In 1949, Ivy McCullagh moved her three boys from the country town of Cunnamulla to the big smoke of Brisbane in search of a better life, but instead found a desperate housing shortage that threatened to leave her and her children homeless.
“We couldn't get a place at all, not even a room when we first came down from the country,” Ivy said. “We had to stay – we had no choice – and that's how we came to the Housing Commission.”
Ivy and her sons Arthur, Chris and Don lived in a temporary accommodation camp at Gregory Terrace with other families in similar situations before being granted their own home in Enoggera.
“Moving into this place felt like heaven because I'd never lived in a proper house,” Ivy said.
Ivy's husband, Arthur, stayed in Cunnamulla to work as a wool presser but it was only seasonal work so his income was irregular. Ivy supplemented her husband's irregular wage by cleaning houses and taking in ironing. “I was always ironing,” she said. “I had corns on my hands from ironing – everything in those days was heavily starched.”
Washing days were indeed something to be remembered.
“You had to boil up the old copper by lighting a fire underneath. You had a galvanised tub and you put a draining board over the top of it and you took the clothes out of the copper with a copper stick, drained it and put the water back in ready for the next lot of clothes.”
Ivy, 83, still lives in the same house she moved into 55 years ago. “They're lovely memories when you look back.”
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