Believe it or not, this building was painted pink when we came here and, at that time, the Forestry Department adopted "Mission Brown" - or "Chestnut" as it was called then - as the colour scheme for all the park furniture. So we had to paint this building "Mission Brown". My office was on the verandah on the eastern side of the building. Bill and I built this. We cut a hole in the solid wall for a door. There might have been louvres there, from memory.
I guess this is the one of the jobs we have to do to show the changing management of the parks. Where we have got 300 to 400 mm between the posts on the horizontals, that's got to come down now to 100mm for fall-through protection.
The Gunn history itself needs to be recorded. I know a little bit about it. In the near future I'll chase up a little bit more. Historically in Queensland, Napier Gunn or Boy Gunn as he was known, was a distant relation of Anaeus (Jeannie) Gunn who wrote the book, "We of the Never Never".
At the front of the building...
The telephone line still comes in at the same place, but in our time it was twin wires that actually came into the corner of the building.
I was in the office and my wife had just opened the door as lighting hit the corner of the building, knocked her flat on her back and the telephone line at that time came just through that window. It blew the phone wires into little pieces, about 25 mm long. Cracked quite a bit of the timber. It has been repaired since.
We still have problems with telephones here, with storms. In fact, when I moved here, not quite 12 months ago, we didn't have a phone for about five weeks at the house, I think. So, I think it is part of the Granite Belt.
It hit that plate there - that's where it hit. It didn't damage it. It just sort of split it and the Forestry Department at that time had a carpenter called Ray Rock who came here and glued it all together and patched it up and, as you say, six weeks later we got the phone back.
So that would have been a while after you first moved there would it? You mentioned you had your wife with you, so it was definitely six months after you came.
She was expecting our second child, so that would have been about 1969/70.
The garden.
Gone of course, and there is nothing wrong with National Parks policy, but gone are the gardens that the Gunn's had here at the front steps. They had all sorts of things. Out the other side of the verandah was one of the best examples of the exotic rose "Peace", which I have ever seen. I guess peace fits into the history of the whole thing. It was the only rose that the Malande family were able to salvage in France in the Second World War. *
I suppose the exterior of the house hasn't changed other than going through a few colour changes?
The windows - I think are the original casements. Here, where the septic system is now, was a little shed and when we came here there was no electricity. We had kerosene lights and, at my expense, I had the house wired and I put in a lighting plant and this is where the lighting plant sat. We had our own generator - 32 volt.
Very interesting times and I think we can recall enough between us all, enough little ditties to make it interesting, and here on this ramp is another one. The big snowfall we had, I think was 1968/69 - I can't recall, I had a wheelbarrow of wood sitting here. We were looking out the window at the snow and the wheelbarrow suddenly just took off. The snow had got under the treads and frozen that bit.
Of course, we have mainline water to the cottage now. It's all part of the mains system. We pump out of Bald Rock Creek to a storage tank and have gravity feed to all the camp grounds and the residences here.
Is that the same system or is it a new one? I put the original system in.
It's part of the original system, but I think it's been changed and various pumps etc.. In fact, Bill Goebel was showing me where the original pump shed used to be. I got Bill to walk me over the waterlines in the park to get an idea. I suppose in the National Parks history, a lot of that is not recorded, not written down.
No, well that's the other thing with this place. Because it was so isolated and so far away from Brisbane. We worked under Brisbane then - we only saw the boss here every three months.
That must have had its benefits (laughing), although I must admit we are probably not much different to Toowoomba. They do come out but …
We were left to our own devices. We had to do all our own cost estimates, material estimates for everything we did, everything we built.
So you managed your own budgets back then?
Yes.
What sort of budget did you have? Can you recall what you had then?
I've got the information. It was fairly open-ended. If we had to build a toilet block, we built a toilet block. It didn't have to be built to a budget. I've got a couple of photos of those early days. I've got a photo of the boss at that time who was in the hierarchy; he was called "The National Parks Ranger". There were three of them in Queensland, one in Brisbane, one in Mackay and one in Cairns.
What was your title?
I was "Overseer".
In today's terminology, it would be "Ranger in Charge".
Probably.
I have a photo that eventually I'll get to, of my boss. His name was Herb Hausknecht. Herb had a thing about toilets. It was his instruction that he had to christen every toilet block that was built and to make sure that he did that, he wouldn't bring up the septic bowls until everything was ready to go. He was the first one to pee in it. He was the first one to christen it. The first block is the far one, it is the oldest one, we started it in 1966. So Herb Hausknecht brought these three or four toilet bowls up and he unloaded them about here and I've got a photo of him and my wife and Bill Goebel sitting on these three toilet seats. It puts a personality to things.
Some of the history that I would like to see recorded is partly the management and all the stories that go with it – as they disappear.
They are the human side of it.
I can remember when I was on Brian Island off Tasmania and one of my rangers came and knocked on the door and said "Do you want to work for a couple of hours?" I said, "Why?" He said, "Come down to the campground with me." I followed him down to the campground and, there on its side, was the tractor. He had gone over the bridge and missed one set of wheels on the bridge. There are lots of stories like that for all parks.
One thing here, John, that has always stuck in my mind. We were so isolated here and we did everything, as I said before, from preparing our own job lists and whatever to using explosives. There were very, very few accidents of any seriousness here at all. Probably one of the most serious was poor Bill Goebel, unloading a trailer, hooked his thumbnail on the number plate of the utility and pulled his thumbnail straight off. In those days, we were more fortunate, we were probably a bit more careful than some of the younger people today.
We have just come into the back of what would have been your house and I guess, what would have been the kitchen.
