Peter was born at his parent's home at Woodend, Ipswich in south-east
Queensland, the sixth child and third son in the family. When he
was three years old, the family moved to a new house at 19 Kendall
street, East Ipswich, where he spent the rest of his childhood. The
Kendall street house, although large, was still bursting at the seams
with a family that eventually totalled 11 children. Until he went to
Sydney as a young man to study, Peter never had a bedroom to himself –
he and his brothers slept out on the verandah of the sprawling
Queenslander-style house.
When he was four and a half, Peter's sisters took him to school at
the Ipswich Central State School. His recollections of that period
are very clear....
“...the teacher in the first grade was
Miss Merlin - a kindly old lady whom we all liked. Our second
teacher was rather a strict lady who made us sit up straight in class.
On one occasion, she took one disobedient little boy up to the front of
the class, laid him on her lap, took his pants down and smacked his bare
bottom. She had no trouble with anyone in the class after that…
“Our third teacher was a kind old man who taught us very well but was
fond of the bottle; so much so he never progressed past teaching second
grade.”
For the next four years, Peter and his brother Frank went to St.
Mary's Christian Brothers College in Ipswich, until their mother decided
she could no longer afford the fees because of the Depression - so the
boys went back to the State school. Peter returned to the
Christian Brothers for his secondary education.
Since he was one of 11 children, study conditions weren’t always ideal.
“It was hard to find somewhere to study
– my older sisters weren’t exactly quiet around the house, and
eventually I had to make do with a space under the front stairs, out
among Dad’s stag-horn ferns”.
(above):
St. Mary’s Christian Brothers College, Ipswich in the 1930s, where Peter
was a student for his high school years.
Years later, Peter had long conversations with one of his
grandchildren, Roger Eveans, who delivered the eulogy at Peter's funeral
where he recalled much of what his grandfather had told him of his
growing-up years.
Granddad
walked everywhere for his entertainment as a kid. He and his
brothers would walk from East Ipswich to Colleges crossing for a
swim, which was about a 10km walk. For an adventure he climbed to
the top of the vacant, derelict Brynhyfrydcastle in
Blackstone, which was about a 3.5km walk. Against their father’s
wishes, the brothers would travel home from school by walking along
the train tracks as this was the quickest route. This shortcut soon
stopped once their father found out.
One day when Roger was an adult and his grandfather was 94, he
showed his grandfather an old map of the Ipswich area.
Granddad
pointed to where he had played tennis or cricket as a kid.He would point out the way he went to school from Kendall
street and how he used to walk up and down his street selling milk
they got from their cow to make ends meet. We must have talked over
this map for hours. His memory was amazing. ......
We’d talk about football, we’d talk about life and I would often ask
him about his life story. About marriage, raising children, about
who was his favourite child. Sometimes I would try to get him to say
something slightly controversial but he was always too smart for me
and very diplomatic in responding always with a wry smile on his
face.
Sport was an important part of the teenage Peter’s
life. He played for the East Ipswich Cricket Club and won the
Binnie Cup for the best batting average in the 1940-41 season, and the
J. Dale Cup for best batting average for Ipswich and West Moreton in the
same year.
His interest wasn’t confined to
cricket – he won the Ipswich and West Moreton junior tennis title (from
his brother Frank) in 1939. The final must have been an engrossing
match. According to a
local newspaper, it was a marathon, lasting several hours:
Noticing the length of the rallies, two onlookers took the trouble to
count the number of times the ball crossed the net. In one game of
seven points, the ball was hit 489 times. One point took 134
strokes, another 108. (.....) Some of the games prior to this,
when the players were fresher, were even more protracted.
The game was called off for the day with the score at 6-4, 5-7.
When it was finished on the following weekend, Peter came out
victorious, 6-3 in the final set. Peter says circumstances played
a large part:
"I'd had a normal week, and was quite relaxed, but Frank had had to work
the night before, so was hardly rested before going on court, which made
my task easier".
Peter completed his Senior (Leaving) exam at the Brothers, and although
he says he “hadn’t a clue” about what he really wanted to do, started
studying to be a teacher. During that year at Teachers’ College,
he was paid a small student allowance – an amount that had to be repaid
when he realised he wasn’t suited to the classroom.
