A Chat With... Graham Minnis

“... I remember my first day at Capeen and the teacher asking, ‘do you mind blood and guts? Because we’ve arranged a dog fight!’...”

I absolutely loved school and was fortunate to have considered some of my teachers as role models during my primary and high school years. I remember seeing them out of school doing the usual daily chores such as shopping at the supermarket, and I would look up to them as though they were of celebrity status. I admired my teachers so much in fact that I considered becoming a school teacher myself, only to chicken out when I got accepted into the course for fear that I would not do well at it.

Graham Minnis and his wife walk past our office most mornings, on a mission to get their daily exercise out of the way. I recently stopped them in the street and asked Graham if he would be interested in sitting down to have a chat with me. He was rather shy, I think I must have caught him off-guard, but after a little bit of coaxing, he agreed to the chat, much to my delight.

Graham was born in Lismore in 1945 and was raised on a dairy farm just outside Old Bonalbo along with his siblings David, Ian Marlene and Joy – who passed away soon after her birth.

“It was up in the hills, in the Richmond Range,” he told me.

After a while, his father, Oliver, gave up the dairy farm, and decided to buy a log truck and go  carting logs from the bush with his cousin.

Graham has fond memories of his childhood, enjoying a close friendship with his siblings and love and respect for his parents.

“Dad was a fairly quiet type of bloke, probably a bit like me. Mum (Margaret) was more outgoing. They were both pretty sociable, but we didn’t have many holidays. Dad was always working, and Mum was raising the family. There were three years between each of us kids, and we did everything together. As a family we’d go on picnics, go horse riding (I rode a horse to school), or go swimming, we tried to do as much as we could together.”

At the age of 10, Graham and the family had planned on moving to Chinchilla where his father had secured a contract tank sinking, but decided it was too far for the family. 

“Then Dad got a job driving a truck at Ballina Sawmill which was supposed to be for 6 weeks, but he ended up staying in Ballina for 45 years!” Graham laughs, “When the mill closed he bought a fruit truck and supplied fruit for everyone in the area.”

Graham began his education at Old Bonalbo, then moved to Capeen, a small one-teacher school and then onto South Lismore Primary School and finally to Ballina Primary and High Schools.

“I remember my first day at Capeen and the teacher asking, ‘do you mind blood and guts? Because we’ve arranged a dog fight!’ He brought in a Fox Terrier pup to fight a huge hunting dog belonging to one of the students. The big dog was the one that got scared and took off!” He laughs.

“I can remember my first day at South Lismore. All the kids at school were given free bottles of Coca-Cola to try. I was excited, because I thought it was Cocoa! I’d never heard of Coca-Cola before. When I tasted it, I spat it out! Another kid got two bottles” 

Primary school in a rural community meant small class sizes but South Lismore was an eye-opener. 

“I couldn’t believe the amount of people who were there! It was overwhelming! Thankfully, I knew a couple of the kids there which made it a little less daunting. I was better prepared for life in Ballina.”

I asked Graham if he enjoyed school?

“I did, actually. Yes, I really liked school. I always had really good teachers which helped. My Grade 1 teacher at Old Bonalbo saw that I was a natural with reading and she believed in me. I seemed to learn to read well quite young. She really encouraged me. By the end of Year 1, I was reading Year 3 books. I also had a very influential science teacher, Malcolm Parry, at Ballina High. It was important to my parents that we all had a good education, but also for us to help out at home.”

At the completion of his Year 11 Leaving Certificate, opportunity came knocking when Graham was offered a scholarship with the Department of Education. Along with the post-war baby boomers came a desperate need for teachers, and so Graham was set for New England University in Armidale where he also boarded.

“It was my first time away from home and of course I missed my family. I came home during school holidays and I’d also work on my uncle’s dairy farm near Casino. I thoroughly enjoyed my course and not once did I question the idea of becoming a teacher.”

Graham’s first teaching job after completing his course was in Gundagai. Although excited about the new venture, there was one problem – where would he live? 

