeston. We lived in Mossman for about a year and then moved back down the Cook Highway to the big smoke – where Dad got a job as workshop foreman at the Cairns City Council.

In Cairns we lived in the old pound keeper’s house, a three bedroom timber high-set home at the back of the City Council Depot.

Like all kids growing up we all had our share of ups and downs. There is one story I’d like to share which captures the type of sister she was. It was a Sunday afternoon in 1956, a few weeks after our visit from Cyclone Agnes. Mum and Dad were out, probably at Yorkey’s Knob Pub if truth be told leaving 15-year old Jean in charge of Phillip and me.

We were all fighting over something, which trivial as it is now, was no doubt important then – perhaps something as critical as how loud the music was or why I wouldn’t get out of her room and leave her in peace. In a moment of wickedness, I took the key from inside her bedroom door and turning the key from the outside, locked her in her room – now, see how you like that!

I was determined to teach her a lesson and leave her there for as long as I could. She pounded on the door a few times, but eventually things went quiet – so I left her to it.

Then I heard a scream. I unlocked the door. There she was, hanging by her fingertips from one of the windows. As I said earlier, the house was on high blocks, and she was hanging at least two metres above the concrete slab at the bottom of our back stairs.

She’d had the idea that to escape from her room she simply had to tie a few bedsheets to the foot of the bed and climb out of the window. It absolutely worked in the story books, but what was needed was a knot that wouldn’t untie itself as soon as you put any weight on it.

I couldn’t help her from inside, so I ran out the back and down the stairs. There was Jean dangling above me, legs kicking wildly, just out of reach.

Did we even have a ladder?

While I was thinking about it, her grip on the sill gave way, and she fell with a crash to the ground – I was not even there to break her fall.

She lay still for a while, with the breath knocked out of her and then started groaning that her back hurt. After a while she got to her feet and took a few painful steps.

All thoughts of our argument had vanished as I helped her back into the house. Mum and Dad were due home at any minute – I was a dead man!

Did Jean say anything to them about this? No she did not.

The next day, the family piled into the Vanguard and left for the long drive to Mackay for a holiday with friends. It was a long and uncomfortable two day drive over roads that bear no resemblance to the highways of today. Jean complained that she had a sore back, I can’t imagine what the bruises must have been like, but aside from a few meaningful looks at me, she never mentioned the bedroom escape incident – ever. 

I told this story to my father, about thirty years later and he still got mad at me. I don’t want to even think about how he would have dealt with it at the time.

Jean was 16-years old when she started her first job at a firm of engineering consultants as a junior typist. She was there for a long time working for the office manager, and many years later when I was coincidentally working for the same firm in their Newcastle office, the son of that Cairns manager remembered Jean and said her dad often spoke of her loyalty, her personality, and her integrity as an example to others.

Dad was a big cricket fan and any time a social match was arranged between the Council and other organisations, Dad was there to take part and sometimes so was I.

One such match took place in 1959 when the Council was hosting a visiting British warship the HMS Crane. It was a friendly picnic match held at the local cricket ground right next to the Council Yards and five minutes’ walk from our house. The whole family was there, Mum, Dad, Jean, Phillip and me.

One of the visiting players was a 20-year old able seaman from Bolton named Gordon. He took a shine to Jean and after the match, when a few of them came back for a few drinks to the Williamson house, Gordon was there.

Over the next few months, Gordon and Jean regularly exchanged letters until one day Gordon’s letter included a proposal of marriage – and Jean accepted.

The rest is history. Gordon left the Royal Navy, emigrated to Australia, got a job, found a house to rent and in October 1961 they were wed.

A few years earlier, Dad had bought a double block of land, in a new area at the top of Balaclava Road where there was nothing but cane farms and dirt roads. This was Earlville. Dad gave one of the blocks to Jean and Gordon and work soon commenced on the single story brick house which would become 2 Carmen Street – the Skipp family home for the next 40 or 50 years.

This then was our sister. For as long as I can remember, she was always the first person I would share my news with. If I did something I was proud of, it wasn’t my parents who I wanted to impress – it was Jean. Whenever I visited Cairns, it was always at 2 Carmen Street, where I stashed my sleeping bag and when I asked Pauline to marry me, and she said yes – it was Jean who I called first.

