Allan and Shirley Home

My friends Allan and Shirley returned after 3 months in Queensland last week. They go up most winters, staying with their daughter who owns a florist shop at Noosa. I've mowed their lawn at Avonsleigh for years and do odd gardening jobs eg. cutting back and pruning.
There was quite a bit of work to do this winter. They wanted a number of large rhododendrons in the front garden and a golden cypress in the the back reduced as well as the usual maintenance, so when it was done they owed me a tidy sum. An hour here and there adds up over three months.
Almost every time they go there's a drama of one sort or another, usually involving Allan's health. The only winter since I met them that they haven't gone up there was a few years ago when Allan was recovering from a brain tumour operation. The Queensland sojourns are plagued by heart attacks, respiratory infections, and other buckshees, the particulars of which escape my recollection.
On the weekend they were due to return, by train, as for two years Allan's doctors have said that flying is too risky for him, he rang me from Noosa to explain they'd be delayed about a week. This time Shirley had gotten sick with a chest infection three days after they arrived. It turned into pnuemonia, she spent several weeks in hospital where her heart gave complications so the whole trip was dominated, again, by medical drama. Shirley was not well enough to travel home by train so another daughter flew to Qld. and drove them home in a hire car.
After mowing the grass last Thursday afternoon I enjoyed a couple of glasses of red wine with Allan and Shirley as they ran through the whole story. We all agreed that Queensland is that sort of place, a land of extremes of climate and where drama and surprise is always close. Expect the unexpected.
Allan then said that when he first came to Australia in 1949 as migrant from England he landed first in Brisbane and stayed at the migrant hostel at Kangaroo Point under the Storey Bridge. He walked the streets looking for work and after a period of no success he landed two in one day. He took one as a stores clerk with the Queensland British Food Company because they offered to fly him to Rockhamton and, being an ex RAF man during WW2, a plane trip appealed to him. He spent most of the war attached to Australian units in England and Scotland and therefore had many Australian mates, which is why he chose to migrate to Australia. He was an armourer, which meant his job was to make sure the machine guns and amunition were in good order before the planes took off.
The Qld. British Food Co. was a joint government venture set up to provide food to help end the post war shortage in Britain. Allan worked at a large farm at Peak Downs where they were growing 96,000 acres of sorghum in the rich black central Qld. soil. Thirty tractors worked together to plant the crop which was to be fodder for pigs on another farm. As bad luck would have it, a big frost burnt much of the crop, then shortly after it rained solidly for a week, the first rain Allan had seen in months. The crop turned black, ruined.
Allan could not stand the humidity for one more day and took off, heading south to stay with a mate in Melbourne. The rest I know. In short, he went to Lorne for a brief holiday before looking for work and walked into the Pier hotel where he met Shirley, who was on holiday with two of her nursing friends. He worked for some years as a cost clerk with a fuel company before starting with BP where he progressed to area marketing manager, working in rural Victoria till retirement, which led him to Avonsleigh after a twelve month world trip.
He's 85 now. Despite his health troubles over the years he's sharp mentally, a great conversationalist. The 'gift of the gab', stood him in good stead throughout his working life. It's something he acquired in the RAF, he says, where he needed to relate to people from all walks of life.
I look forward to mowing the lawn and enjoying the odd glass of red through the season.