As the son of a motor mechanic father and mother who, through convention, had given up a successful career in nursing to support her husband and nurture her family, we would properly be categorized as typical working class. Although cash resources were limited, we lived comfortably in a lovely old Queenslander style home. It was rented from one of the original inhabitants of the district and was situated on a corner allotment, one of whose streets was named after our home’s owner.
Like most of the people who lived in Brisbane at the time we did not own a motor vehicle. As a result, travel was very restricted. You can imagine my excitement therefore when dad announced one day that we would be going on a holiday to his home town of Longreach. He said it was over 800 miles away which didn’t mean much to five year old me. However, I would find out, not all that long later, it was a long, long way,
I looked forward to finally meeting my grandmother and a couple of aunts, dad’s sisters and their families, whom I had never met. They were the only ones still alive or living in Longreach out of a family of ten children.
As a five year old I was so excited at the news we would be going by train. It struck me later that, with no car, it was the only form of transport available to us. Longreach, being the birth place of Qantas, had an air service to and from Brisbane but the cost was well outside dad’s capacity to pay.
Let’s Go Exploring
Come the day, our family, then of four - mum, dad, two year old sister Pauline and I made our way to Roma Street railway station in the city. It was a bustling hub, the terminus for all country trains arriving from and departing to points north and west of Brisbane. At that time, the Brisbane River separated them from those trains going south. To catch one southbound you had to take a tram across the river to South Brisbane station.
I knew South Brisbane fairly well and going there was always exciting. When we did, we would be going to Southport on the Gold Coast where my other grandparents, mum’s father and mother, lived.
Exciting as it was, South Brisbane had nothing on Roma Street. The Southport trains had little more than suburban type carriages. To feed the passengers along the way, the train would stop for an hour or so at Yatala, about half way to the Coast. Almost everybody would disembark there, leave the station, cross over the road, buy a pie or two at the Yatala Pie Shop and return to the train to enjoy the feast. Though the line still passes the shop, the station no longer exists so the trains just race on by. However, it is still a very popular stopping off place for motorists travelling between Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
By way of contrast, the Roma Street beauties were much bigger and, for the times, more luxurious. Although there were second class carriages with seating only, the sleeping cars (as they were called) were first class. In them, small groups could travel together and, come dark, sleep in bunks that would fold out of the walls. This was just perfect for us.
Unlike modern trains, the sleeping cars had no ensuites but there were one person toilets at either end of the carriage, one for males and the other for females.
Eating arrangements were quite sophisticated. The dining car was always beautifully appointed and all the tables had cloth coverings. I don’t remember what the food was like but none of us got sick so it must have been OK.
Much and all as I loved exploring what was to be my home for the next five days, what really excited me was the huffing and puffing and hissing steam powered monster up front. Its job was to pull us to destination. Longreach. What a beauty.
Longreach – Here We Come
All too slowly for me, the departure time for our big adventure was approaching. How exciting it was watching the porters rushing around loading the last of the luggage into the baggage cars and seeing the crowd of people lined up along the platform. Some were weeping, others laughing as they called through the carriage windows to family and or friends about to leave on the Midlander, as our train was then called. Finally, with a long shrill whistle from our guard and a long deep responding call from the engine, we slowly chugged away from the station.
It was exciting as we careered through the northern suburbs, particularly Toombul where the railway station was only a couple of hundred yards from our home. At that time, Toombul was close to the edge of Brisbane so it was not all that long before we were in the country headed for our first major port of call, Rockhampton.
Rocky was about two days away, much longer in time than the overnight it now takes the Spirit of the Outback, as the old Midlander is now called, to travel the 400 plus miles (600+ klms). Everything was new to me so it was fun. However, I was running out of places to explore and things to do on the train so life was becoming not quite so rosy. However, as we were arriving in the city, there was a moment of great excitement. The train line runs down the middle of one of the main streets and I was able to watch the cars driving right next to us.
Go West Young Man
After a couple of hours stopover in Rockhampton the train left the northern line and headed west, bound first for Emerald atop the Great Dividing Range.
