Risson's Produce

One of the buildings sacrificed in the redevelopment of the CBD in the mid-1980s was a timber shed on the corner of Nicholas Street and Bremer Street, which had originally been Cribb & Foote's cotton ginnery. For over 60 years, Risson's Produce traded from this shed.

The Risson family story begins with Henry Risson, who made the four-month voyage to Australia with his wife Eliza (née Chaplin) on the sailing ship Indus. The couple had previously lost two infants, but when they landed in Brisbane on Boxing Day in 1874, Eliza held eight-month-old baby Alice in her arms. Henry and shipmate David Nicholls headed off to Toowoomba,  where they cleared Margaret Street - at the time, this was an rea of thick bushland. henry and Eliza then worked on Grantham Station, Henry as 'wood-and-water joey' and Eliza as housekeeper. After this came a stint at Nicholls' farm at Tent Hill, followed by a job splitting palings at King's Creek, near Warwick. By this stage, the couple had another child, Charles, who would one day establish Risson's Produce in Ipswich. In all, Henry and Eliza had eleven children, three of whom died in infancy.

Farming at Ma Ma Creek

In 1877, Henry selected land at Mt. Whitestone on Heifer Creek Road (Gatton-Clifton Road), just five kilometres from the township of Ma Ma Creek in the Lockyer Valley. About a dozen people had settled in the district, which was nearly all scrub. Pioneers cleared roads as needed. The creek ran continuously, and Henry reported that, according to the oral traditions of local Aboriginal people, many of the deep holes where they fished had never been dry. But as timber was cleared and the soil was cultivated, the holes quicky filled up, and in dry times the flow diminished. Dingoes, wallabies, parrots, and cockatoos were troublesome. By day, farmers frightened cockatoos from the corn with pistol shots. At night, wallabies had to be chased away. Sometimes, emus wandered by, no more than ten metres from the slab houses. 'The valley was lively then,' said Henry. 'Even the nights were busy.' In the late 1920s, old station hands and bullock drivers related problems with Aboriginal people, but Henry reported that few were about in 1877. 'And they were more civil than some of the whites - good old people some of them' (Queensland Times, 31 March 1928, page 11). Maize and potatoes were the chief crops. Cotton had been grown, though this was gone by 1877. The industry revived after a ginnery was started in Ipswich, but when prices went down to 1½d per pound, farmers went back to maize and potatoes. With the advent of cream separators, some took up dairying. Henry ran a dairy herd at one point. In 1883, the Risson family had a 100-cacre farm with eight acres of potatoes and four acres of maize. Henry was also working a farm he rented further down the creek.

Henry and Eliza were involved in their community. They helped to establish the Ma Ma Creek Church of Christ, which opened about 1885, and were active members while they lived in the district. Eliza taught Sunday School and tended the sick. The Risson boys played in the district cricket team and were well known in Lockyer cricket, and Charles was a keen footballer. The Ma Ma Creek Provisional School opened in 1880, and for some time Henry chaired the parents' committee. Charles was one of five original pupils who attended the School's 70th anniversary celebration in 1950, when it was one of the oldest schools in West Moreton District. Speaking on behalf of the original students, he said they were thankful to be present and wouldn't have missed the occasion for anything. he described an era when there wasn't a vehicle with a spring in the Ma Ma Creek district. The main crops were potatoes and corn, and men earned 2/- a day picking potatoes for which farmers obtained £2 and £6 per ton. Sometimes they were unable to sell them. Dairy farmers received 3d per gallon for cream, and butter sold from 3d to 6d per pound. There were no tanks in those days; domestic water came from the creek.

In 1903, Henry and Eliza retired to Toowoomba, having farmed in Ma Ma Creek for almost 30 years. They left Charles and his brother Robert to work the farm. Charles married Ada Banks Sherrin in 1906. They bought the property, and Robert moved to Grantham. When Eliza died in Toowoomba in 1918 at the age of 69, all eight children were married and she had 29 grandchildren. Henry died in 1929.

