Like many of our forefathers, this man was not born in
Australia. He was born in Knockboy,Co Waterford, Ireland on 26
January 1911 to good Irish stock and, like all Irishmen, he was
proud of it.
But commonsense prevailed when he realised there was little
food and few prospects for the young.
Perhaps also too, permanently embedded in his mind, was his
sister's dress that he was forced to wear in his earlier years by
his concerned parents, because of Irish superstition that fairies
steal baby boys. Ireland was a simple country and its people
lacked education and an understanding of the realities of life.
This bloke was a good worker and found work easily around
Kingaroy in Queensland as a farm labourer and contract fencer,
then later at Monto where he first met a young teenager Ethel
Joyce Daniels, second daughter of Herbert Eli Daniels who owned
the farm he worked on. He was taken by her smile and easygoing
nature but she had plans to leave the bare mud floors of the
farmhouse behind and flee to the city. He moved on after a few
years and tried cane cutting in North Queensland. This was back-
breaking hard work but it was to lay the foundations for his
empathy for the worker and hardened his body for the war years
that were looming.
In 1937 he moved back to Monto and Herb Daniel's farm but Ethel
had since grown up and moved to the bright lights of Brisbane
where she worked as a waitress in Christie's café in Edward
Street. He followed her and 'accidentally' ran into her outside
the café and asked for a date. After a short romance he married
her in November 1939 aged 28 and she 19 at the Petrie Terr
Baptist Church next to Lang Park, only one month after he had
signed up for service in World War II. He travelled to Melbourne
to join the Victorian 2/5th Battalion because Queensland was too
slow in forming a battalion and like all young men at the time
felt it was his duty and besides Irishmen like a good fight.
In March 1940, the 2/5th sailed for the Middle East for what
he hoped was a short battle and a quick return to his beloved
Ethel or Joyce as she preferred. This was not to be unfortunately,
and he was embroiled in continuous conflict in Africa, Crete and
Greece until 1942. During those years he fought against every
nation that had become the enemy- Italians, Germans, Arabs and
French. The Battalion came home that year to defend Australia
against the Japanese who were on our doorstep and after some
jungle training and a short home leave, they were off to New
Guinea and more fighting - 1868 days of duty with 1202 outside
Australia - before finally being discharged in December 1944.
During that highly successful period, he refused medals that
had been honestly earned and commissions that had been offered
for valiant service in combat. He felt they were unnecessary. His
only war wound was a rejection of religion - "What God would
allow man to die in such agony?" he asked. His battalion
still toasts Paddy at their annual reunion in Melbourne recalling
one episode at Buna when, as artillery observer, he rang
Headquarters end asked in his thick Irish brogue,
"Where are the guns?" "Buns?" queried
the Commander. "Guns, you silly bastard. Stop thinking of
your guts and direct the guns." "Do you know who you
are talking to, soldier?" roared the Commander. "Do you?"
he asked. "No" came the reply. "Good" said
our man.
He saw a need in the suffering of the working class during
those years and threw himself into unionism, firstly as a shop
steward at the XXXX brewery where he now worked, then as a union
organiser, and finally in later years as union State Secretary
and Federal President.
He was a born leader in Unionism, converting a nearly bankrupt
Liquor Trades Union into a Queensland union showpiece and the A.L.P.
recognised his efforts and awarded him life membership in 1984.
The workers loved his honesty and his ability to highlight and
champion their needs to management. The current Premier of Qld
Peter Beattie was at that presentation at Lima Street as a cancer
ridden Irishman stood proud and tall and received his award in
honour of his achievements.
This was one award he truly wanted and he was particularly
proud of the fact that he had encouraged and sponsored a young
solicitor to join who was to become a Labour Premier. Peter did
not let him down as in 2001 he was to become Queensland most
popularly elected Premier winning the election in a landslide
vote to Labour.
The Liquor Trades Union named their building at Spring Hill after
him in 1985 in recognition of his work, an honour few of us will
ever achieve.
