By: Adrian Pyle21st Apr 2024 11:24PMMy parents (initially both, and then my Mother after my Father’s death) lived two doors up the road (to the left, in the photo) at 8 Short St for 50 years until 2017. I lived my first twenty-three years there wth them. The four houses to the left of the one in the photo were built on former Marsh Nurseries land and numbered 6, 8, 10 and 10A (10A being the block of flats to the left of 12 which are partially visible in the photo). When my parents arrived in 1967 the A on the flats had disappeared leading to the confusion of having two ‘number 10s.’ Apparently my Father’s complaints led to their house being then allocated number 8. When the Marsh family themselves built a house at the former number 8 site it was then confusingly numbered 8A, so the house numbering then went 6, 8A, 8, 10 and 12. There was continuous mail and delivery confusion on Short St.

There is also a block of flats to the right of number 12 at number 14. Number 14 was the site of the overnight abduction in 1973 of toddler Deidre Kennedy who was found murdered in a nearby park the next day. She was six months younger than me.


Diagonally across the road (at number 3, the numbering of each side of Short St was out of kilter) was the long time home of Senator Neville Bonner, first Aboriginal member of the Australian Parliament. He lived there until his death in 1999.


Looking at the picture of number 12, the verandah on the left side of the house can be seen to be enclosed, something that occurred as part of a major restoration and renovation of the house in the 1990s. The period railings and decorations on the front of the house were added as part of that restoration. My first memories of the house are ones if it having a semi-enclosed front verandah probably added in the 60s or early 70s. The 90s renovation also added a rear extension to the property.

In the late 70s and early 80s a family of British migrants, who ran a motor garage at Inala, moved into the house. The children from that family played together with other children in the street including me, and I got to see inside the house on a number of occasions. That family began some internal renovations to the house which they didn’t finish before moving out. I was a student at nearby Ipswich Central State School. The school had a unit for students with hearing issues an the family who lived at number 12 prior to the British family had a son who attended that unit.