It was this leg of the journey where all the gloss and glamour of the trip wore off. Not only was getting up the range a tremendous struggle for the monster up front but there was lots of track work being undertaken which slowed us to a slow amble pace. By that stage, my latest entertainment, looking down the barrel of the toilet and counting the railway sleepers below, became all too easy.
The train’s toilets were functional but basic. They consisted of a seat atop a straight tube open at the bottom. Very efficient they were but I can imagine they would have left a lot of unwanted presents for the large number of railway track workers employed at that time. These men worked in groups, often in remote areas, where there was little outside contact.
As we struggled up the mountain we came upon a number of such groups that, to a young fellow like me, were very scary. As we meandered by, these scruffy individuals would scream at the train in what I took to be a threatening manner. It was much later that I found out that they were actually begging for newspapers that would bring them news about what was happening in the outside world. Theirs would have been a hard life.
After reaching Emerald, the rest of the journey was fairly uneventful, I must say though that by the time we pulled into Longreach nearly two days later, I had told mum and dad that I was train sick and sick of trains.
Longreach and the Family
Longreach was like no other place I had been to before. It was a small to medium sized town, remote and dusty. It’s big saving grace, as far as I was concerned anyway, was a large herd of goats that called the town home. My biggest excitement was the pet goat, a large billy, owned by one of dad’s sister’s family. We were staying with my grandmother and the sister lived immediately across the road so I was able to make contact with it regularly throughout the stay.
The goat’s name was Billy, a rather appropriate name for a billy goat. He had a great temperament and would let me ride on his back or in the miniature sulky that he would pull up the street, around the corner, then down the laneway that ran at the back of Aunty Aggie’s place. I was fairly lightweight at that time so he never seemed to mind. Maybe he was even happy at all the attention he got.
Grannie’s house was a modest weatherboard home, typical of many in the town. She lived alone as her husband William, my grandfather, had died nine years before I was born. Unfortunately I was fairly shy with her, and indeed, many of his family, though I did get to know and be fairly close with a few of his nephews and a niece, my cousins, after their families moved to Brisbane.
I must admit my memory of events of our stay is fleeting. I do remember waking one night just after we had arrived to find no one in the house. I was quite scared but eventually found mum, dad and grannie across the road at Aunt Aggie’s place where there was a welcome home party going on. My other memory was of a large grapevine in the side yard of grannie’s place that was laden with fruit. Mine for the taking.
That’s it. My memories of my first big trip. Little did I imagine as we boarded the train for our long journey home that twenty years later I would be posted back there as an employee of the Commonwealth Bank or that another forty plus years after that Rob and I would return to find a modern town thriving on tourism as well as the traditional sheep and cattle industries. Gone were the goats that I had so long associated with the place only to be replaced by a small family of emus. I don’t know if it meant anything, probably nothing, but I felt a strange sense of eeriness, even peace, when one evening in the fading light of day we stood by the graves of my dad’s, and therefore my, family when we were approached by the emu family, totally relaxed at our presence.
It was probably on the same trip when we were in Western Australia we came upon a couple from Longreach. When I told the wife that my dad had grown up there, she wanted to know all the details. When I told her my grandmother was Catherine Richardson and she had lived in Crane Street, she excitedly said “Grannie Richardson. She was well known and loved in the town.”
A few years later while investigating my family history, I discovered that my grandfather, a renowned stockman in North West Queensland before marrying and settling down as a butcher in Longreach, was a highly respected person within the community being, for some years, a member of the Longreach Hospital Board.
All in all, I am very proud of my family’s association with the town.
As for the first big trip, I have no recollection of the journey home. I can only assume I blocked it from my memory if it was anything as boring as the last part of the trip there. Things have changed drastically since then though. We, Rob and I, have travelled across the country in the Indian Pacific train and enjoyed it immensely. Then, after nine years as grey nomads travelling up and down and around and around the country, we are firmly of the opinion that, more often than not, it is all about the journey, not the destination.
Below are
1. William Richardson {“Grandfather”)
2. Catherine Jane Richardson (“Grannie Richardson”)
3. Dad, Billy and me
4. Pauline and me
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