Cannon Hill grandparents, Jan and Terry Turner, are so entwined with the Commission; they're practically family. While Terry painted public housing for most of his life, Jan's family would have faced a life on the streets without it.
In another twist, Terry's dad Arthur was in one of the Commission's first labour gangs building public houses from 1946.
Seven years later, as a lad of 13 and keen to earn some cash, Terry followed his dad's footsteps and started his five-year painting apprenticeship earning three pounds, 18 shillings and 6 pence ($7.85) a fortnight.
“I guess Pop organised everything. We had a lot of men back then but we had to work hard.” Together, father and son and two of Terry's brothers, Ron and Peter, worked on hundreds of public houses all over Brisbane.
Forty-seven years later, after mixing with the entire range of tradesmen, Terry became a leading hand-painter. When he retired in 2000 with almost five decades service, he was one of the Commission's longest-serving employees. “Everybody got on and I used to love going to work,” he said. “We were all mates. Every lunch, we'd play cricket and bust windows but we'd always fix them again.”
In 1961, Terry married his childhood sweetheart Jan Field. Her single mother, Joyce, and her six children were homeless so she left them all in the City Botanic Gardens one day with strict instructions not to move until she returned. “We had nothing, and nowhere to go and were facing having to sleep on the streets,” Jan said.
Joyce spent the entire day at the City's Commission offices and was granted a hut at Camp Muckley.
Two years later, this family of seven were granted a home of their own and despite the cramped conditions, Jan remembers the excitement. “We felt like we were moving into paradise,” Jan said.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License