He loved his six children and during those years he worked
hard to secure them all a good education and to achieve more than
his year 3-education level in Ireland all those years ago. He was
a great provider often walking miles to buy Xmas poultry or to
buy shoes for them because he could not afford transport. Many a
time as they sat in front of television at Lima Street there
would be a shout of "the books!"'
and six children would scatter to their rooms to study their
school- books. They all reached tertiary level of education as he
envisaged and he was proud of their achievements.
Notes:
John migrated to Australia on board the "Esperence Bay"
from Southhampton England via Malta arriving in Brisbane on the
22 May 1929 aged 18.
John and Joyce married in the Baptist church Hale St Petrie
Terrace,Brisbane witnessed by William Grant (Bill) Davies and
Herbert Eli Daniels.
He was then aged 28. John was in the AIF at this time.
AIF discharge certificate #116443 states that John enlisted in 2/5th
Aust Inf Forces on 22 Oct 1939 and served on continuous service
for 1868 days, of which 1202 were outside Australia. BC # N541 DC
# 96566 MC (COPY) AIF # QX3607.
John and Joyce are buried at Mt Thompson with their daughter Pamela closeby
"An Average Bloke" by Brian
Murphy, written and a finalist for 100 Australians story
competition held in conjunction with the 1988 Bicentenial
celebrations.
Published in"Generation"Quarterly
journal of the Genealogical Society of Queensland,December 1995.
Playing "My Wild Irish Rose"
Dreams Don’t
Always Come True.
Ethel Joyce ( Joy ) Daniels 1920 - 1989
In today’s world everyone expects to
live their dreams. We are well educated and live in a healthy economy where
opportunities await us all. We are exposed to technology that enhances our lives
at work and at home in many ways. A world where we can save and travel to the
loneliest or more glamorous parts of the planet and indulge ourselves in our
wildest dreams if we so choose.
Let’s spare a thought in these good
times for our mothers and grandmothers, for the women of yesteryear. Women born
into a world that did not offer to most a high school education, appliances,
high fashion and women’s liberation to assist them but still coped. A world
where they were expected to raise a large family with little or no help from
technology, without parents to assist and a husband who was hell-bent in keeping
them ‘barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen’. They too had dreams but not of
foreign places, more simple dreams and unlike today, few had their dreams come
true.
My mother, Ethel Joyce Daniels, was one
of them and she had a dream when she was young but, like many women in her era,
life got in the way. Her dream was to live a glamorous social life of dining and
dancing and forget her humble beginnings in the Queensland bush and it was like
a fire that burned inside her all her life.
She was born to Herb Eli and Alice
Ethel Daniels on the 19 March 1920 in the Queensland town of Kingaroy. The
Daniels were not wealthy and struggled as farmers to make ends meet. They lived
in a small hut on their property and lived a simple life that revolved around
dirt floors, hand washing, small crop farming and making ends meet. Clothes were
styled from flour bags and feet never felt the comfort of a pair of shoes when
she was a child.
Joyce and her sisters, Doris and
Daphne, were expected to support their mother in her daily farm duties and they
toiled from daylight to dark in all weather conditions. Her brother Elijah and
father Herb did the hard yakka around the farm with the help of the odd farm
labourer. One of those labourers who helped Herb fence his property in the mid
30s was a tall good looking Irishman who was 10 years older than Joyce. His name
was John Joseph Murphy who had immigrated to Australia by himself at the age of
18 .
He was looking for a better life than
the hard superstitious life of Ireland where he was forced to wear a dress for
the first five years of his life because his parents believed that the fairies
stole baby boys. John took a fancy to Joyce and took her to the odd country
dance at Kingaroy until he moved north to Ingham for a better income cutting
sugar cane. She was 16 at the time and ready to fulfil her dreams.
The girls were sent to local schools at
Kingaroy and later at Monto when the family moved there but receiving an
education was difficult as it meant a 10 mile ride on horse back to the school
when they could attend, weather and farm work permitting. So a good education
was never going to be the answer to help her find those dreams so she would have
to find them herself. She had become tired of the hard work doing daily chores
and the constant struggle by the family to pay for food and basic necessities.