Until last week when she stepped off that travelator we call life, there was never a time when her face would not light up when one of us walked into the room.

She was a loving sister to Phillip and me; she adored her children; her grandchildren and great grandchildren and she was a wonderful friend to all of us.

God bless you, Jeannie – I’m sure you are with Gordon once again.

A visit from Agnes

 The city council’s main depot in Cairns covered about eight acres of real estate with frontage on Martyn Street about a quarter of a mile from the main cemetery. The depot was where all the council’s garbage trucks, sanitary vans, flatbed trucks, graders, dozers, steamrollers and all their other pieces of plant and equipment, otherwise known as assets, came home to roost every evening. It was also home to the council’s main stores and maintenance sheds including a carpenter shop, a paint shop, and a large World War 2 converted Nissen hut. This was the council’s main service department and workshop housing a team of mechanics, boilermakers and auto-electricians all working under the supervision of a Workshop Superintendent, my Dad.

I’ll come back to the Nissen hut later in the story.

We had been in Mossman for a year when we moved to the “big city” just in time for Christmas 1955. The job included an unfurnished house right next to the council depot, but we would first have to stay in a small flat for a couple of weeks while the house was made ready for us.

Mossman had been a brief but exciting time for me, although I’m not sure that I could say the same for the rest of our family. A deciding factor in this change of environment from my father’s outlook was in keeping the family together – which I’m not sure would have happened if we’d stayed much longer in Mossman.

For me however, it was a great time and place to be an 11 year. My younger brother and I learned to swim in the local river, went handline fishing with my father from the boat ramp at Rocky Point (boring) and crabbing with him at Salt Water Creek (exciting). I learned to ride a bike, climb trees for green Bowen mangoes and cascara beans which were sticky and tasty, but also a strong laxative as I soon learned. I also learned that no one is ever safe from green ants particularly in mango trees where they are beautifully camouflaged until the moment you put your hand down on their nest and are instantly covered in small angry creatures whose bite is sharp and painful.

Now, we were in Cairns – a city with a population of 22,000 which was some 20,000 folk more than where we had just left and about one tenth of where we had been two years prior at the outset of the Ten Pound Poms adventure.

In addition to vehicle and property storage, the council depot was used as a stockpile for sand and gravel mainly used as road base. Alongside this area there was a large, corralled area which was the City Horse Pound. Wild brumbies and untended horses were regularly found roaming the streets and it was the role of the pound keeper to capture and impound them. If not claimed within a certain amount of time and released on payment of a fine, the horses were put up for auction and sold (hopefully). Next to the pound yard and within the council property stood a three bedroom timber single story home raised on concrete pillars, in the classic Queensland style. This was the pound keeper’s residence. The “poundy” was a single man, with no family and was in the process of being relocated to a smaller property nearby. I never learned where this was, and whether the poundy was happy with this arrangement or not. The outcome was that this house became our family home for the next ten years – 42 Charles Street.

There was no other houses near to us – there was no 40 or 44 Charles Street. Access was via a narrow dirt track which ran from Martyn Street and followed the line of the depot fence. The track was flanked on the other side by what was generously referred to as “pensioner’s cottages”, but which were, in reality small, corrugated iron shanties housing a number of aging veterans from the First World War. The shanties were a hidden part of a larger area set aside for pensioners which fronted on to Grove Street on the other side of the reserve. There had been much lobbying to replace these huts with the local Pensioners’ League describing them as “conditions unworthy of a city the size of Cairns”. The huts were gradually replaced over the next few years by small timber bungalows many of which exist today and are heritage-listed but it was a very slow process and ten years after we first arrived at the Charles Street address, the shanty huts were still there, although the number of old Diggers was thinning out.  

 At Mossman, I had attended the local primary school, run by two teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Messer. The classes were combined, and as a fifth grade pupil, I shared a classroom with a handful of other kids including third and fourth graders. It was a five minute walk, barefoot to school every day and I have nothing but fond memories.

Our new school, at Parramatta was about a kilometre from home and my brother and I biked there every day, rain or shine. I was in Grade 6.

