Taking in the Sights

I was caught without a photograph today.

My paternal grandfather b. 1878 travelled c.1951 from Brisbane to Far North Queensland not long after I was born "to see the new baby". The reasons will include that first and foremost a parent wants to see their own. In this case piecing together family history, my father had around about a year before my birth very almost died of peritonitis. Antibiotics were the saving grace. The prospect of a death may be a great aphrodisiac, cue for a birth and incentive to take a long journey.

We see here a touring party standing on a tourist track in the Barron Gorge in North Queensland that is the location now of a famous skyrail.

Grandfather as a widower had travelled the journey alone once before to visit his son and wife and their first born c.1938. The journey on a train would not have been an easy accomplishment on Grandfather Wilson's own at the age he now was.

Migration from Scotland in 1922 had meant some difficulties of one sort or another for his family of wife and children among them young adults ...and in my thinking Grandfather felt for that reason he had to leave work early before retirement to devote himself to caring for his wife in her remaining years when my grandmother was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Grandfather had when he did leave his position prospects that would have seen him an extremely wealthy man. Yet he said no thank you. Photographs show him seated with Grandmother in various positions demonstrating her decline and his straight-backed presence, sometimes leaning towards her touching her hand. From his demeanour in this shot, I think it is evident he was by nature and vitality a kindly and experienced, dignified man. He must have been a remarkable personality. Cobbler, draper, qualified foot care specialist and businessman, shop steward in later years on the side of the workers, tramper and cyclist in Scotland, emigre, father of a family of talented children and host in photographs of the family alongside his wife in Scotland and Australia, loved by my father and my mother both. John Wilson, gentleman.