The Burke Family of 80 St Johns Ave
The Burke Family at home on the front verandah 80 St John's Ave. Left to right Roger, Rona, Carrol, Max & Rikki 1968
By Rona Speakman (nee Burke)
I lived in the yellow house near the top of the hill at 80 St John's Avenue from 1951 to 1970. My parents Max and Rikki Burke (originally from Sydney) purchased the vacant 24 perch block in the late 1940s. In the back yard they set up an ex-army hut which they lived in for two years while they built the house themselves. A laundry was attached to the back of the hut and a timber outdoor toilet (earth closet) was located nearby. My sister Carrol was born in 1949 and spent her first year in the hut (aka 'The Castle'). In 1950 when the house was built, my mother's father, Daniel Roper, came from Sydney to live with us, so a part of the front verandah was converted into a small bedroom for him. I was born in 1951 and my brother Roger in 1955. All three of us were born at Ashgrove Private Hospital (on the Ashgrove tram line). Our neighbours at the time were Mathews (No 78) and Leyland/Templey (No 82) - (later followed by Howlett then Benton). Adjoining our back fence in Grand Parade lived the Bennetts (and later Angelos). Opposite our house on the other side of St John's Avenue was 'the bush'.
In the mid 1940s, my father was an industrial chemist in Sydney. He came to live in Brisbane in the late 1940's. My mother, who knew my father in Sydney, followed him shortly after. He and a friend Ron set up a photographic studio called 'Memory Studios' at 14 Fraser Street, Ashgrove and later at 137 Waterworks Road, Ashgrove. The studio owned an 'autobyk' which was my father's earliest form of transport. After building the house he upgraded his degree in chemistry to a physics degree which eventually led him to work as a Senior Lecturer of Physics at Queensland University. During that time he needed a place to do research for his doctorate so the ex-army hut was relocated to a university site at Moggill for this purpose. This research into radio waves reflecting off the ionosphere (also know as 'over-the-horizon-communication') drew the attention of the Government. Two satelite dishes were installed in our back yard along with a recording device in the workshop under our house. This work led to a position at the University of Ottawa in Canada where he developed a process for devices to share the same bandwidth, which is how mobile phones communicate to base stations today. As well as the recording device, our workshop was well stocked with many and varied chemicals, tools and equipment. I remember my father making the family sunscreen, me making a doll's house and my grandfather mending our shoes with his cobbler's tools in the workshop.
In the late 1950s my father featured in a children's science segment on a Channel 7 program called "Cottee's Happy Hour". We were invited to watch him on TV by the Griffiths in Grand Parade, they were the only family we knew who owned a television set at the time. When we eventually got our own TV, we were allowed to sit on the sofa with a 'fork dinner' on a Sunday night and watch Disneyland (dinner was normally eaten every night at the dining table). My father was also a member of the Taylor Range Pistol Club and in the 1960s drove a Ford Customline.
While we were young my mother stayed at home with us. As well as the normal home duties she volunteered at the school tuckshop, school fetes and played tennis with friends at the courts in Royal Parade. She also enjoyed painting. Our first family car was a grey Austin A40. Mum would drive us up the hill to Ashgrove West Kindergarten and later to Ashgrove State School until we were old enough to walk to and from school on our own, or with friends. On shopping days she would load the car with up to six children to be dropped off at school and three adults to go shopping (there were no seat belts In those days of course). Groceries were bought locally at 'The Terminus' in Ashgrove or at Chandler's Corner opposite the bridge. Bread and milk were delivered daily. Later when we went to The Gap High School, the shopping was done at the supermarket near the school. In the 1960s my mother drove a Mini Minor.
My mother had a passion for theatre which started when she became a member of 'The Globe Players' in Sydney. In the late 1950s she rekindled her interest by involving herself with the Brisbane Repertory Theatre, first as an actress, then producer/director and later as theatre secretary. In those early days, Brisbane Repertory Theatre used different halls to stage their plays as they did not own a hall of their own. They did, however, own a couple of old houses on a site in Hale Street Milton, one of which they used for rehearsals. My mother decided to experiment with this rehearsal room to produce and stage plays 'in-the-round'. It was so successful that the theatre group converted the other house into a theatre-in-the-round. As the popularity of theatre-in-the-round increased the iconic 'La Boite' Theatre building was built on this site. Designed by Blair Wilson using discarded bricks to keep costs down, the building won an architectural award and the discarded bricks 'look' became fashionable. My mother was eventually made a Life Member of La Boite Theatre.