Moving to Ipswich and into the Produce Business

Charles and his family moved to Ipswich in August 1914, the same month Australia declared war on Germany. He went into business with Walter Barrett, who had managed the retail department of George Harrison Wilson's produce store in Nicholas Street until it closed, a period of about seven years. Produce seems a likely occupation for an ex-farmer; Charles knew what farmers needed and was possibly acquainted with many who would be his customers. Initially, Messrs Barrett & Risson, Produce Merchants, traded in premises on the south side of the North Australia Hotel in Nicholas Street. These had been the old drill-rooms used by No. 2 (Ipswich) company of Queensland Volunteer Rifles. In later year, the Trades Hall would stand on the site, a brick building that was erected ca. 1925 and remained until it too was demolished in the redevelopment of the CBD. A new Trades Hall was built in Bell Street ca. 1986.

Early in 1919, Charles shifted the business across the street. Walter Barrett had died the year before and Charles had taken over the business. He leased a shed at the far end of Nicholas Street, which was part of George Harrison Wilson's produce business 0 probably the department Barrett had managed - and had once been Cribb & Foote's cotton ginnery. Charles had occupied these premises for some years when Wilson's 32-perch allotment went up for auction 18 December 1924. With 132 feet frontage along Nicholas Street and 66 feet along Bremer Street, the allotment comprised two lots: a two-storey brick shop (Lot 2) and the building that housed Risson's Produce (Lot 1). Charles bought the latter. Risson's Produce had found a home from which the business would trade until 1986.

The old ginnery was a timber building that stood on eight-foot tall block posts with a doorway to Bremer Street. It had a bitumen floor and a thatched roof supported by 6x1 inch pint timbers. The roof was later replaced with corrugated iron. Fire was an ever-present threat to timber buildings in the early days. A fire that razed a box factory on Bremer Street in 1937 was brought under control just two metres from the eastern wall of Risson's yard. Three years later, the premises next door in Nicholas Street - R.M. Gow Pty Ltd - caught fire, and the basement of the produce store was flooded.

Like his parents, Charles was active in the community. he and Ada were members of the East Ipswich Church of Christ, where Charles was a lay preacher and Superintendent of the Sunday School. At the time of his death, he was an elder of the church. In the 1940s, he judged the Farm Produce at Marburg Show, and in 1948, the West Moreton Hatchermen's Association was formed in his store. As a member of the Silkstone State School Committee, Charles was largely responsible for excavation work undertaken to install the swimming pool. Charles and Ada lived at 7 Cramb Street, on the corner of Prose Lane in Eastern heights. Prose Lane - this may have then been called Prowse Lane - was a dirt thoroughfare that ran between Cramb Street and Whitehill Road. In 1924, despairing of Council action, a group of residents under the direction of Charles Risson reformed the gutter and roadway. over several Saturday afternoons, they 'put Prowse-lane in good trafficable order'. Charles supplied the horses and drays employed in the work and Ada supplied afternoon tea.

After losing their first child, a boy they named Cyril, Charles and Ada had one daughter, Myrtle, and then eight more sons: Cecil (always called by his second name, Dudley), Clifford (Cliff), Stanley (Stan), Arnold, Horace, Wilfred, Donald (Don) and Lionel. They lived in the Cramb Street house until at least seven of those sone were born and then moved to nearby Marvin Street. It is likely they built the house that straddles 5 and 7 Marvin Street. The allotments went through to Idolwood Street, with the two blocks at the rear being used to stable the horses used in the produce business.

Produce Means Transport

You can't operate a produce business without vehicles to transport the produce. Charles operated with three horsedrawn drays. Whenever they ventured beyond the city, he used another horse as a lead horse. There were stables at the shop. Until it was demolished Risson's had a second shed on Bremer Street, where they kept hay and straw bedding for the horses; perched on the riverbank opposite Bell Street, the shed had been part of the cotton ginnery. The horses went home at night to graze at what is now Limestone Park. Charles also leased land, including a portion of Queens Park, to keep his horses, some of which won numerous show prizes in the 1920s.

Before World War Two, when corner stores were numerous, Charles used a horse and sulky to visit these shops and take orders - a horse was more practical than having to stop and start a car every few blocks. Orders were delivered next day. After the War, one horse and dray were retained for deliveries around town. The first motor vehicle was an International with solid rubber tyers. This was useful on farming properties - no punctures - but in wet weather, farmers often had to use horses or tractors to pull Risson trucks out of bogs. Even in the postwar years, country roads were rough and corrugated. By the time Charles' sons were driving, Risson's had two trucks, one for local work and the other for country runs. Stan usually drove the local trucks, while Don delivered produce to dairy/mixed farms in the Lockyer Valley, and bought potatoes, pumpkins and onions from the farmers. Their trucks were always secondhand and they were always red. The last one was a Bedford, which the business purchased ca. 1976.