To help her through those tough years,
Joyce dreamed of a life of excitement, bright lights and glamorous clothes
whereas her sisters were content in the country. Joyce wanted the life the big
city of Brisbane offered. Her parents could not help so she saved a little money
doing some waitressing in Kingaroy and caught the train to Brisbane where her
uncle, who owned the Shingle Inn, offered her a job waitressing there. It was
1939 and she was 19 years of age and ready to live her dream.
John Murphy had returned to the
Daniel’s Monto farm that year to work for Herb again but more importantly to see
Joyce who he had taken a fancy to years before. He was disappointed to find she
had moved to the ‘big smoke’ but decided he too might also move to Brisbane.
Joyce was only just discovering life as
a single young lady when, one evening after she left work, she ‘accidentally’
ran into John Murphy outside the Shingle Inn. He acted surprised to see her and
found the courage to ask her out and they spent some time together at dances and
walking the streets of the brightly lit city at nights. Her dreams were
beginning to come true until news came that Australia was at war with Germany.
Her dream had to take a back seat as the country mobilised and John quickly
enlisted in October 1939 and asked her to marry him before he left for overseas
service.
They were married at the Petrie Terrace
Baptist Church opposite what is now Lang Park on the 5th March 1940.
After a short honeymoon in Brisbane,
John was off to war. She put her dream on hold as she waited the outcome of the
Second World War.
Her husband was gone for over 4 years
and she continued to work at the Shingle Inn while he was away. Many a ‘sweet
talking’ Yank presented her with chocolates and silk stockings and she even met
a few at a local dance but romance was out of the question because she was
married and faithful. The temptation for the glamorous life they offered to
Aussie girls must have been almost overwhelming; with their swing bands and
dance routines and many succumbed but not Joyce.
By the time John had fought all the
enemies of Australia, (German, Japanese, Arabs, Italians and Vichy French),
serving overseas for 1202 days, he returned home in 1944 exhausted and ill. No
time then for her dreams now as he was ready to start a family and the first
Michael John was born in 1945. Within 10 years she had 6 children, Rodney
William, Pamela Anne, Brian, Peter (too tired now for middle names) and Noel
Anthony. It was the ‘baby boom’ years when everyone felt secure after the
difficulty years of the war and rationing. The daily war casualty death notices
ceased and the population wanted to celebrate our freedom after winning the war
and the peaceful life on offer.
John took time to re-settle and after
several jobs finally found good health and his peace at the XXXX brewery at
Milton. While he worked a pattern of shift work throughout the late 40s, 50s and
early 60s Joyce became the anchor at home. They had decided after a short stint
at their first home in Fortitude Street Auchenflower in Brisbane, to move to a
bigger house that 3 children could live comfortable in. Within 5 years
extensions were needed at the new house in the same suburb, 29 Lima Street, to
house the final 3 and she settled into a daily routine much like the farm days.
In those early years of motherhood,
there were no washing machines and few appliances. The fridge required ice that
was delivered to the door as was the milk, bread and fruit. Children needed
clothes that were worn by the eldest first then passed down over the years until
they wore out. Buttons were sown back on at night before bed and patches put on
torn shirts and holes in shorts and dresses. Vegetables were cut up and peas
taken from their shells daily. Clothes were hand washed after boiling in the
‘copper’ and ironed from the stove. Shoes were repaired on a metal shoe stand
under the house and fathers cut hair with a basin on the child’s head to keep a
straight line.
Xmas was a tough time as only the
well-off could afford toys so for us it was always new clothes as presents and a
Xmas tree was just out of the question. She set up a survival list of daily
chores as well as being out of bed by six (or when babies demanded it in the
early days), preparing breakfast and lunches for the school kids, and dressing
them before seeing them off.