In the 1950s, our Austin A40 was well used on holidays. We would go with friends on day trips to either College's Crossing or Cash's Crossing on The Brisbane River. On longer trips we would pack our camping gear into the car boot and onto the roof racks. What didn't fit there was then packed into the footwell behind the front seats up to the level of the back seat. We used it like a large travelling bed (pre seatbelts) while mum and dad sat in the front. In the 1960s we would stay with friends at their holiday homes in Binna Burra, Caloundra, Surfers Paradise and South Stradbroke Island.
We walked a lot in the 1950s and 60s. We walked to and from the Ashgrove State School, Brownies and Guides on the corner of Grand Parade and Buckingham Street, and Sunday School at the Ashgrove Methodist Church. Walking home from school always started by going through the 'opening' in the ridge near the south west corner of the school grounds, then down the gravelly hill beside Waterworks Road, (dodging the quarry's sludgy rivulets on the way), then down the deeply creviced track to the bridge at the bottom of the hill. Sometimes we would stop at Hinton's Store in Royal Parade to buy a treat for the journey home. Our house was one of the furthest from the bridge so I could choose various routes to walk home. As a consequence I felt as though I knew The Woods fairly well. Most houses contained someone I knew, either friends from school or parents' friends. It seemed that everyone had a connection. I remember visiting the 'button man' who lived half way down London Street. He was in a wheel chair and made a living covering buttons and buckles with fabric to match the clothes we made. In the 1960s I walked mainly to and from the bus stop in Laird Street where I caught the bus to The Gap High School and later to Brisbane Girls Grammar School. To go to town we would catch a tram or a bus from 'The Terminus'.
My earliest social memory is of a gathering (maybe a Christmas party) in the hall at 'Granite House' in Laird Street. Lots of parents and children from The Woods were there. We also went to the movies (the pictures) at the Ambassador Theatre near the bridge, where we lounged in low slung canvas seats. During the 1960s I went to progressive dance lessons in Ambassador Hall after school.
During the 1950s we played outside most of the time. If it rained we played under the house. We made things like puppets from scraps of material and bits of wood and staged puppet shows, used blackboard, chalk and dolls to play 'schools' and used old tins, packets and pretend money to play 'shops'. We would bandage up dolls and play 'hospitals', use old clothes to play 'dress-up' and make cubby houses in the back yard gully where the banana trees grew. If there was a pile of dirt or a sand pit around we would create towns for our toys to live in. 'Hide-and-seek', 'tiggy', 'hopscotch', 'cowboys and indians' and bike riding were also regular activities. During the 1950s and before the army houses were built, we played quite a lot in the bush opposite our house. I remember once finding some hidden cubby houses. They were deep rectangular holes dug into the ground and covered with branches to disguise their appearance and secret openings. When it rained, we would play 'boats' in the little streams that ran down our dirt road. That game only lasted until the grader came along and flattened the road again.
Cracker night was also great fun. For days we would gather branches from the bush and build a bonfire. It was a popular event and children and adults would gather in their front yards to light crackers and watch the bonfire burn. The next day we would get up early and look for 'fizzers' (crackers that hadn't gone off) and continue the fun again. At Easter we would make baskets from bush materials and leave them on the front verandah. We were told that overnight the Easter Bunny would come from the bush over the road and leave Easter eggs in our baskets. One year a bush fire became rather threatening and garden hoses were brought out just in case. During my teens I became more interested in listening to pop music and spent many hours in my room recording the 'Top 40' on a large reel-to-reel tape recorder. On hot days we would walk down Grand Parade and across the creek to Greenlanes swimming pool. There was always someone there we knew.
When I was old enough I had chores to do, although they weren't called chores, just 'helping out'. I remember doing simple cooking, setting the table, tidying my room, hosing the garden, hanging the washing and damping down the clothes for ironing (before steam irons). Any money I was given went into my Commonwealth Bank tin money box which all of us were given at school.
Our house was originally a two bedroom chamfer board house on concrete stumps with a tiled roof. Under the house there was a laundry, workshop and garage containing a pit which allowed my father to service under the car. In 1958 a septic tank was installed and a WC (water closet) was added to the back landing. The old earth closet In the back yard was then taken away by a football team. The WC was later connected to sewerage in 1965. The house was tenanted for many years and eventually sold in 2002. The property was sold again in 2009 but this time the house was extensively renovated.
The spirit of our old family home remains despite the changes, but sadly most of my family and their early memories of St John's Wood are gone. Grandad died in 1968, Carrol in 1982, Dad in 1991 and Mum in 2004.
I have very fond memories of growing up in The Woods.