At one stage, Charles' staff included five sons - Dudley (Cecil), Cliff, Stan, Wilfred, and Don - plus three other men, and three office girls. Risson's Produce was classed special services during World War Two, when they supplied Amberley Air Force Base, Redbank Military Camp, Ipswich General Hospital, and the mental health institutions at Wolston Park and Sandy Gallop. But staffing was a problem, as only one son was exempt from service and Charles had to rely on men who were unable to serve. Five of the eight Risson boys enlisted, Dudley, Clifford, Horace, and Wilfred in the Army, and Don in the Navy. Don enlisted on his 17th birthday in 1943, the year the enlistment age was lowered from 19 to 18. His father had to sign off on his papers because Don was underage. After completing six months basic training at HMAS Cerberus, the naval training base on the Mornington Peninsula, Don and the other recruits boarded a train, headed for Townsville and the adventure of a lifetime. THe pain had niggled for a while. By the time they approached Kyogle it was excruciating. Don had eppendicitis. He was kten off and became separated from his cohort, who had embarked for England by the time he recovered and reached Townsville. Soon he was dodging Zeros as the coxswain on a motor torpedo boat off Darwin. He finished the war on Matthew Flinders, a pilot vessel stationed off Caloudnra, taking pilots on and off large vessels, sometimes in very high seas. Ada spent a lot of time praying at the kitchen table and was afterwards issued with a Female Relatives Badge bearing five stars. All five sons came home.

Cliff, Stan and Don worked in the business with their father, and after Charles died in October 1951 at the age of 75, they carried on together. Cliff lived with his parents and occupied the family home at 57 Marvin Street until late in life. Don married Lorna Mudford of Gilgandra in May 1948 and bought the house at number 1 Marvin Street. Stan lived at the other end of the block.

What is produce?

'Produce' is a varied and variable retail category. In the early years, Barrett & Risson advertised fresh Coominya grapes, large quantities of pineapples, which arrived daily, and 'all kinds of produce', and yet, a produce merchant is not a greengrocer. Seed maize and panicum-seed were also on offer. In 1927, Risson's sold Sea Foam Flour and coarse and fine salt. As an agent for Sea Foam Flour (South Brisbane) and Defiance Flour (Toowoomba), Risson's supplied Ipswich bakeries, such as Scholtes, which was almost directly across the river from the produce store. Salt was stored in the shed on the righthand side of the property. Done remembered of later years, 'We sold about 900 tons of salt a year. We sold coarse salt to the butchers and the three slaughter yards in the district, crude salt to the ice works, flossy salt to bread bakeries, and fine salt to the corner stores.'

Potatoes, pumpkins and onions were a big part of the trade and these were sourced from Gatton, Lowood and Fassifern. In the days when farms produced only one crop of potatoes per year, Risson's brought supplies up from Guyra and Dorrigo in NSW and from Tasmania. Tasmanian potatoes - brownells were especially good - came by boat to Brisbane and then by rail to Ipswich, 1,000 bags at a time. They were stored under the main building where it was cool and produce kept well. Onions were brought from Victoria and South Australia.

Grain such as wheat, milo and maize came from the Darling Downs and Lockyer and Fassifern areas. Lucerne, chaff and hay came mostly from the Lockyer Valley. Oaten and wheat chaff and oats came from Ganmain in NSW, procured through an agent, Logan and Hitchins, with whom Risson's dealt for 60 years. The business had one machine to make cracked maize, another one to crush oats, and a third to make maize meal and milo meal, and oat from Risson's, as well as potatoes, pumpkin, oats, and barley, fertilisers and chemical sprays.

At times, the State Government contracted Risson's to deliver hay to flood-affected areas in western Queensland, and this was loaded into planes at Amberley Air Force Base. other contracts included Ipswich City Council Sanitary Depot, Queensland Mounted Police at Oxley, and the Dinmore and Bremer Meatworks - if there were horses, there was need of a regular supply of hay. In earlier times, when goods like bread, milk and fruit were delivered to homes by horse and cart, businesses needed horse feed and straw for stabling. Risson's supplied businesses like Halley's Bakery. Old maps of the town centre show stables tucked behind many of the shops and businesses.

