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You weren't actually Ranger in Charge at that time?
No. They didn't deem to call us rangers in those days. The only people that were called rangers in Queensland at that time were forest rangers in Forestry Department. We were just called Overseers. Essentially, Ranger in Charge. Under the Overseer was the Ganger, under a Ganger you usually had workmen. These were the terms that we used.
You lived in Gunn's?
Yes, I lived in Gunn's for the duration of my stay here.
You were married when you were here?
Yes, previously I had been at Carnarvon Gorge National Park for 18 months and Leanne and I were married in 1970. We moved to Carnarvon in about 1971, so we hadn't been married all that long when we came here.
Did you have family here?
No, we never had family. I don't know why, but we just never had kids. Just the two of us here.
What are some of your fondest memories of the place?
It was relatively early in the development of the park and during my stay here, the park was expanded two-fold. So it was lots and lots of challenges, which was good at my time of life. Just learning from people like Hock and Bill Goebel about bush skills and things like that was really great. I really just loved the solitude of the place, except when there were hordes of campers or picnickers and the fact that you could get out into the back blocks and escape all that, anyway. We had lots of friends visit us from Brisbane. We had lots of happy memories in the house having barbecues and parties and whatever. It was a really good time for us.
How much has the house changed from your time here?
The exterior hasn't changed all that much. The colour's changed because in those days it was painted "Mission Brown", but the interior has changed quite a lot. A lot of it has been gutted to accommodate the facilities that are there now for the purpose of being like a theatrette. It hasn't changed all that much.
The yard's changed a little bit, because the fences have all been taken away. You may remember that it was a farmhouse to start with, so it had a fence around it. It had lots of exotic plants which we gradually got rid of and tried to plant as many of the local native species as we could in the front yard. This was to be representative of the vegetation in the general area.
Certainly, there's not a lot of exotics left and certainly not in front of Gunn's.
There were lots of roses, would you believe, in the garden and I got into trouble with a few people when I started pulling them out.
I'm in the same position. I've got a willow tree at the house I'm living in that I would dearly love to get rid of. I think I'd be in big trouble if I did.
Were there any bad things that happened while you were here at Girraween?
I wouldn't say there were any bad things. There were probably a few things I regret with my attitude towards the public in some ways. When you are the person in charge of a national park, particularly a beautiful park like Girraween, you tend to eventually regard people as intruders. You are always looking for problems because you think people are going to do the worst. Sometimes, it was unfounded, but occasionally some things would happen that you wish hadn't. By and large, nothing really bad happened as far as I can remember.
If we look at the infrastructure in the park today compared with what you had while you were here – the information centre was built while you were here?
The information centre was built in 1978. Prior to that, the office was in the house, which was a bit of a problem. Although we put signs up to say the office was at the side, with side steps, people would come knocking on the front door. I then had to erect a sign saying the office was around the side. However, some people couldn't read. We once had one chap actually came through the front door, as it was slightly ajar, came through to the kitchen at the back of house and opened the door and started asking questions about park information. I wasn't very happy about that.
I can imagine. I've had similar happen. You probably dealt with him in a similar way.
Did you frog march your person through the front door and point at the sign and say "Can't you read?"
Not quite - close I think. What staff were working with you here?
When I first came here, I can only recall Hock Goebel as the only other person here. Bill Goebel was sort of living down the road and he would stop by and have a yarn and he was always very helpful in lots of ways, but it wasn't till two or three years later that we managed to get Bill put on the staff here. That was actually a good increase and helped us. As you can imagine, the number of picnickers and campers that we used to have here, it was very difficult with just two of you trying to cope with that many people, particularly having only one person rostered on each weekend. It was very difficult to deal with.
You also collected rubbish and supplied firewood at that time?
Yes, at that time, and we also cleaned all the toilets and emptied all the fireplaces, took the ashes away. It was a heck of a lot of maintenance. We had some good staff here. Of course, Peter Haselgrove came later on, too and for a time there, we had four staff. That was very, very helpful and spread the work a bit better amongst us.
I suppose I'm very fortunate now, I've got five of us here.
Occasionally we had five. We had Ray Rock who was the maintenance person who used to do a lot of carpentry and plumbing and stuff like that. He'd come and help with maintenance every so often, particularly when we were doing feral animal eradication, particularly pigs. Ray was an ex-shooter and he liked that sort of work. He would come out with us and we would do some pig eradication and run the traps. That was mostly in winter time when things were fairly quiet.
Even then, Girraween had reasonable staff. What sort of equipment did you have – radio systems, obviously not computers?
We didn't have radios, there was only the telephone. We had very poor communications between ourselves if we were out in the bush.
There is probably still room for improving it now. We have radio systems, but there is still room for them to improve. Our latest thing now is to wander out the back with a satellite phone.
That sounds like it would be pretty handy. We could have done with that. We only had one vehicle here at the time so it wasn't necessary to have contact between vehicles because we only had one. We had a really clapped out old tractor which was left out in the rain and was almost useless.
Looking back on your time at Girraween, I suppose with the Visitor Centre being built, that would have been quite a big achievement. Would that have been the highlight of your time here?
Well, the Information Centre being built was one of the highlights because it also got the attention away from the house and gave us a little bit more peace and solitude to some extent - except that it's right next-door, anyway.
No, I feel my biggest achievements here were when I first came here and for a few years, up until 1976, we didn't have a booking system. We didn't have any kind of system where, over a long weekend, you could limit the number of people camping here. With that 1976 Easter, we just ended up with nearly a thousand people camping here. It did so much damage to the park and the facilities and the infrastructure that we decided to try and run some sort of booking system. We introduced a ballot system. It was very cumbersome, but at least it did limit the number of people that camped here at one time. That was based on the amount of people the facilities could take. I think it was something like 350 campers at any time.
That's very similar numbers to what we have now.
Yes. The other major achievement, and although it wasn't all my own efforts, but I certainly helped, was the acquisition of much of the land. When I first arrived here, the park was two sections with a very narrow strip in the middle joining it. By the time I left, the park was probably well over twice as large as it was when I arrived. It was through lobbying and also liaising with people in central office that I feel that some of the areas were acquired. Some of it caused a lot of grief to people, particularly those that owned the land, but we had a long-term view for the future management of the park. It was critical that we acquire as much of the land that was still relatively natural to be able to manage it properly and to capture all of the diversity of the area.
So you were instrumental in getting the park close to the size that it is today?
There were some people from central office, particularly in the acquisitions section that pushed it along. One was an ex-Lands person, John Churchward. John originally started to come up here to camp and he loved the place so much. He then became the acquisitions officer in central office and because he loved the place so much, he put his heart and soul into acquiring as much as he possibly could of the surrounding natural areas and, also, any of the in holdings in the centre park which would have made it very difficult for management in the future.
Looking on the lighter side, what interesting stories or anecdotes have you got in your time here at Girraween?
Have you got about two hours?
A very amusing incident with Hock Goebel was that we had been doing some prescribed burning and we were walking with our drip torches from one area to another. The in-between area we didn't want to light for some reason or other, but as we were walking along as a group, we happened to look around and noticed the bush was starting to light up behind us as we went along. I couldn't work out how it was being lit, because I had specifically said we were not going to light this area. Then I looked across at Hock and noticed that the tip of his boot was on fire. It was a steel capped boot and he had obviously dropped some of the drip torch fuel with it still burning on his toe. As he walked along, he was spreading the fire. I turned around and I told him his boot was on fire and, in his casual, nonchalant way, he just sort of shuffled his foot, stomped on it and no more was said. I was a bit upset, but anyway, I got over it.
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