The story of Donald's Corner

When you were growing up in Hamilton’, I asked memoir writer Margaret Colditz ‘where was the money?’ 

‘The money’, she responded without a second’s pause, ‘was in Donald’s Corner’.

A Mine Manager's retreat - the AA Company house

Status is having a house on the crest of a hill, fireplaces in every room, and your own underground water tank  so you don’t have to queue to draw water with the wives of miners.

Status can also mean responsibility - lying awake, desperate for sleep, dreading the first light. Imagine that your boss, Superintendent of the AA Company, [1] has commissioned you to bring in ‘scab labour’ from Victoria and South Australia, and to destroy the coal miners union, once and for all.

The making of Hamilton

There was not a decent street or footpath in Hamilton; they had creeks and watercourses in every direction.[1]

Truly, the place looked deserted and miserable, no one to be seen but poor old Murphy and his double team dragging a barrow load of coal through the yielding sands into which the wheels of his dray....were sinking almost to the axle.[2] 

These were just some of the challenges facing Hamilton’s first Municipal Council in 1872.

Boy boxer from Burnt Bridge

He wore green satin shorts with a white star, and was promoted in boxing circles as Puerto Rican rather than Aboriginal, because of racial prejudice at the time.

Masonic Hall

The queue surged with a life of its own along Beaumont Street. An excited buzz rose from the young crowd, dressed to dazzle in their up-to-the-minute gear.

I was on an evening walk with my husband, not long after we had moved to Hamilton, when we encountered what we thought was a nightclub with a line of people waiting to enter. A little surprised that our new suburb apparently had a nightclub, we crossed the street. Looking back, we saw that the building creating so much anticipation was the Masonic Hall, alias The Depot.

Gelateria Arena

She was working full time at the age of 11, travelled alone by ship from Genoa (Italy) to Sydney to marry a man she had not seen for five years, and cooked meals for 60 diners a night in a cafe in Beaumont Street, Hamilton. And by the way, Silvia Saccaro raised three children.

Missing from Beaumont Street

'All these shops, but nowhere to buy a nail!'

This was my husband’s recurring lament, after we moved to live in Hamilton. We love being in close walking distance to a wide range of shops and services. It wasn’t long, though, before we discovered some serious gaps in the retail mix.

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.