Then the beds had to be made or
stripped (if there had been unfortunate accidents or wet dreams), floors swept,
dust and vacuum the house; mop the floors; polish the dining room floor which
was the only room with exposed natural timber; do the washing in the huge
‘copper’, a large vat which was heated by gas and would boil the whites in hot
water before putting them through the metal wringers, (a process I can remember
well, especially the soapy smell of the freshly washed sheets that had been
boiled in the copper and the fact that brother Noel’s arm got caught in the
wringer and he still bears the scars today); hang out the clothes with the old
wooden pegs; prepare lunch for those at home; see to the fights between the
young ones; bring in the washing; see the visiting vendors- baker, ice-man in
the early days, the fruiter and a visit to the butcher and grocer and then back
home to start preparing the evening meal. This process of meal preparation
included shelling the peas, cutting up the vegetables, cutting the meat and
placing it in pots on the stove.
The school kids would then arrive home
so it was then a change of clothes from school uniforms, prepare some afternoon
tea (that usually included some biscuits she had cooked during her busy day),
and a glass of milk, and supervise homework. This remarkable woman then dished
out the evening meal, washed up and then did some ironing and sewing. Finally at
nine o’clock, she would drag her weary body into bed and fall quickly to sleep
to prepare her self for the next day unless, of course, there was a sick child
who needed attention throughout the night.
Even when times became better as John
was promoted and were able to buy some appliances, she still worked from dawn
until dark with the daily routine of preparing children for school, cleaning and
washing but vacuum cleaning becoming a daily ritual once that appliance became
available.
Living with six children in a small
four- bedroom house was also no fun. She kept the peace when her vigorous
children wanted to play while her shift working husband tried to sleep during
the day and generally held the family together. He suffered from sleep
deprivation as he was woken up so often by us playing. It was never on purpose
but children played all the time in those days and we would quickly forget that
the front yard bordered on his bedroom window. We called him the ‘white flash’
as he raced out of the bedroom on a hot summer’s day in his Bonds undies and
singlet and chased us with his strap. She would tell him when we had been
punished sufficiently and he would retreat into the room and close the door. No
time for her dreams here though as by time she took her exhausted body to bed to
meet the demands of a ‘pre liberated women’ husband, there was no time for her
at all.
As the years went by, the children grew
up and took up the slack on her demanding routine a little and did their jobs.
Cleaning the Venetian blinds, sweeping, polishing the floor, cleaning windows,
burying the scraps and left overs in the garden and burning the rubbish were
some of the chores on offer and we all had to take some. Gardening, of course
now was our focus, and each year she would prepare the garden for snapdragons
and we would plant them in rows and weed around them. She never failed to have
an annual display in that garden to raise her spirits no doubt. The lawns were
also ours as dad did not have the time.
One of my regular jobs was ‘the shop’
as it was called but basically it meant walking around to the local shop on Lang
Parade daily with a net bag and a shopping list and purchasing a few items. It
was not a popular job with my siblings so I went more than most, but I was aware
that a few pennies left over could be spent on lollies (if we had the money to
pay that is or else it went on her weekly account until John gave her the
house-keeping money) and she never became angry with me for spending it.
I think she appreciated my placid
nature as I seldom argued with her about going whereas my siblings would want to
argue about whose turn it was and debate who did it last time. It was only two
minutes around the corner and I made that journey hundreds of times over the
years.
She also hated buying herself a packet
of smokes, as it was not acceptable to her generation for women to smoke
cigarettes openly, so she didn’t want to ask for them but I didn’t mind asking
the shopkeeper. It was her only link at this stage of her life to the glamorous
life she craved as a young lady. She smoked in the toilet at home though so we
did not witness her vice and it was also time out from her busy schedule. All of
my trips to the shop included smokes for Mum and she was dead at 69 from lung
cancer because of that habit, although like all good smokers in those days, she
denied it to the last. Today’s smokers are well aware of the risks.
She was now living in the 50s and
things were improving. My memories of the 50s are of a dreadfully boring and
colourless world although very snug and secure because of the safe environment
our parents had set up. No colour television then, just the daily serials on the
radio when Dad and Dave ruled the roost and Greenbottle played havoc on his
teacher. We had to be cleaned-up and completed tea as dinner was called then
before we were allowed to sit in front of the wireless as radio was known.