“Needless to say”, Peter recalls, “I’d spent every penny of the
allowance, so Mum came to my rescue and paid it all.”
His brother Tom, five years his senior, pointed him in the right
direction for his future career:
“Tom told me that if I joined the Commonwealth public service, even as a
clerk, opportunities would come up for traineeships – and they did”.
So Peter entered the Commonwealth
Public Service as a clerk, before gaining a cadetship in 1941 as a
trainee biochemist that involved five years of study at the School of
Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Sydney University. Peter’s
mother Lily was reluctant to see one of her three sons travel so far,
particularly in wartime, but for him, it was the chance of a
lifetime. Peter’s 10 brothers and sisters had, until that point,
stayed in the south-east Queensland region around Ipswich, although his
sister Kathleen later ventured further afield, to the United States, as
a war-bride, after the end of World War Two.
The move to Sydney was the turning point in Peter’s life. While in
Sydney, he found lodgings at Randwick with the family of Gertrude
Williams. Gertrude was the much-loved aunt of Joan Gaffey, and had
taken her teenage niece in, when Joan left her father’s Hunter’s Hill
home on the other side of Sydney. The Williams’ house was home to
several relatives and this extended family helped Peter adjust to life a
long way from his Queensland roots.
(left) Peter in the early 1940s on an outing to Mt. Kuringai, in
Sydney’s north
It’s perhaps to be expected that the two young people, living under the
same roof and still in their teens, would make a match of it.
After a two-year courtship, Joan and Peter married in Sydney's St.
Mary's Cathedral.
After their marriage, the couple lived briefly in Darley Road Randwick,
near Joan’s mother’s family. Accommodation in wartime Sydney was
extremely hard to find; they eventually found a room in the home of a
woman whose husband was away fighting in the war.
They were living there at 1 Norfolk Avenue, Beverley Hills, their first
child, son Peter, was born. Living in a single room with a baby
was not unusual for the time, but when a second child arrived less than
a year later, the time had come for them to look further afield.
Joan’s father Tom Gaffey, who’d retired from his tram driving job,
was working part-time for a butcher at Hunters Hill. His employer
owned a shack at Valley Heights in the Blue Mountains more than an
hour’s train ride to the west of the city, and after some negotiations
over rent, Joan and Peter moved in. The owner had wanted nearly £4
a week rent, an amount simply beyond Peter’s weekly pay packet of £5;
the landlord’s son came to their rescue, and persuaded his father to
drop the exorbitant rental to £2/10/-.
right: Peter with his two
eldest children, at Valley Heights in the Blue Mountains in 1945
Peter travelled each day from the mountains to his work and study at
Sydney University – but soon realised that the primitive life in the
mountain shack with two young children was no life for Joan. The
risk of bushfires was too great, and snakes were also a problem.
His only alternative was to suggest Joan take the children to
Queensland, to live at Ipswich with his parents, and with some
reluctance, she agreed.
After his graduation, Peter was able to work for the Department of
Health on a relief basis at Lismore in northern New South Wales – an
opportunity he snapped up, as it meant he could travel to Ipswich at
weekends to see his family.
From Lismore, Peter was given more
relief work at the end of 1946 in Townsville and Cairns in far north
Queensland, work which meant the family could be together again
.
left: The young family on Magnetic Island, during Peter’s relief
work in Townsville
When the work in north Queensland came to an end, Peter considered
taking a job at the University of Queensland, but the chance of a
permanent position with the Health Department in Toowoomba came up – and
this time, Joan and Peter made a more permanent move to south-east
Queensland.
The original Commonwealth Health Department Laboratory in Ruthven
Street, Toowoomba (below left), where Peter worked, from when he arrived
in Toowoomba in the late 1940s until the laboratory was transferred to a
new annex in the grounds of the Toowoomba Base Hospital, in James
Street. The older children enjoyed visits here while their father
was working, and took a great interest in the guinea pigs kept at the
laboratory for various tests.
The
laboratory can be seen as the single level white building between the
Town Hall and the Soldiers Memorial Hall (on the left) in Toowoomba's
main street, Ruthven street in the late 1950s. Peter's car, a
black FJ Holden is parked outside the Town Hall.
