From cane fields to suburbs: Recollections of simpler times past

Norma lives in the same house that Noel built for them, at Nambour Heights, 70 years ago when they were not long married.

by Janine Hill

HAVE YOU ever wondered what it would have been like to live on the Sunshine Coast before suburbs mushroomed and the roads rushed with traffic, when plains of cane fields rippled under summer breezes and only stars lit the night? 

Norma Poole does not wonder. She remembers. 

Norma has lived on the Sunshine Coast all of her 88 years  and her memory keeps a picture show of the area from the 1930s to today.

Cane farmers

Norma’s family  lived on a cane farm at Maroochy River with her parents, Bert and Annie, and her older brother and sister when she was little.

“We had a big flood when I was about four and my mum got scared. The water came up the floor. We had a boat tied up with rope through the window to a bed post,” Norma said.

After the flood, Bert pulled down the house, which was on the south side of the river, and rebuilt it on drier ground on the north side of the river. 

That meant Norma had to row a boat to the one-teacher, one room school at Dunethin Rock, navigating the sometimes-strong current on her own from the age of seven.

“Dad taught me to row like he taught us to swim. He put me in the boat and pushed me out and said, ‘Row’. He taught us to swim by throwing us in the water and saying, ‘Swim’,” she said.

The journey to school got a little easier when she was able to catch a boat to school from a jetty near home.

Norma remembers an army camp between her house and Yandina during World War Two, when there were concerns the Queensland coastline could be vulnerable to invasion.

“The soldiers had these amphibious vehicles they’d drive along the road and put into the water to go and patrol the river,” she said.

“There was barbed wire along the beach at Maroochydore. Dad would go down at night to patrol, as a volunteer.”

Their windows at home were blacked out at night and there was a trench at home and at school that she knew she needed to get into if they heard an aircraft overhead.

“It wasn’t very nice getting in them.”

Norma fell in love with Noel Poole, a young builder and good mate of her sister’s boyfriend, Norm “Digger” Thomas, when she was 18.

She lives in the same house that Noel built for them, at Nambour Heights, 70 years ago when they were not long married.

“We paid 100 pounds for the land. They wanted 160 pounds for the ones along the front,” she said, referring to blocks which once had coastal views that have now been built out.

The new house was the first time Norma, who grew up with Aladdin and kerosene lamps, had anyting to do with electricity. But it was still very basic, with no interior wall linings and not much furniture.

“We had a box for a table and no chairs,” she said.

Their house is in a typical suburban setting but in those days, was surrounded by passionfruit vines and mango trees.

Noel built three of the houses opposite their own as others arrived in the growing area. “It was all young families in those days. We were all friends. Now I’m the only one left,” Norma said.

Norma and Noel, who died five years ago, had four children. Although many mothers of the day did not work, Norma did at times.  “We had four mouths to feed.”

One of her jobs was to collect photographic films for processing from chemist shops on the Sunshine Coast and drop it at the train station to be processed in the city, and then drop the printed photographs back at the chemist shops for customers to collect.

“I’d go from Nambour to Buderim and then down to Maroochydore and along the Coast to Caloundra. Down at Kawana, it was all wildflowers through there then.”

Another of her jobs involved collecting, cleaning and delivering hire cars often used by passengers flying in and out of the Sunshine Coast airport, which was a much smaller affair in those days than it is now.

“If I had to go across to Surfair, which was the only building then, I’d just walk straight across from the airport. You can’t do that now – it’s all fenced off.”

One day, a co-worker whose job was to tell pilots about the weather conditions and see the planes off did not turn up for work. 

Norma was able to tell the pilots about the wind speed and not much else and found herself on the tarmac guiding a plane about to take off. “I had to put one finger up when one propeller came on, and then the other one when the other propeller was working,” she said.

In retirement, Noel and Norma travelled around Australia four times in a caravan. She would love to go again but is not confident about manoeuvring a caravan on her own.

She is still very fit and walks 2km around the streets near her home every day, although a bacterial infection in her lung has curtailed her exercise in recent months. She spends about two hours a day in the garden, much of it raking up leaves, and mows her own lawn although one of her grandchildren does it for her if she needs.

Her doctor tells her to keep doing what she is doing as long as she can keep doing it. 

“It’s just staying active,” she said.

Norma still drives but this is where she draws the line at interacting with the modern Sunshine Coast.

“If I need to go down to the Coast, I ring my daughter or get someone else to drive me. It’s too busy,” she said.