Ther yard in front of Risson's shed was a hive of activity with vehicles coming into the property to load up. Up to ten milk trucks called in the mornings. At a time when farmers operated numerous small dairy farms around Ipswich, trucks delivered milk to the factory on Jacaranda Street in Booval, which the Queensland Farmers' CO-operative Company opened as a butter factory in 1901. It was usual for these drivers to pick up supplies from Risson's for the famers while they were in town. Friday mornings were especially busy. As a receiving agent for Red Comb Abattoir, Charles designated Friday as collection day. People could bring fowls to the produce store before 11 am and a truck from the abattoir would collect them. IN 1949, hens over 3½ pounds paid 1/5d in 1949, and young ducks and drakes were 1/6d. Rsson's did not collect commission; they were merely a transfer station. Don did pick up poultry on occasion; he remembers collecting 200 turkeys from Esk. The birds were weighed at the farm and reweighed in Brisbane, because poultry frets. The turkeys had lost on average half a pound each.

Don Risson

For many Ipswich people, Don Risson was the face of Risson's Produce. before the war, Don worked for Dalgety, a stock and station agent in Brisbane. He started in the family business after being demobilised in 1946. During the nine-week-long railway strike from 3 February to 5 April 1948, many goods had to be transported by road. This meant long-distance travel, for which drivers needed a permit, and these cost 3d per ton, over fifteen miles. After a fortnight of this, the Transport Department permitted travel of any distance for the price of 10/-. Don covered 18,000 miles during this episode. In later years, produce came by road instead of rail, and this eliminated double handling because heavy bags of potatoes didn't have to be loaded onto trucks at the goods yard and unloaded again at the produce store. A bag of potatoes in those days held three bushels, about 160 pounds, and Don shifted them by hoisting them into his shoulder. Stacked according to a meticulous pattern, a load of potatoes on Don's truck was a thing of beauty. Risson's leased a shed in the railway yards on Ellenborough Street, which they used initially in their capacity as agents for Caltex.

Droughts were difficult times for farmers, as there was no irrigation in earlier days. It was difficult for produce merchants too, because the days were long and drivers got little sleep. As feed stores ran low, Charles bought chaff and hay by rail from southern states, and on one occasion, he sourced wheat from South Australia. One of the biggest droughts was in 1936. That year saw the men delivering fodder to dairy farms on Christmas day. Don remembers in later years delivering loads to farmers at night, and on the return trip, coming across a customer on the road, swinging a lantern, asking when their feed was coming. If the run was late, farmers always insisted that Don stay for a meal. Then they sent him off with eggs or homemade butter. One year, farmers asked them to drag hyacinth out of the Bremer River to feed their cows.

Don commonly managed country deliveries but he also took care of the city's numerous Greek cafés, where hot chips and hamburgers were standard fare. At the City Café in Brisbane Street, for example, waitress Esther Brewer berated him if he brought dirt into her kitchen while delivering potatoes and onions. Runs were carefully planned and the truck was loaded meticulously, with last deliveries stacked at the back and subsequent deliveries loaded in reverse order. It made for a quicker run. Don was a religious, law-abiding man, but like all truck drivers, eh knew the 'rat-runs' and could avoid 'scalies' when he needed to.

Fewer people had utilities in those days, so early body trucks were a great help to those in need. When the Bremer River overflowed its banks in January 1974 and floodwater rose through suburbs and city streets, Don climbed into his truck with family and church members and worked tirelessly ahead of the devastation that was to come. Charles and Ada had started the Church of Christ in Ma Ma Creek, and Done and his family were equally involved in the church and community work in Ipswich. Again, the trucks were a great asset. Don and fellow Church of Christ members shifted ex-Army buildings, or dismantled and rebuilt similar structures, for use in church work. They helped to found the Leichhardt Sunday School this way, and Campe Cal, a Christian campsite and conference centre established at Dickey Beach, Caloundra in the 1940s.