For the first few years in
Toowoomba, the family moved around, first to a small flat in Cecil
Street off Margaret Street, then to houses at 147 Mary Street (below
left) opposite the Toowoomba Grammar School, and Herries Street (below
centre), before a permanent home was found in a Department of
Health house at 350 South Street, Harristown (below right),
where the family lived for nearly 30 years.
The South Street house had one big
advantage, apart from its size (it had to accommodate a family large
even by the standards of the day) – it was on a double block, which
provided plenty of room for the five boys and four girls to play. The
backyard was the scene of many impromptu football and cricket games,
while the sole piece of brickwork, a chimney, provided a tennis hit-up
area, much to their mother's consternation, as the hard-hit ball often
missed its target and hit the adjacent fibro with a house-resounding
thump.
Peter described the early years in Toowoomba as 'somewhat difficult'....
"for example, we did not have a car until just after John was born in
1955. But we certainly made the most of the FJ Holden...clocking
up the mileage very quickly including regular trips to Brisbane".
(right): Peter with the family’s
first car, the FJ Holden NAS-871
The FJ Holden survived the driving lessons Peter gave to his teenage
children, and even survived a roll over inflicted on it by daughter
Mary, during a drive home to Toowoomba from Brisbane. (Fortunately, none
of the family was seriously injured in the crash – although Mary was
fined for driving with an overloaded vehicle!). That car was
resuscitated at the panel beaters, and was succeeded by two more
Holdens, first a Kingswood, then a Commodore that served Peter and Joan
well in their later years.
During the children’s growing-up years, Peter was constantly in demand
to help with a busy homework schedule, and carried out his and Joan’s
belief that all their children should be educated to best of their
ability. Achievement in education was a strong motivator in the
household. After primary grades at the local parish school,
St. Anthony’s, the girls were sent to St. Ursula’s in Taylor Street, a
college run by the Ursuline nuns, while the boys attended St. Mary’s
Christian Brothers’ College in West Street.
Both schools were some distance from the family home at Harristown, and
for most of the school years, transport was by bicycle, unless the
children could prevail on their father for a ride in the Holden.
left: Peter at work in the Commonwealth Health Department
laboratory, 1970s.
Peter
& Joan (seated in centre) with many of their children, their
spouses, and grandchildren in the backyard of 350 South Street,
December 1981
Peter and Joan's youngest child, Danny, c1969
(right):
Peter's favourite Sunday morning escape – reading the papers on the
front porch of 350 South Street.
(left): Peter with son John.
After Peter's retirement in 1982, Joan, Peter and young son Danny moved
to a new home in Toowoomba. The house was in walking distance of
the University of Southern Queensland, and the university’s grounds and
gardens - particularly its exotic Japanese Gardens -became one of
Peter’s favourite walking routes.
Grandson Roger tells that retirement also gave him even more of a chance
to follow the sports that he loved.
Granddad
loved to read and often when we went to visit him he would be
sitting in his favourite chair with the daily newspaper close by.
Either that or the latest sporting autobiography, in particular
rugby league autobiographies. He very much loved his rugby league
and was a big fan of the Broncos and Queensland. Although he
followed the whole NRL competition pretty closely as he had to
remain updated with the stats so that he could become the 2015
Byrnes Family Tipping Competition Champion.
Roger and his brother Craig spent many school holidays in
Toowoomba....
Whenever
we walked anywhere with them they would walk hand in hand and
Granddad would always walk at a pace that suited Grandma. However,
once she was dropped off inside for her weekly appointments,
Granddad went to Olympic walking pace as we would run around doing
all the errands while we waited for Grandma. There was no looking
back for us. We just had to keep up.
Danny’s sudden death in 1984 was a tough time
for the whole family. Cancer was not diagnosed until a matter of
a few weeks before, and in Peter’s words at the time, “It’s been the
hardest thing I’ve ever had to bear in my life”.
(left): Peter with wife Joan, January 1997
(right):
Peter and Joan, at a retirement luncheon in Peter's honour at the
Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education (later the University
of Southern Queensland).
A final word from Roger:
Granddad was well respected, intelligent and kind hearted. No one
could ever say a bad word about this man. He was a true gentleman
in every sense of the word. He was the very best role model to his
sons and grandsons and he showed his daughters and granddaughters
what kind of a character to look for in a husband. He counted
everyday he lived as a blessing from God, and I thank God everyday
for having him in our lives.