Rona can be contacted at [email protected]
I lived in the yellow house near the top of the hill at 80 St John's Avenue from 1951 to 1970. My parents Max and Rikki Burke (originally from Sydney) purchased the vacant 24 perch block in the late 1940s. In the back yard they set up an ex-army hut which they lived in for two years while they built the house themselves. A laundry was attached to the back of the hut and a timber outdoor toilet (earth closet) was located nearby. My sister Carrol was born in 1949 and spent her first year in the hut (aka 'The Castle'). In 1950 when the house was built, my mother's father, Daniel Roper, came from Sydney to live with us, so a part of the front verandah was converted into a small bedroom for him. I was born in 1951 and my brother Roger in 1955. All three of us were born at Ashgrove Private Hospital (on the Ashgrove tram line). Our neighbours at the time were Mathews (No 78) and Leyland/Templey (No 82) - (later followed by Howlett then Benton). Adjoining our back fence in Grand Parade lived the Bennetts (and later Angelos). Opposite our house on the other side of St John's Avenue was 'the bush'.
In the mid 1940s, my father was an industrial chemist in Sydney. He came to live in Brisbane in the late 1940's. My mother, who knew my father in Sydney, followed him shortly after. He and a friend Ron set up a photographic studio called 'Memory Studios' at 14 Fraser Street, Ashgrove and later at 137 Waterworks Road, Ashgrove. The studio owned an 'autobyk' which was my father's earliest form of transport. After building the house he upgraded his degree in chemistry to a physics degree which eventually led him to work as a Senior Lecturer of Physics at Queensland University. During that time he needed a place to do research for his doctorate so the ex-army hut was relocated to a university site at Moggill for this purpose. This research into radio waves reflecting off the ionosphere (also know as 'over-the-horizon-communication') drew the attention of the Government. Two satelite dishes were installed in our back yard along with a recording device in the workshop under our house. This work led to a position at the University of Ottawa in Canada where he developed a process for devices to share the same bandwidth, which is how mobile phones communicate to base stations today. As well as the recording device, our workshop was well stocked with many and varied chemicals, tools and equipment. I remember my father making the family sunscreen, me making a doll's house and my grandfather mending our shoes with his cobbler's tools in the workshop.
In the late 1950s my father featured in a children's science segment on a Channel 7 program called "Cottee's Happy Hour". We were invited to watch him on TV by the Griffiths in Grand Parade, they were the only family we knew who owned a television set at the time. When we eventually got our own TV, we were allowed to sit on the sofa with a 'fork dinner' on a Sunday night and watch Disneyland (dinner was normally eaten every night at the dining table). My father was also a member of the Taylor Range Pistol Club and in the 1960s drove a Ford Customline.
While we were young my mother stayed at home with us. As well as the normal home duties she volunteered at the school tuckshop, school fetes and played tennis with friends at the courts in Royal Parade. She also enjoyed painting. Our first family car was a grey Austin A40. Mum would drive us up the hill to Ashgrove West Kindergarten and later to Ashgrove State School until we were old enough to walk to and from school on our own, or with friends. On shopping days she would load the car with up to six children to be dropped off at school and three adults to go shopping (there were no seat belts In those days of course). Groceries were bought locally at 'The Terminus' in Ashgrove or at Chandler's Corner opposite the bridge. Bread and milk were delivered daily. Later when we went to The Gap High School, the shopping was done at the supermarket near the school. In the 1960s my mother drove a Mini Minor.
My mother had a passion for theatre which started when she became a member of 'The Globe Players' in Sydney. In the late 1950s she rekindled her interest by involving herself with the Brisbane Repertory Theatre, first as an actress, then producer/director and later as theatre secretary. In those early days, Brisbane Repertory Theatre used different halls to stage their plays as they did not own a hall of their own. They did, however, own a couple of old houses on a site in Hale Street Milton, one of which they used for rehearsals. My mother decided to experiment with this rehearsal room to produce and stage plays 'in-the-round'. It was so successful that the theatre group converted the other house into a theatre-in-the-round. As the popularity of theatre-in-the-round increased the iconic 'La Boite' Theatre building was built on this site. Designed by Blair Wilson using discarded bricks to keep costs down, the building won an architectural award and the discarded bricks 'look' became fashionable. My mother was eventually made a Life Member of La Boite Theatre.
In the 1950s, our Austin A40 was well used on holidays. We would go with friends on day trips to either College's Crossing or Cash's Crossing on The Brisbane River. On longer trips we would pack our camping gear into the car boot and onto the roof racks. What didn't fit there was then packed into the footwell behind the front seats up to the level of the back seat. We used it like a large travelling bed (pre seatbelts) while mum and dad sat in the front. In the 1960s we would stay with friends at their holiday homes in Binna Burra, Caloundra, Surfers Paradise and South Stradbroke Island.
