Siblings

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2020)

Week 2 | Favourite Photo

Is it possible to have just one favourite photo? I’m fortunate to have a large collection of photos of my ancestral families and many are favourites for different reasons.  So I thought I’d treat this week’s challenge like a question in a Myers Briggs test and go with the first photo that popped into my mind when I read the topic. 

This photo features my granny, Mavis McKinlay, age 12 years, with her younger sister Rae and brother Jock, posed in their father’s Model T Ford.  The three siblings, the children of school teachers Frederick and Francia (nee Dow) McKinlay, were frequently photographed as a trio and generally appeared to be the best of friends, enjoying being photographed together.  When I revisited this photo to write this post, I was surprised to find that they don’t quite look their usual chipper selves.  Mavis is staring down the camera in a very direct way, almost glaring (which, in fact, is quite characteristic of her) and Jock looks a bit sceptical altogether. 

The photo was taken in January 1922 in Hamilton Creek (an outlying community of Mt Morgan in central Queensland) and, given this timing and the badge on Mavis’ hat ribbon, may have been taken on the first day of school for the year.   By this time, Mavis had commenced her secondary school education at Mt Morgan High School, while Rae and Jock would have still been attending Hamilton Creek State School, where their father Fred was head teacher.

This photo is made more of a favourite due to some snippets of priceless information I received a few years ago that adds a dimension to the story that the photo tells.  Mt Morgan High School celebrated its centenary in 2012 and I obtained a copy of the book published for the anniversary.  In it was an article about a former student, who I calculated would have attended the school at the same time as Mavis, who, somewhat surprisingly,  was still alive.  This seemed pretty remarkable and I was immediately keen to see if I could meet him and if he would remember my Granny.  Remember, family history is all about the long shot.  I contacted the school centenary committee who put me in touch with his daughter (who had submitted the article) and discovered that this gentleman was residing in an aged care facility only an hour’s drive from my home. I arranged to visit despite the daughter indicating that she didn’t think he’d remember much.  And I’m so glad that I did.  Not only was it an absolute treat to meet 103 year-old Lyle, but once I was there in person and mentioned the McKinlay name, he immediately said ‘Oh yes! McKinlay! He was the school teacher chap. Drove his daughters to school every day in his Model T Ford’.  He couldn’t add much more detail than this but I was thrilled.

It’s a seemingly tiny detail but a lovely qualitative piece of information, obtained firsthand, to add to the family story and to the context of this photo.  I feel quite pleased to know that my gr-grandfather drove my granny to school every day and that he was an involved and presumably kind father.  And, given that Lyle remembered this detail  90 years later, suggests that getting driven to school was not a very common occurrence in Mt Morgan at that time.

So what did life hold in store for this trio? Here’s their very brief bios.

Mavis (1909-1984), academically talented and a competitive swimmer, followed family tradition and trained as a teacher.  After a few years doing relief teaching, she married World War I veteran Ernest Frank Davey and raised six children on a small crops farm in Eight Mile Plains, near Brisbane.

Rae (1909-1991) also trained as a teacher and worked briefly prior to her engagement and marriage to Leslie Lyon Bell.  The couple lived in Brisbane and had one daughter. 

Jock (1915-1954) trained as a pilot in the RAAF and received a commission to the RAF in 1937 which found him in England when World War II broke out.  After several years’ active duty with the RAF in Bomber Command and as an instructor in the Empire Air Training Scheme, Jock returned to Australia and continued serving the war effort flying Catalinas for the RAAF.  After the war, he married his childhood sweetheart (and first cousin) Jean McKinlay.  He died tragically in 1954 in an industrial accident, leaving his devastated wife with four children under the age of seven years.