“Accommodation was scarce and during a conversation with one of my Year 11 students, he suggested that his Mum had a spare room I might be able to stay in at Nangus. So, it was organised, I stayed there. Then that same student decided that I should go on a blind date with a friend of his family which I agreed to. Her name was Marg and she was very pretty. She was outgoing and very attractive. Anyway, that all seemed to be going well and so I asked her Mum’s permission to marry her because she was under 21. In those days you asked permission if they were under 21. Marg’s father had passed away just before we got together, and I never had the chance to meet him. Marg’s Mum was a beautiful lady. We married on the 10th of May 1969, and hired a van and went on a bit of a road trip for our honeymoon. We went to Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Echuca, Deni and Hay. When we got between Deni and Hay I took a photo of the scenery and said to Marg ‘Well, we’ll never be back in this flat country again!’ Never did we imagine we would end up back this way!” 

The newlyweds initially lived with Marg’s mother, then moved into a flat in Gundagai, before settling in Goulburn for three years. Marg found casual work and they enjoyed their time there in spite of the cold!

In 1972, it became apparent that there was a shortage of headteachers, particularly in rural areas and at the top of the list of towns affected was Barham. They were looking for someone to head the Maths and Science Department at Barham High School.

“I applied for the job and was offered the position for two years. We had never heard of Barham and had to look it up on the road map. I travelled down at the end of 1972. The road from Deni to Barham was dirt. We went to my sister’s place in Tasmania for Christmas and we called in to see Barham on the way home. We crossed the bridge and the main street had been ripped up. Marg’s first view of Barham was a dirt main street. She asked where do they tie up the horses? There was a problem with accommodation, no teaching houses except for school principals. There was a house on the river where all the single teachers used to board. There would be three teachers to a room, and the owners of the house lived in a caravan out the back. We ended up renting the Uniting Church house. It wasn’t long after we arrived in Barham that we made lifelong friends in Jim and Joyce O’Neill, Neil and Joy Eagle, Pat and Horace Hahn and Alan and Rose Millar. They were very welcoming.”

Throughout the entire interview, Marg has been sitting to Graham’s side, smiling at every memory he shares. Every now and then, they look to one another and smile, as though acknowledging the accuracy of each story.

Life in Barham was about to get a whole lot busier when Graham and Marg were blessed with the arrival of their first child just before Christmas in 1974, a son they named Andrew.

I ask what Graham thought about becoming a father. He responds with the biggest smile.

“Great. I loved it! I was so happy. Then 20 months later, Andrew got a brother in August, that’s when Greg was born. Then there was a bit of a gap and along came Steven in February 1983, followed by Jacqui in March 1985.”

I think it’s fair to assume that Graham would consider becoming a father his greatest achievement.

“Well, it’s just such a wonderful feeling. We had waited for a long time to have our children and then when they came along, it was just the best thing. We’d had a lot of experience with kids and we felt a close bond with them straight away. All of our kids are close which was important to us. I was so proud of Marg, I still am. I was fortunate to see all of my children being born. I remember when Greg was born, and Liz Gorey would sneak me down to the nursery to see him. That’s how you got to see the babies back then, when the nurse would hold them up and you’d look at them through the glass. They never used to stay in the room with the mother, they were kept in the nursery. It was convenient having the school right next to the hospital because I could easily pop in and see them during breaks.”

I wonder when Graham looks back on those early days of fatherhood, what he believes was the best part about those times?

“Coming home from work and seeing them, coming up to me all cuddles and smiles. I also enjoyed singing them to sleep and reading to them.”

What a lovely memory, I think to myself.

“When Greg was a baby, we bought a caravan and I took long service leave so we could head off on a holiday. That was in 1979, we went around Australia for 4 months. It was the beginning of the touring Australia boom. There were a lot of dirt roads but it was great camping. Sometimes we’d be the only people at the campsite. It was lovely; no air con, no devices, no technology – just us. We did a bit of camping with all of the kids and they were such wonderful times. Just all being together.”

I’m curious as to how disciplining his own children differed to disciplining his students?