We walked a lot in the 1950s and 60s. We walked to and from the Ashgrove State School, Brownies and Guides on the corner of Grand Parade and Buckingham Street, and Sunday School at the Ashgrove Methodist Church. Walking home from school always started by going through the 'opening' in the ridge near the south west corner of the school grounds, then down the gravelly hill beside Waterworks Road, (dodging the quarry's sludgy rivulets on the way), then down the deeply creviced track to the bridge at the bottom of the hill. Sometimes we would stop at Hinton's Store in Royal Parade to buy a treat for the journey home. Our house was one of the furthest from the bridge so I could choose various routes to walk home. As a consequence I felt as though I knew The Woods fairly well. Most houses contained someone I knew, either friends from school or parents' friends. It seemed that everyone had a connection. I remember visiting the 'button man' who lived half way down London Street. He was in a wheel chair and made a living covering buttons and buckles with fabric to match the clothes we made. In the 1960s I walked mainly to and from the bus stop in Laird Street where I caught the bus to The Gap High School and later to Brisbane Girls Grammar School. To go to town we would catch a tram or a bus from 'The Terminus'.
My earliest social memory is of a gathering (maybe a Christmas party) in the hall at 'Granite House' in Laird Street. Lots of parents and children from The Woods were there. We also went to the movies (the pictures) at the Ambassador Theatre near the bridge, where we lounged in low slung canvas seats. During the 1960s I went to progressive dance lessons in Ambassador Hall after school.
During the 1950s we played outside most of the time. If it rained we played under the house. We made things like puppets from scraps of material and bits of wood and staged puppet shows, used blackboard, chalk and dolls to play 'schools' and used old tins, packets and pretend money to play 'shops'. We would bandage up dolls and play 'hospitals', use old clothes to play 'dress-up' and make cubby houses in the back yard gully where the banana trees grew. If there was a pile of dirt or a sand pit around we would create towns for our toys to live in. 'Hide-and-seek', 'tiggy', 'hopscotch', 'cowboys and indians' and bike riding were also regular activities. During the 1950s and before the army houses were built, we played quite a lot in the bush opposite our house. I remember once finding some hidden cubby houses. They were deep rectangular holes dug into the ground and covered with branches to disguise their appearance and secret openings. When it rained, we would play 'boats' in the little streams that ran down our dirt road. That game only lasted until the grader came along and flattened the road again.
Cracker night was also great fun. For days we would gather branches from the bush and build a bonfire. It was a popular event and children and adults would gather in their front yards to light crackers and watch the bonfire burn. The next day we would get up early and look for 'fizzers' (crackers that hadn't gone off) and continue the fun again. At Easter we would make baskets from bush materials and leave them on the front verandah. We were told that overnight the Easter Bunny would come from the bush over the road and leave Easter eggs in our baskets. One year a bush fire became rather threatening and garden hoses were brought out just in case. During my teens I became more interested in listening to pop music and spent many hours in my room recording the 'Top 40' on a large reel-to-reel tape recorder. On hot days we would walk down Grand Parade and across the creek to Greenlanes swimming pool. There was always someone there we knew.
When I was old enough I had chores to do, although they weren't called chores, just 'helping out'. I remember doing simple cooking, setting the table, tidying my room, hosing the garden, hanging the washing and damping down the clothes for ironing (before steam irons). Any money I was given went into my Commonwealth Bank tin money box which all of us were given at school.
Our house was originally a two bedroom chamfer board house on concrete stumps with a tiled roof. Under the house there was a laundry, workshop and garage containing a pit which allowed my father to service under the car. In 1958 a septic tank was installed and a WC (water closet) was added to the back landing. The old earth closet In the back yard was then taken away by a football team. The WC was later connected to sewerage in 1965. The house was tenanted for many years and eventually sold in 2002. The property was sold again in 2009 but this time the house was extensively renovated.
The spirit of our old family home remains despite the changes, but sadly most of my family and their early memories of St John's Wood are gone. Grandad died in 1968, Carrol in 1982, Dad in 1991 and Mum in 2004.
I have very fond memories of growing up in The Woods.
Rona can be contacted at [email protected]
Early photos of 80 St Johns Ave and the Burke Family
The next generation for 80 St Johns Ave...
The new owners purchased the house in 2009 and engaged an architect to preserve the post-war architecture style whilst providing a contemporary solution.