Yes, we are standing in the kitchen now, as you come in through the back door. Just a brief description, immediately on the right there was a wall which was the wall for the bathroom which you went through out onto the verandah which was the washhouse and toilet. The kitchen on the left hand side, in the old stone fireplace there was an old Crown stove with the traditional country wood box beside it, the wood came through a trap door to the exterior. We had a terrazzo sink that we probably broke a lot of our good crockery on.
So even the sink that is in here now was been replaced?
Oh, that's a modern sink that one. Yes, that horrible terrazzo thing it was about an inch and a half thick and it was solid concrete. Structurally, the kitchen hasn't changed except for the removal of the bathroom wall and obviously that had to be done because of the white ants.
We had white ants in the building a few years ago, I'm not sure of the exact date but there was quite extensive timber work re-done.
Yes, well the majority of the building, including all the flooring, was Hoop Pine. Which is quite interesting, because that would have had to come from probably the Killarney area - there was no Hoop Pine around this area. Even the floor - we can see some exposed boards - some of the original six-inch tongue and groove Hoop Pine boards.
We'll just walk through to what used to be the washhouse and the laundry.
The washhouse was reasonably unique I think, in as much as it had the wood fire copper internally. It was a bit unusual because, with all due respect to the wives of the household, a lot of them weren't really careful with fire. I remember my wife used to have some raging fires going out through it to heat up the clothes.
So you still used to use the old copper?
Oh yes, she used it.
All that really remains now is the old chimney section that you can still see in the top of the roof.
Yes. Basically it hasn't changed structurally.
I was able to find the remnants of our staff dartboard, which was on the far wall. On wet days, of which we used to have a lot in that time, we used to play darts in here and we hung a sheet of masonite on the wall to soften the damage from the darts on the wall. It must have worked, because you can't see any damage. One of the early employees, old Goebel, he was a very good darts player and he probably led the tournaments that we had in here. There was no power in here so it was very, very dark in this room and you couldn't open the door because the rain would blow through. So there was probably a little bit of cheating that went on as well.
You mentioned that there was no power here at all.
No power at all, no. Well, my first lighting when I came here in February 1966 was the old Forestry Department carbide light issues. When my wife came out here as a newly wed in May of that year, we had the luxury of kerosene lights.
After some time, I approached the Forestry Department to put power in and they said they didn't have the money but they agreed that, if I was willing to wire the house, they would provide fuel for me for a lighting plant which I bought. I was overwhelmed with their generosity! When I had the house wired, it was done to 240 volt capacity so that when the power did come, which was around 1969/70, it was able to be switched straight on. I didn't ever envisage leaving Girraween.
The other thing that comes to mind as we stand in the old washhouse, near the light switch there was a shelf and that's where we had our little hand separator. We had our own cow - it used to run up in the orchards. We used to separate the milk here. My wife made butter.
Let's go through to what would have been your living room. This living room now is used an auditorium for slide shows and school groups.
Even in our time, it was quite a grand room because of its size. The eastern wall has since been removed but the original concept is still quite visible from the size of the room. There was the open fireplace which probably saved our lives for a couple of winters. It was a fairly cold house and this fireplace was a real Godsend to us, especially when we had a young baby. It finished up we had two young babies, but it was a Godsend. Beside the fireplace is my old wood box that I built – so that still survives today.
Would these be nine foot ceilings?
At least, they would be closer to eleven foot ceilings. These are seven foot doors. There is no insulation and we had some very cold winters at Girraween. I guess to give you an example of how cold it could get here, apart from the normal freezing up of the water pipes and whatever, we had to have a stick in the septic toilet to break the ice before we could use it. Water used to freeze in the glass on the table beside our bed. We needed plenty of blankets.
Off the side here, we have two bedrooms?
Originally there were the two bedrooms, plus the verandah.
The first bedroom if you like, was our spare bedroom. I can relate another little human story here from when my brother and one of his friends were staying. There was this big old cupboard, which is still here, and the latch somehow came undone - that door had its own mind, and it used to open itself. At that time, it used to have a fairly eerie, creaky sort of a sound and on that night, it did open and some stuff my wife had in there actually fell out and made quite a racket. My brother, well his language was fairly expletive, and we won't go into that. The house was extremely dark as there was no power, so you couldn't turn a light on to see what was happening. He and his friend were wondering what this creaky sound of a door opening was and an almighty crash on the floor. The next night was when we had quite heavy snow. The brother and his mate actually slept in front of the fireplace, because they were cold, they said.
Further down the hall is the main bedroom. It is basically the same as what it was in our time. Now we are in the main bedroom, more or less in the centre of the house. It was a very dark room, it was very cold and it was where the water froze on my wife's bedside table here.
This room opened up onto what at that time was more or less an open verandah. We closed it in to make it a bedroom for our eldest child. I started to do it but I didn't have time because I was building a toilet block or something at the time, so the Forestry Department sent up their carpenter, Ray Rock, who finished it off. There have been a few modifications since then. The windows aren't original and, of course the security screens, but this is where our eldest son spent the first six years of his childhood.
We had two children while we were here. They were both born in the Stanthorpe Hospital. Sean, who is the oldest, is now an electrical engineer and Christopher, our youngest fellow, is a chef. Chris was about two and a half to three when we left here. Sean would have been just six, old enough to start school, but we didn't want to start him here because it would have meant changing schools. He went to Betty Goebel, who was the wife of one of the early employees here. She used to run the school bus and she used to take Sean to school just to get used to sitting in class.
Which school was that?
That was the Wyberba School. Where the road junction is on the old Wallangarra Road, you turn right to follow the bitumen round, come back this way, there is a sharp dog-leg bend and there is a winery down there. Just after you go past that, if you look to the right, I think it's the old school house down in there. It's a private house now, but that was the Wyberba State School.
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