Preamble to chronicles of memories of Malcolm John and Ihian Duncan Mackenzie, sons of Duncan Bert William and Elizabeth Ann Mackenzie (nee Harkness).  Malcolm was born 16 February1933, and Ihian on 1 July1939. The memories start in 1939 when Ihian was a baby in arms and I was 6 years old. I  recollect being in the suburb of Milton an inner city suburb of Brisbane living in a flat with my mum, dad and brother. There was a woman named Miss England living in the same group of flats who owned a car and the brand was Singer. A friend of Mac’s named Jack Marshall visited us and he was quite well off. He gave me 2 shillings and I went straight to the paper shop, as it was known then, and purchased 12 comic books at 10 pence each, and back to the flat and started reading them. Mac would go out on New Year’s Eve and first foot[1].

Here are some photos of the time (60 plus years old and not too bad)

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My next memory is shifting to a suburb of Sherwood and Mac working in the Ipswich Railway Workshops as a coachbuilder. I went to Sherwood Public School and I remember two girls in the same class named Ailisa Hadgraft and Merle Salisbury. I had not thought about this in later life, until while working in Darwin, the subject came up about Sherwood school with the manager of the Swan Brewery who had attended the school and remarked what good sorts they were.

Mac purchased a car either a Willys or an Essex two seater with a dickie seat. He was not used to it and crashed it through a fence and sold it. We shifted to Kew Road, Graceville and I attended Graceville Public School. Mac went to work every day at the Ipswich Workshops. Next door was a family called Green consisting of Dad, Mum and 5 children. Mr Green was the postmaster at Graceville and had a wooden leg and his daughter was also employed there. Two children I don’t remember. The two youngest were twin boys named Kenny and Vivian about my age. We used to go to the Brisbane River and catch prawns. Mr Green had a car and trailer and we three boys went with him camping to Southport and Tewantin. Mrs Green got cranky with me and would not let the boys play with me so I cut the stems of their plants that hung over the fence and they died.

Ihian: Hard for me to know if these early memories are real, or the result of family conversations.  There was the bread delivery cart-horse bolting down the street at Graceville when the air-raid siren went off – we had to shelter in the inadequate slit trench someone had dug in the back yard. And then somewhere north of Brisbane, all our possessions were swept out on the high tide. And another time I cut the ropes on Malcolm’s tent because I was excluded. And I can recall pissing into the Green’s teapot whicn caused exclusion from that lot.

Malcolm: Bill and Hilda Smith were great friends of Mac and Bet and had a daughter called Loretta two years younger than me and live two streets up from us. Mac and Bill would argue about religion as bill was a Roman Catholic but I don’t think Mac was any religion. Jo and myself visited Hilda many years later on a holiday around Australia and she was a member of the Chelmer Bowls Club. We also visited Loretta and her husband Freddie at Mt Cootha in Brisbane.

A circus arrived in Graceville and set up two streets from where we lived. I went to have a look and while I was there a boy put his finger into a monkey’s cage and was bitten badly. I was walking past a tethered elephant and it swung its trunk around and hit me across the cheek. I ran home bawling my eyes out and had a gravel-like rash for weeks on my cheek.

In 1942 during World War 2 Mac joined the R.A.A.F. as a tradesman as was posted to the South Pacific at Morati in the Moluccas. While he was away we were evacuated to Inverell in N.S.W. due to the fear of Japanese bombing Brisbane. I cannot remember much of that but we soon returned to Brisbane. Mac returned from the war in 1945 but all was not well between he and Bet. There were tensions and something had to happen. My memory tells me that Bet must have sewed a lot and saved furiously as she informed me that I was to be sent to The Scots College in Warwick in January 1946. I do not know how Mac took this but I was taken to the railway station and put on a train with many other boys and sent to Warwick. We were met by teachers and either bussed or walked to the school. I was placed into School House with many other boys from all over Queensland and N.S.W.

Meanwhile back in Brisbane Bet packed her bags and picked up Ihian and did a runner to Western Australia.  Ihian will fill in the details of that journey and subsequent events. Now that left Mac and my Grandmother in the house in Graceville. I do not know how they coped as I was in school at Warwick.

I settled into school routine and on reflection it was a great life. We were disciplined but not brutalized. We had good meals in the dining room and one of the waitresses was called Ruby. She was nicknamed Spanner as it was stated every time she walked past the boys their nuts tightened. We were introduced into all sports and also the school army cadets. Attendance at church in Warwick Township was required every Sunday and we walked there and back. There were dancing lessons provided in conjunction with the ladies college in Warwick.

In 1948 I was summoned to the headmaster’s office and he informed me that my father had been killed in an accident. He was run over by a train at Graceville station on a crosswalk. I returned to Graceville at the end of 1948 and obtained my first job at Caltex Oil as an office boy. I remember the male clerks used to run their hands up the girls legs in the office.