From the age of eight, Don's only son, Glenn, worked with his father on Saturdays doing general work. On two days during the week - Fridays and one other day - Don collected him from home at about 4 pm and took him on deliveries. This was around 1960, when Glenn remembers them selling things like pollard, molasses, bran, chaff, lucerne hay, cracked corn, salt blocks, and bird seed - while farmers placed significant orders, other customers called at the shop for as little as a pound of seed for their pet bird. On one memorable occasion, when he was about ten, a semitrailer backed up to the front of the store and Glenn was put to work dragging its entire load of potatoes onto the verandah. It was around this time that he decided he didn't want to be a produce merchant when he grew up.

Don's red trucks feature in his children's memories. When his first child was a toddler, the family went camping. Don put sides on the truck and created a 'motorhome' by trying a tarp over the frame like a tent. The children remember that Don was very particular about folding his tarps, as he was about loading sacks onto the tray. They listened for the truck coming home at the end of the day. Sometimes, when the motor idled out front, they raced out the door and tore down the stairs to climb up onto the back of the truck. It was a short a ride along Abbey Street and then left into Idolwood Street to stow the truck where horses had once been stabled. With the truck bedded down for the night, they walked back home with their father. Going to the Rocklea Markets with Dad was a treat too - bodies bustling, men yelling in strange accents, the smell of ripe fruit - but the children were forbidden to leave the cab. It was usual for Don to leave home before 5 am on market days and come home afterwards for breakfast.

Lorna always cooked a hot breakfast on week days - mince, scrambled eggs, baked beans on toast, leftovers...And if he was late home at night, she placed his dinner in the oven, wrapped in alfoil and resting on a cake tin of steaming water. At other times, after work was done for the day, and he'd had dinner, Don made a trip over Cunninghams Gap to collect a load. Since potato and pumpkin was a staple in the Risson household, at least one child has not eaten pumpkin since she left home. Their father was good at maths - they recall the way he could slide a finger up a column of numbers and have the sum by the time he reached the top - and this was in the days of pounds, shillings, and pence (see note below). Don always wore an apron. It was a produce bag. At the end of the day, he wrapped it around the hook he used for shifting heavy bags and tucked the bundle behind the seat in the cab. Then he sat on the back steps to remove his boots, placing them to one side, ready for the morning.

Looking back over his years in business, Don recalled that, at one time, four other produce merchants operated in Ipswich - Cribb & Foote in Bell Street, McCartney's opposite the Old Flour Mill, Bob Dogherty opposite where Faulkner Motors used to be, Roly Clarke below the North Star Hotel in Ellenborough Street - and good relationships existed between them. Once, the manager at McCartney's asked Don to deliver their poultry feed to Marburg; the blacksoil road was wet and their small truck couldn't do the job. Don delivered the load, and the next day, the manager asked how much he owed him. 'Nothing,' said Don. The man was surprised, but Don related Charles' mantra: 'If you cannot help someone in business, you should not be in business yourself.' Goodwill played a major role in those days. It was not unusual for Risson's to 'carry' customers through hard times. Trainers at the Bundamba Racecourse were sometimes unable to pay their bills, and Risson's let their accounts ride until their luck changed. Farmers were similarly vulnerable to markets and seasons and were not always able to pay on time. After the business was sold, small regular payments were collected for several years afterwards, with relatively few being written off as bad debts.

Don also remembered that Charles worked hard and expected his sons to pull their weight. 'I recall one summer we were unloading a trailer of 200 bags of oats and 200 bags of oaten chaff, and I said to Dad, "It's very hot today," and his reply was, "Just work a bit harder and a make a breeze for yourself." Despite that, no matter how busy you were, Dad said, "Always stop and talk to people because that makes a good relationship with the customer."'

The business was sold as a going concern in 1986 after trading for 70 years. Three sons worked at C. Risson & Co. at that time, and Don, after his years in the Navy, had personally clocked on for 40 of those years. The old shed was demolished soon after.

A not about pounds, shillings and pence: where the letter 'd' is used after a number - 3d, for example - this means a penny, so threepence; when the symbol /- is used  - 10/-, for example - this means a shilling and 0 pence, so ten shillings. A shilling was twelve pence, thus 10/3d is 13 pence. When the symbol £ is used - £6, for example - this means one pound, so six pounds. A pound was 20 shillings.