The romance of timber

'Timber is the thing,' Frank Standen told his daughter Jan. 'It’s all in the taste.'
Years later, her father long gone, Jan Pilcher wishes she had asked him what he meant.

'My beloved Beaumont Street'

'I was so happy growing up there, and have tried to recall the events and experiences that made it so. I want others to be happy there, in the future.'

So wrote Margaret Colditz, in May 1990. The earthquake in December, 1989 had changed Hamilton’s main street irrevocably. People who had lived there all their lives told her they felt that with the terrible carnage to the street, 'part of them had died.'

Hamilton Chinese - the Mook family

'I could wrap you up in newspaper and there wouldn’t be a gap anywhere!'

This somewhat startling skill comes from working in Mook’s Fruit Shop after school in 1960s Hamilton. Along with wielding an alarming knife to slice up the tough Queensland Blue pumpkins, it is one of the many skills of Teresa Purnell.

'So who are the other Chinese who came to Hamilton in the earliest days?' I ask Teresa.

'We are the Hamilton Chinese', is the rapid reply.