With over one thousand pupils, Parramatta was the largest primary school outside of Brisbane, with each year split into three or four classes. I was probably the smallest pupil of my year, with most of the boys and quite a few of the girls towering over me. We can’t do anything about our genetic heritage; my dad was no giant either, so I did what many smaller kids do – I made friends with the biggest guys in the class. Ron lived just around the corner from me, and we became good mates. Ron’s dad, Percy worked as a technician at the PMG (Post Master General’s department). The PMG was responsible for the phone service as well as delivering the post (it would be another 20 years before this department was split into Australia Post and Telecom).

Percy drove a big elegant two-tone blue and cream V8 Ford Customline. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen particularly in comparison to our ugly black Standard Vanguard. I don’t think there was ever a day when Percy wasn’t out in the front of their house with a garden hose, or a wax cloth removing every speck of North Queensland grime from his pride and joy.

Ron had an elder brother and sister, and when we weren’t sitting in front of a radio listening to kid’s shows on 4CA or the ABC, we were rummaging through their collection of records which as well as great songs from Fats, Buddy and Don and Phil included Ahmad Jamal, Miles Davis and John Coltrane – an introduction to something from which I would never recover. I’m not saying that music wasn’t big in the Williamson household – if I ever wanted to hear Winnie Atwell, or anything from the Big Band era, it was right there in my lounge room, coming at us through Dad’s HMV gramophone.

We started going to the local Sunday School at the top of the lane at the Draper Street Methodist Church. Mr Bourner was the Sunday School teacher and for a year or two there was nothing I liked better than standing with the congregation on a Sunday morning and belting out Onward Christian Soldiers and Stand Up For Jesus. I loved singing, but alas when it came to handing out talent from this section of the gene pool, I was absent. At Parramatta School, the music teacher was Mr Burgemeister. I volunteered for choir, but during rehearsals he took me to one side and said, “I’m happy for you to be in the choir, but please don’t sing, just move your lips.” To this day, I think he could have tried a little harder.

I enjoyed Parramatta School. I was a good student who enjoyed learning. Our teacher in both Grade 6 and Grade 7 was Mrs Pearson. She was a tough old bird, who scared the life out of me when she first walked into the classroom, but I soon realised how much this lady epitomised the vocation of teaching. She certainly set me straight on the process of learning and as much as anything, I owe my enduring interest in English grammar and literature to those two years at Parramatta.

The wet season in Cairns runs from December to March or April. Repeating an old saying, my dad would often say, “when you can see the mountains, you know it’s going to rain; when you can’t see them, you’ll know it is raining”.

Cairns folk know a lot about precipitation, particularly in the peak rainfall period of January and February. We had been subjected to our share of it the previous year when we travelled by train, boat and truck from Brisbane through the northern Queensland floods to our new home in Mossman.

1956 was clearly not going to be any different and we became used to riding our bikes to and from school in heavy rain. It was at least warm rain, cycle capes were in wide use and, since we were in bare feet, there was no need to feel concerned about wet shoes and socks.

The big one was coming and in early March of that year we were to receive a visit from the first major storm in Australia to have its own name, Cyclone Agnes.

According to the State Library of Queensland archives, there have been at least 53 cyclones which have had an impact on the city since Cairns was founded in 1876. The city comes under the influence of tropical cyclones on average, at least once every two years. Indeed, one of the first in 1878, almost destroyed the settlement before it had a chance to establish.

Agnes was the first Australian cyclone to be tracked on radar, so for a few days we had been listening to warnings that she was on her way. At first we were told she was heading for Townsville, which to those not familiar with Australian geography is the nearest large city, about 350 km to the south. Indeed that is exactly what she did, but rather than continue her way inland and weaken to a low pressure system, she chose to follow the coastline north causing destruction as she slowly made her way toward us.

It was already quite windy when I left for school that morning. My brother was in the infants class and my mother had decided to keep him home for the day. With the wind in my face, it eventually became too hard, and I dismounted and walked the rest of the way pushing into the wind. As the morning proceeded it was clear that we were in for a blow. The school was closed, and we were sent home at lunchtime. Ron and I rode home together and this time with the wind at our back, no effort was required, but as the wind began to gust more strongly, thoughts of tree branches and other debris made it a nerve-wracking trip for a couple of 11-year-olds.

