When They Go, It Goes With Them!
Logan River Family History members collect oral histories and then transcribe them for inclusion in our library. These are then available for us to listen to or to read, to gather either family information or to gain an insight into the character of early Logan. One of our members, Lesley, conducted such an interview on 10 May 2011 and below are excerpts of it:
Annie Aileen Lamb has recently passed away. She would have been 98 on the 27 January 2012. She had a busy and varied life, bringing up four children and working as Station Mistress and Post Mistress at Woodhill near Beaudesert
I: Can you tell me what happened in your life after you turned 13, after you left school? What did you do?
Annie: Well, when I was 19, I went out onto a station, Paradise Station, out west. My younger sister went with me, and I was Cook.
I: And that’s where you met your husband?
Annie: I met my husband there, and then after three years we got married and we went back out west. He wouldn’t stay in Rockhampton or anywhere like that, he’d been out west and that was where he was going to stay.
I: What was his name?
Annie: Jim.
I: How long were you at Blackall and where did you go then?
Annie: We were there until, I remember my daughters were five-year-old, and we went to …. My husband had got on the railway about this time, and we went to a place called Yalleroi. It was 32 miles south of Blackall.
I: In 1944 you moved from Blackall and moved to Yalleroi, did you like Yalleroi better?
Annie: Yes, I liked Yalleroi.
I: Were you on a property then or in town?
Annie: No Jim was in the railway then and we lived in a railway house there.
I: What did his job include?
Annie: He was a fettler on the line.
I: And you moved from there?
Annie: Because they had no school at Yalleroi, they had a school, but they didn’t have enough pupils to have a teacher there. So, we came down to Brisbane on holidays and Jim put in for a transfer for where there was a school and we got down there at Woodhill.
I: So, you moved to Woodhill, and you lived in the railway cottage there. Can you remember much about the railway cottage?
Annie: It was just when we first went there. It just had the four rooms and a veranda and a little room on the end of the veranda and it had a landing going out to the kitchen.
I: How many bedrooms did it have?
Annie: It had three bedrooms, but it had the Telephone Exchange in one bedroom in the corner.
I: You ran the Telephone Exchange?
Annie: Yes, I was Station Mistress for the first five years, but the Exchange was still in the house. Been in the house all the time.
I: So, you were Station Mistress from about 1947 to about 1952?
Annie: Yes.
It is so true that we lose a library when a grandparent dies. If you still have the chance, talk to your parents and grandparents and record their knowledge. When they go, it goes with them if you don’t.
See you next month
Rob Thomson
President, Logan River Family History Society
loganriverfhs@hotmail.com