Adversity & Resilience: Growing Up

For many Ipswich people, the Great Depression was a time of hardship and lost opportunities which affected the rest of their life. Here are some of their stories.

Myfanwy Sullivan: When I was at Grammar School, the terrible Depression was on. My whole interest in life was to become a school teacher, and of course that was one reason I was at Grammar School, I wanted to do my Junior and go and do my teacher training. My father was a clerk in the Carriage Foreman’s office at the Railway Workshops. He had a good job, a fairly reasonably paid job, but during the Depression everybody was retrenched to a degree. Instead of working 10 days a fortnight, they were put onto seven days a fortnight and with a growing family, that was very hard. They couldn’t afford to keep me at Grammar and I had to leave. It was very heartbreaking for somebody who had an ambition to do that one particular thing and couldn’t go through with it because of circumstance. I just had to get myself a job and carry on.

Len Trower: I went to Brassall School, there were four boys in the family, I was the second youngest. I passed scholarship, then I went to the Technical College up to Junior Level, but then came the Depression, there were no jobs, everybody was unemployed. It was hopeless looking for work. Dad worked three days one week and two days the next. One of my brothers worked in the Railways as a tinsmith, he used to have a week on and a week off.

I eventually went on relief work - one day a week you had to go out and work on the road in the Moreton Shire. They’d tell you where to go and you got there the best way you could on a pushbike. I was paid about 10/- I think. The off week was 7/6 rations - a ration card you could cash it in for groceries.

• You had to put your card in every week to the Labour Bureau. If any jobs came up, your name was called and if you didn’t take it, you were struck off.
• We used to cut wood, particularly wattle wood, for the bakeries. Halley’s Bakery in Ipswich used to take the wattle wood in lengths for their ovens.
• When they were putting the electricity extension through from Ipswich through to Gatton, I worked on the timber cutting, all that timber had to be cleared.
• Then I got onto Main Roads work, I was working on the main road over the Ironbark Range to Esk.
• You’d see chaps coming out there, solicitors and tradesmen, never lifted a pick in their life. They used to get big blisters on their hands, but it was either take it or starve. [1]