The whole family was in the house when I arrived that afternoon. The council depot had closed, and the workforce had been sent home. My parents had been busy. All our mattresses had been moved into the living room. Mum and Dad’s double was on the floor for the kids to sleep on. The remainder, together with extra blankets, pillows and cushions were placed against our louvred windows. The kitchen table was on its side and placed between us and the windows alongside the piano, couch and lounge chairs. A couple of kerosene hurricane lamps were at the ready in case we lost power, and Mum had made sandwiches and coconut pyramids in preparation for a lengthy shutdown. Although we were still five years away from owning a transistor radio, Dad was the proud possessor of a Phillips “Tinnie” portable valve radio which had a battery about the size of a small house brick. For listening to our local radio stations 4CA and the ABC’s 4QY it was perfect.

Our house was what was known as a high set, built on two metre high concrete pillars which provided a concrete hard stand underneath the house with laundry tubs, storage space, and a place to park the car. For my parents and my sister, with thoughts of being blown to Oz like Dorothy, or losing our roof, it was a fearful experience. For my brother Phil and for me, it was an adventure – or at least, it began that way.

The wind continued to increase in strength and the constant rattling of the louvre windows made us certain that before long we would be showered in glass and the wind would roar into the house. There had been a lot of early discussion about whether to open the windows and let that happen or leave the windows open on just the side away from the wind, but in the end, my mother insisted that they be closed.

At some point in the evening we lost power.

The wind howled all night – even if we had wanted to look outside, there was nothing to see. There was complete darkness everywhere.

The cyclone passed to the south of Cairns, crossing the land about 100 km south of us. This meant we didn’t see the eye of the cyclone, which would have given us a period of calm between changing wind direction. Instead, we experienced a slow change as the wind direction went from a howling south-westerly gale to an equally fearsome north-westerly which started the louvres on the other side of the house to rattling.

Shortly after the wind had changed direction, there was a huge crash against the side of the house. We had no idea what it was but were afraid to venture anywhere near a window to look. Dad thought it might have been a tree branch, or maybe a whole tree. The banging kept up for several hours while whatever it was persistently beat against the wall.    

No one slept – or maybe we did.

Wednesday morning as daylight started to filter through the curtains and blankets, saw a reduced wind. Still blowing hard, and with sudden and terrifying gusts, but the fear of the house flying off into the wild yonder had eased somewhat.

Against Mum’s wishes, Dad went off to inspect the property.

We soon found out what had caused the huge bang during the night. A high wooden platform, which was the base for a large, corrugated iron water tank used for truck wash down had collapsed during the storm. With the change in wind direction, the tank had rolled off the platform across the depot yard, taken out a small wire fence separating our house from the depot, and slammed into the side of our house and most unfortunately at the same time, into the family car. Not content with doing that once, it rolled back and forth all night, and had finally come to rest, as the wind died down against one of the concrete pillars and the car.

There was more to come. The sight that greeted Dad when he started looking around the depot was one of devastation. Remember the Nissen hut I mentioned earlier? The one which had been built during the Second World War, and which was the pride and joy of the Cairns City Council as it workshop and store. The one which, like all Nissen huts, had been manufactured from prefabricated corrugated iron, designed for quick assembly, strength and durability, particularly in strong winds. Yes, that one.  It was no more.

At some time during the evening, it had simply collapsed, and all that was left was scattered corrugated iron, timber and twisted steel beams – and underneath that, what was left of the machinery that you would expect to find in a motor garage and storage workshop. It was devastating.

There was a lot of clean-up work to be done. There had been little rain with the cyclone, but there was no doubt that plenty would be following.

The next day the school remained closed, but it didn’t stop Ron and I and a few more school friends from riding around looking at the mess.

As well as many trees uprooted – particularly palm trees, there were houses with roofs missing or dislodged, fences down, and sheets of corrugated iron, from roofs and sidings everywhere. Down on the Esplanade, there was even more chaos. The harbour dredge had been blown from its mooring and dragged the wooden wharf up the inlet with it. Boats which had been moored in the inlet had been blown ashore, one as far as the middle of the road.

The estimated damage in Cairns alone was £2.5 million which in 2025 is the equivalent of around $100 million.

Agnes certainly left her mark and reminded us all, if we needed any reminder, that this land surely is one who shares “her beauty and her terror”.