Vince Stokes
Grandchester district
Date of interview: 1997
Interviewer: Robyn Buchanan
Interview available on CD
Track 01
Track 02
I went to the Grandchester State School. In those days,
some children came in cars to school, some walked, some
rode ponies - they had a small paddock up at the back of
the school where they kept the ponies and they used to
ride three or four miles sometimes to school. This was
when I started school in the late 1940s.
Getting back to my days, there was a bit of sport played
around Grandchester. We had a couple of cricket teams
in the early years and some of my cousins played cricket
for Grandchester. We all had ponies and horses and used
to ride them around the area. That was about the only
entertainment that there was.
In Grandchester in those days, we had a butcher shop,
a baker shop, a corner store. Prior to that, I believe that
there were two hotels in Grandchester where now there
is now only one. You could buy everything at the corner
store. You could buy your groceries there, get petrol for
your vehicle.
There were dances up in the hall every so often. If you
were lucky enough, you could go to the Rosewood or
Laidley picture theatre. We went mainly by car and we
rode our horses over a couple of times, saw the pictures
and then came home. Virtually, that is what everybody
did around Grandchester, it was a quiet dairying town at
that time.
At the Railway Station, they used to load pigs and calves
to send on to Cannon Hill in Brisbane every fortnight.
When I grew up, Grandchester was a farming area, we all
farmed and sent cream on the cream truck to Laidley to
the butter factory which no longer exists.
The farmers around Mt Mort and Hidden Vale depended
on the cream truck because they would take groceries out
from the Grandchester store and bring the cream back
in again. They’d call in in the morning and pick up the
groceries, bring the cream in and go to Laidley with it.
As time got on, people ventured away, some houses got
pulled down. After that, the tide turned in 20 or 30 years
and some people ventured back. Probably the good roads
brought them back and people decided “Let’s get out of
the city and go back to the country to live.”
But basically, it was a quiet lifestyle. Lots of people got
involved in everything that was on around Grandchester
- hall committees and cricket committees, a lot of sport.
People got involved which was great.
Eventually, I believe the butcher’s shop closed. That was
earlier than I can remember, but I remember the baker
shop, that eventually closed too.
After we left Grandchester School - it is a three teacher
school now, it was only one teacher then. - we all got jobs
and ventured out a bit. I got a job in Ipswich.
As time went on, with the better roads we have got, the
general store changed hands a few times and eventually
closed down.
Now I graze cattle. Most residents would do that, some
only keep them as a hobby farm, but I’m here all the
time.
Vince Stokes - oral history interview
29 - Grandchester Railway Station
A lot of people work away, the man and the wife - and
they just keep it as a hobby farm. These days, things
have changed so much, you couldn’t survive on dairying
today here. Those days, there might be 20 dairies around
Hidden Vale and around here. I think this is happening in
all country towns, not just Grandchester.
I’m still involved with the Grandchester Hall and I’m a
trustee of the recreation ground – that is appointed by
the Lands Department - and a committee member on
the Cemetery. Those sorts of things are still going, only
through voluntary labour.
The Cemetery - we keep it clean and tidy and keep it up
to date. We have to keep the books right because you get
a fair bit of people checking. I used to get a lot of it here
years ago until the Council put it on their computer and
now they just press buttons and tell people what they
wanted to know. But I had the books here and people used
to call at weekends and ask to look up such-and-such a
name and you’d have to go through the book of burials.
The Hall - we still keep it in repair. Most country halls
find it very hard to keep open. A lot of them have closed
but we still have it open. We just raised money last years
with chook raffles at the hotel to paint it. The Council did
give us some money, about half of it, but we had to find
the rest.
Its there, and you have to maintain a hall for around
Grandchester, well for any little country town, because
that’s the meeting place. If you want to have a meeting or
a function, you really have to have a hall. That’s basically
what we try to do at the Hall.
We run dances again now, but to run big dances with a
big band, it’s just not viable, we wouldn’t be able to get
the band money out of the hall because it’s not a very big
hall.
Grandchester Cemetery
Grandchester Community Hall
you wouldn’t have to get so many people to attend the
dance to make some money, but these days, you have.
We still keep it in repair and keep the grounds in order. It
still gets used by the school, when they have fancy-dress
balls, concerts, whenever thy want to do anything in it..
They get the use of the Recreation Ground for sports day
and if they want to play cricket in it.
There is still some social cricket gets played on the
Grounds. That keeps it going a little bit.
So things have changed these days to what they were
years ago. Then, you’d get a band very reasonably and
Vince Stokes - oral history interview
29 - The Stokes family farm on Lady Bowen Hill, Grandchester
Track 03
Track 04
You said you looked to Laidley as a centre?
Your family have been here for quite a while, haven’t
they?
Years ago, when we were children, we had more of
a tendency to go to Rosewood, I don’t know why. Not
only us, but all Grandchester people did have a tendency
to go to Rosewood. The road over the range was very
rough in those days, and at least there was a bitumen road
through [to Rosewood}. I know my Mother always used
to do her shopping in Rosewood. When the butcher shop
in Grandchester closed, we used to buy our meat from
Rosewood and it used to come up in a sugar bag on the
train, thrown out at the Railway Station and we used to
go down and get it off the platform, that’s how you got
your meat delivered in those days. .
In refrigeration?
Yes, I don’t know the exact year, but it would have been
about 80 years that they have been in Grandchester. They
called this road after us - Stokes Road.
We own the farm on the hill, that was where they had their
lunch when the first railway was opened from Ipswich to
Grandchester. They had the big official opening up on the
hill, that is where Lady Bowen planted a fig tree with a
knife. There was a big marquee, I have seen the photo.
People used to call it Lady Bowen Hill. Cribbs in Ipswich
sent an account every month, it always used to come to
“Lady Bowen Hill, Grandchester”
No, just as is. They just used to wrap it up in newspaper,
and put it in one of those sugar bags we used to call them,
hessian bags, and they’d tie the top and put it on the train.
You’d know what train it was going to come up on, say
the 10 o’clock train,, and the guard used to throw them
all out on the platform and stack them and we’d come
and take it home. That was in those days. There was no
refrigeration until you got it home. It might sit on the
Rosewood platform for about 15 to 20 minutes and sit
here at this end before you came down and got it.
Those days, you only went to Ipswich if you had to go
to Ipswich. That was when I was small, you didn’t go to
Ipswich a lot.
Early years
Prior to what I can remember, there used to be a lot of
timber carted into the Railway Station and loaded onto
the trains. There used to be about two horsedrawn wagons
and a couple of bullock teams. The timber came from all
around the district. It went to Ipswich, it must have been
to the mills in Ipswich. There are photos around showing
a bullock wagon coming into the Railway Station.
Vince Stokes - oral history interview
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