Up, up and away

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2020)

Week 16 | Air

John and Margaret McKinlay with their four
Frederick, Helena, Jeanette and Stewart

The theme for this week is air.  Amy[1] always encourages creative interpretation of the weekly themes and in her email this week observed “most of us don't have pilots in our family tree”.  I have two pilots (plus another ancestor who had a non-flying role in the RAAF) so plenty of air-y ancestors. However, the stories of these three men are a little sombre and the current times call for something lighter (slight pun) so I’m going to share this flighty memory from my great-great-grand aunt Helena ‘Lena’ Wix (nee McKinlay).

Lena was born in 1883, the third of four children of John and Margaret (nee Stewart) McKinlay.  She spent much of her childhood in the seaside town of Emu Park (on the Keppel Coast, Queensland, Australia).  In 1965, Lena documented some of her memories, including this description of the time her brother made a kite.

“Another incident that happened was when my brother made a huge kite of calico. We had run out of string and it was quite high in the sky. He asked me to hold it while he ran home for more twine. But soon after he left a breeze sprang up and started the kite to go higher and further along the hill. I hung on and it lifted my feet three or four feet off the ground and down again. I began to scream. My brother came running and calling “don’t let go”.  He then made it fast and it stayed up in the air for several weeks and the folk would watch it each day. But the wind dropped and it fell over amongst the trees near Mt. Gillfillan.”

Lena doesn’t name which brother, but it was most likely her older brother, Fred McKinlay (my gr-gr-grandfather) who was four years her senior.  I’m sure many children have wished the kite they were flying would lift them off the ground, but judging by Lena’s experience, perhaps this is a case of being careful what you wish for.  Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly how old they were at the time and Lena doesn’t describe what kind of kite it was or just how big it was and there are no photos in our family collections.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words – in this case we there are 130 words that create a lovely picture in my mind of these ancestral siblings playing together on the hill above Emu Park beach, enjoying happy (and airy) childhood pursuits.

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[1] Amy Johnson Crow, the instigator of this challenge

Farm, fire, frogs

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2020)

Week 15 | Fire

Stewart, Lilian, Jack, Bob and Jean McKinlay

Over the past summer, nearly every part of Australia was impacted by extreme bushfires, which indiscriminately took lives and destroyed homes, livelihoods, and tens of thousands of acres of farmland and native forests.   Fire has been an ever-present threat in Australia, and throughout the period of European settlement lives have been altered and fortunes changed as a result of fire, including those of my great-grand-uncle Stewart McKinlay (1887-1959).

Stewart,  grew up in Rockhampton and Emu Park in Central Queensland and commenced his working life first as a teacher and then in a series of Queensland public service positions in Brisbane and Mt Morgan.  His role as the Clerk of Petty Sessions in Mt Morgan was multi-faceted and extremely busy and placed him under a lot of pressure.  He was advised to give it up and purchase a farm to reduce stress.

So, in 1921 he purchased a farm in Tanawha, near Buderim, on the Sunshine Coast and moved with wife Lillian (nee Bowser), and children Bob, Jack and Jean. His daughter Jean was three years old at the time but in her late eighties had very clear memories of the property.  She told of five acres of pineapples, bananas and strawberries and one cow.  She described a creek running through the bottom of the property that had a wooden bridge across it and opened out into Palm Grove, an area of lots of palm trees where the creek spread out across a sandy base, only about 6 inches deep and crystal clear.  She recalled the stump of a large gum tree that she would sit on while her father milked the cow.  There was a packing shed where the bananas were boxed for market.  And a house high on stumps nearer to the road, with one or two bedrooms, a kitchen where Jean and her older brothers Bob and Jack bathed in a galvanised tub, and a veranda along the front.  Much of the property consisted of thick forest – “absolutely thick forest, jam packed together” (Jean McKinlay 2009).

