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Peter Byrnes (1922 - |
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PART 1:BYRNES FAMILY
ANCESTORS’ CHARTS : (Parents of Peter Byrnes):
INDIVIDUAL SUMMARIES (Scroll down for full list): |
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Father |
Thomas Arthur BYRNES (b Oct 19 1883, Toowoomba) | ||||||||
| Mother | Amelia (“Lily”) DANCE (b Jul 27/17? 1891, Haigslea) | ||||||||
| Birth | Jan 29, 1922, Ipswich, Queensland | ||||||||
| Education |
Ipswich Central State
School
St. Mary’s Christian
Brothers College, Ipswich (now St. Edmund’s) Sydney University (School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine) |
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| Occupation | Biochemist, Commonwealth Health Dept. | ||||||||
| Lived in: | Ipswich, 1922-1941; Sydney and Blue Mountains 1941-46; Queensland: Ipswich, Townsville, Cairns 1946-47; Toowoomba (1947 onwards) | ||||||||
| Marriage | Joan Margaret GAFFEY Jun 12 1943, St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney | ||||||||
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Children |
Peter Mary (m. David Boddy, Mayfield, 28 December 1974) Gerard Catherine
Paul
Elizabeth
John
Joan
Daniel
(b. 1965–d. |
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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 Peter 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 older brother Frank 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”. 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.[i]
(above):
St. Mary’s Christian Brothers College, Ipswich in the 1930s, where Peter
was a student for his high school years. |
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(right): Peter on the tennis courts in Ipswich
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. |
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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 a
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.
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, 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/-.
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, work which meant the family could be together again. |
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Peter with his two eldest children, at Valley Heights in the Blue Mountains in 1945 |
The young family on Magnetic Island, during Peter’s relief work in Townsville |
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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.
The original Commonwealth Health Department Laboratory in Ruthven
Street, Toowoomba, 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.
(above) 147
Mary Street, Toowoomba, where Peter and Joan, along with youngsters
Peter and Mary and the infant Gerard, lived in their early days in the
Garden City of the Downs.
(above) When the lease on 47 Mary Street expired, the young family moved to
this more modest dwelling at 9a Herries Street for a year, before the
long-term move to South Street. For the first few years in Toowoomba, the family moved around, to Mary Street (opposite the Grammar School), and Herries Street, before a permanent home was found in a Department of Health house at 350 South Street, Harristown, 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 Joan’s consternation, as the hard-hit ball often missed its target and hit the adjacent fibro with a house-resounding thump.
The house at 350 South Street, where the Byrnes
family lived for nearly 30 years.
(above)
By 1957, Peter and Joan’s family had grown to seven children:
Back row: Peter, Gerard and Mary Front: Catherine, Paul, John, Elizabeth |
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(right):
Peter with the family’s first car, the FJ Holden NAS-871
Peter describes 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".
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 |
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Peter at work in the Commonwealth Health Department laboratory, late
1970s. |
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(right) Peter’s favourite Sunday morning escape – reading the papers on the front porch of 350 South Street |
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(below): Peter and Joan’s youngest son Danny with his sister Liz and baby nephew Mark Hollands
(right) Peter & Joan (seated in centre) with many of their children, their spouses, and grandchildren in the backyard of 350 South Street, c1981 |
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(right): Peter in a typical stance, with son John (also in a typical stance!)
After Peter's retirement in 1982, Joan, Peter and their
youngest son Danny moved to a new home at 24 Rachel Street, Toowoomba.
The house was in walking distance of the University of Southern
Queensland, and the university’s grounds and gardens became one of
Peter’s favourite walking routes.
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”. In his youth, Peter had been a keen tennis player, and although there were several decades of his life when the demands of family life didn’t allow him time to play, he was able to take it up again later in retirement. Thursday afternoon saw him regularly on the courts at the Holy Name Tennis Club, until Joan’s deteriorating health made his absence from home not practicable.
After Joan’s
death from pulmonary fibrosis in February, 2001, there was a very
difficult period of re-adjustment.
Nearly 60 years of married life were followed by days and nights, weeks
and months as a widower.
The company of third son Paul, who continued to live on with him in the
Rachel Street house, was invaluable, while other sons, daughters and
grandchildren made even more frequent visits to Toowoomba.
Peter set about keeping himself busy, eventually returning to the
tennis court, and encouraged by his family, took up new interests such
as the world at his fingertips on the Internet. Almost exactly one year after Joan's death, Peter's world changed abruptly - he suffered a massive heart attack, and was saved only by the prompt action of son Paul, paramedics and medical staff at St. Vincent's Hospital. His previous high level of fitness helped him with the slow process of recovery, when he counted every day lived a blessing from God. |
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(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). |
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 24 Rachel Street, Toowoomba
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A gathering of the Byrnes clan in Toowoomba 1993, to
celebrate Peter & Joan’s 50th wedding anniversary |
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1: Dave Hollands; 2: Neville Eveans; 3: Geoff Boddy; 4: John Byrnes; 5: Joan Eveans (née Byrnes); 6: Gerard Byrnes; 7: Jennifer Boddy; 8: Andrew Magill; 9: Anna Byrnes; 10: Laura Magill; 11: Mary Boddy (née Byrnes); 12: Mark Hollands; 13: Alyssa Byrnes; 14: Robert Magill; 15: Jordan Byrnes; 16: David Boddy; 17: Paul Byrnes; 18: Peter J. Byrnes; 19: Roger Eveans; 20: Jennifer Byrnes (née Hintz); 21: Joanne Magill; 22: Leo Hollands; 23: Craig Eveans, 24: Catherine Magill (née Byrnes); 25:Elizabeth Byrnes (Hollands); 26: Peter Hollands; 27: John Magill 28: Judith Byrnes (née Belôt); 29: Joan Byrnes (née Gaffey); 30: Peter Byrnes; 31:Belinda Byrnes |
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[i] Memoirs of Tom Byrnes, Queensland Times, November 14, 1952 |
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