We were a close family in that we
shared our clothes as pass me downs, got each other birthday presents and sang
‘happy birthday’ to each other annually. The 10 mile round trip to Milton State
School was completed together and the teachers all knew our family as the first
3 were great achievers. It was so good to go to the tuckshop on a Friday and
have Mum hand over a hot dog to you.
We had our holiday each year at Kirra
on the Gold Coast in the early days. We would catch the dreary old steam train
down to Coolangatta, past the very hills that I now live in at Mudgeeraba. All
the kids were full of excitement as we left the railway station in Griffith
Street and walked several miles along the beach to our flat at North Kirra. Some
of the names are still there such as Two Views and Yarrum, but most flats have
disappeared to be replaced by unit blocks. They were great holidays because we
spent two weeks surfing, walking on the beach, gathering shells, watching
fisherman drag in catches of migrating mullet onto the beach and, generally, we
rested.
Joyce was the financial manager. She
was given an allowance each week to keep the house and from that she also had to
save for holidays. Money was always the centre of attention and arguments
between her and dad. One year at the coast, after she was unable to come down
with all the family because Peter had chicken pox, by the time she had arrived
John had spent the holiday money for two weeks in one. An almighty argument
meant that we were fatherless for the second week as he returned to Brisbane.
They were mostly good friends though
and excellent parents in that the children came first. Her only luxury was the
cigarettes. It was her link to a more glamorous life as depicted in television
advertising in those days.
After her last child was born, she
suffered severe liver problems as a direct result of the birth and was given
only a short period to live, but Joyce had other intentions. She desperately
wanted to live to enjoy her grandchildren and secure the family home. After all
the years of hard work she was not going to quit now and she still had her
dreams to fulfil. The family were very concerned and Uncle Kevin came to support
Dad who had all but written her off after the medical advice given. With the
help of a newly appointed specialist at the Brisbane Women’s Hospital though,
she was given one of the first operations on the liver of its kind in Australia
and survived.
She quickly recovered and after the
pressures of the demanding role of motherhood had eased as the children grew up
and her children took over many of the household duties, Joyce found other
interests. She became a member of the Gardening Association, the First Toowong
Boy's Scouts ladies committee, school tuck shops and community groups. Everyone
knew her as a kind, caring person who always considered others first. It was
amazing that, without any formal education beyond primary school, she became
Treasurer of these organisations and never faltered in presenting her annual
reports accurately.
Then came the grand children and she
would often have them over to stay, giving them small gifts as she loved them
dearly. Family picnics became the new focus and were a necessity in her mind and
everyone was expected to be there. John, however, never really recovered his
patience after the war and never wanted to have a good time as such. His role by
now with the Union Movement was Federal President of a Union so it meant that
bright lights and good times would have to wait for Joyce yet again so she kept
on dreaming.
When John finally retired, she asked
that they move and start a more social life than they had lived over the years
but he was reluctant to leave the family home. Indeed, he stayed there and lived
a quiet life with Joyce at his side until his death in September 1984.
After recovering from her grief, she
quickly sold the house and moved to Kenmore in one last dash to live her dream
and announced to the family that it was time ‘to see the inside of every
restaurant in Brisbane’
. The family were all married and with
young children so we did not respond at all and her dream began to flicker until
her life ran out on Boxing Day in 1989. She was never to fulfil her dreams.
Written by Brian Murphy (
Son ) 2007
Notes
from Certificate of Marriage 5th March 1940
Minister Henry Ebenezer Saunders
Baptist Church Hale St Pertrie Terrace .
John Joseph Murphy Soldier AIF of Showgrounds Flemington Victoria Age 28
Ethel Joyce Murphy Waitress of Sheriff St Petrie Terrace age 19
Witnesses William Grant Davies and Herbert Eli Daniels
As Joyce was under 21 consent was given by her Parents
Herbert Eli and Alice Ethel Daniels of Old Cannindah Via Monto Queensland
" RETURN HOME"
" Pam's Page 1948 -- 2006 "