Unfortunately, the family’s life in this idyllic locale and Stewart’s time as a farmer was to be short-lived.  In March 1923, the family set off for Brisbane (60 miles to the south) in the horse and sulky, possibly for the birthday of grandma or an aunt.  Upon their return, they were greeted with devastation.  A bushfire had been through destroying everything except the packing shed.  Despite the property having been insured, the family walked away from the farm.  They lived in a corrugated iron shed belonging to friends in Nudgee until Stewart found a job and was able to build a new home for the family on Scott Street in Northgate, which they moved into in 1924.

Stewart, as a husband and father, would likely have borne the weight of responsibility for overcoming this blow and creating another new life for his family, but perhaps also feeling thankful that the family had been away at the time of the fire and only possessions, not lives, were lost.  For Jean, who was only a toddler at the time, she remembered the fire as the reason she lived in a tin shed with a dirt floor and frogs that created music in the kitchen jumping between the saucepans that hung from nails on the wall and the explanation for why there are no baby photos of her.

[Story based on memories of Jean Mitchell (nee McKinlay) and newspaper reports.]

Divine In(ter)vention

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2020)

Week 14 | Water

Pop Davey working the cultivation

My grandfather Ernest Frank Davey (Pop Davey) bought 50 acres of land at Eight Mile Plains on the then outskirts of Brisbane (Queensland) in 1932 for £5 an acre.  He began by establishing a poultry farming operation for egg production, followed by a small crops’ cultivation.  An essential ingredient for any farming venture, big or small, is water.

Fortunately for Pop Davey, one boundary of the property was delimited by Bulimba Creek which provided a supply of water for the farming activities.   Pop had a Ronaldson Tippett engine that pumped water up a quarter mile long pipe from the creek to the cultivation, connected to a series of spray lines.  This set-up might have been considered ‘state of the art’ for the time.

There was a bore on the property down near Miles Platting Road in the early days.  Initially, Granny Davey had to walk down the long driveway from the ‘old house’ and fill a four gallon kerosene tin from the well using a hand pump and carry it back to the house.

Pop Davey

Later the new house and chook (chicken) sheds were serviced by rainwater tanks – three near the house (2 x 1000 gallon, 1 x 500 gallon), plus several near the chook sheds.  These could be topped up with creek water if they ran low by means of a long hose running from the end of one of the spray lines to the tanks.   One of the house tanks was used only for laundry, the other fed the bathroom.  The two 1000 gallon tanks were connected underneath by a pipe so they always stayed the same level but a tap between them allowed for water to be kept separate (i.e. if the laundry tank was topped off with creek water it wouldn’t mingle with the rainwater still in the house tank). There was also a small dam on the property that was possibly fed by a spring.

To supplement these water supplies, Pop Davey also discovered he had a talent for water divining (or perhaps he learnt the skill from an expert) and he claimed he could find water underground.  His daughter Irene used to watch him doing this as a child and sometimes assisted him.

Chook sheds, Eight Mile Plains

He would select a forked stick and holding one fork in each hand walk around the paddocks until the stick vibrated, giving a signal that water might be found below that spot.  When Irene helped him, she would hold one fork and Pop Davey the other and they would hold hands in between to complete the connection and the technique would still work.  They would feel the stick twitching when there was underground water in the vicinity.  Having identified a likely spot in the paddock (although never the paddock under cultivation), Pop proceeded to dig a well, assisted by Irene, and about 12 feet down they found water.  On this occasion the location was alongside the dam.   

Pop Davey needed water – for his family’s daily needs, for his chooks, and for his crops.  Through intelligent purchasing, inventive and ingenious irrigation practices, and an iota of divining intervention, he was able to tap into multiple water sources to keep his farm supplied with rainwater, creek water, dam water, well water and underground water and limit the chances of his farm running dry.  The farm, in turn, provided a home and income for Pop and Granny Davey and their six children for over 50 years.

Aerial view of property in 1936.  Blue line very roughly describes property boundary [Image courtesy of QImagery]

Aerial view of property in 1966 clearly showing house, chook sheds and cultivation areas. [Image courtesy of QImagery]

[This story based on the memories of Irene Davey]