“I’d say it was harder to discipline our own kids. But harder for them than what it was for me. Andrew was a student of mine, then I taught the three boys physics. They’d get embarrassed if I had to go on excursions with them, which we tried to avoid as much as we could.

In the early days, there were huge classes. Year 11 and 12 were in together in a small room. Students had to climb over the desks to get to the seats at the back of the room, Year 10 had 40-odd kids in the class and in a Year nine class, the teacher had to climb over the desks to get to the front of the room. There were very few materials to use for teaching. We worked from the Messel Books, we called it ‘the blue bible.’ There used to only be 5 years of high school and then in 1967 they introduced 6 years of high school. At Goulburn, I taught classes of forty-four in labs designed to hold thirty. There were large classes at Barham as well.”

I’m interested to find out what made Graham so passionate about teaching and why he stayed in the career for so long? 

“I loved the challenge. It was really something when you saw a student making progress and seeing them so determined to learn. Something else I loved about teaching was my involvement in hockey. We had a hockey team which I coached when I worked in Gundagai, and I coached the school team in Goulburn. We won the state championship. When I came to Barham, they were playing footy. They’d had two girls hockey teams, but the woman who had been coaching them left. There was a strong comp around here and the coaches were almost all male teachers. A teacher from Kerang and I started a men’s competition in 1974 with teams from Barham, Kerang and Swan Hill. We kept the competition going until 1980 and it started to fall to pieces, so we folded.”

At this point, Marg mentions some of the reasons she thinks they have enjoyed living in Barham so much and at the top of the list is Apex.

“Ali, I think Apex was one of the best things we have been part of here. Graham joined when we first came to Barham after being invited by Malcolm Evans. I loved it because it was filled with like-minded people.”

Graham elaborates.

“I stayed in Apex until I was 41. I had been President twice and was involved in many activities including setting up Apex Park. I was awarded Life Membership when I retired. Something else that I was proud of was my involvement with Scouts. I was president of the local Scout group and the South Western Riverina Scouts. There were groups in Wakool, Moulamein, Deniliquin, Balranald and Moama. Now Barham is the only one still functioning. In 1992, I was able to run a Riverina Jamborette which was very successful. We had lots of activities and this jamborette was remembered for many years afterwards as being one of the most successful. Each of the kids were involved in Scouts. 

“When our kids were involved in swimming, I was president of the swimming club and vice president of the pool committee. Then after a while, my commitments were becoming too much so I pulled out of swimming and the Primary School P&C, of which I was president, and just kept Scouts and Apex going.”

I’ll bet that freed Graham up a bit to enjoy some more social time or did he take up a hobby?

“Well, I decided to do a uni degree in school administration! I was with the University of New England at night to complete the course.”

Seeing a pattern here, Graham isn’t one to sit still for too long?

“Not really, no! I joined Lions then and took on a scout leader job also for a few years. Then when Jacqui left with Venturer, I left Scouts.”

I read back over my notes at this point and to be honest, it makes me feel very lazy when it comes to the community. Clearly, Graham has a natural ability and passion for teaching which is apparent with all of his leadership roles. What a patient man he must be!

“I just figure that if you’re going to live in a community then you may as well do something for them. I didn’t drink or play footy. Lions have been a big part of our lives for the last thirty years. My times in Lions have included many activities including the youth activities like Youth of the Year and a Nurses Scholarship, probably the most important being the Junior Public Speaking Competition. This was an initiative of Tracy Davis. I took it over and expanded it to become a District competition involving clubs along the Murray River. I then organised it to become a series of competitions held around Australia. 

“I have also been assisting John Boyd in running the Lions Bingo which involves one night each week. I also organised the Fruit Fly Trap distribution while that was in place. I have been awarded the Melvin Jones Fellowship which is the highest honour a club can award a member. 

“In 2018, I was awarded Citizen of the Year by the Murray River Council.” 

 By 2005, Graham found himself growing tired of teaching and so at the age of 60, he decided it was time to retire.

“Marg was running a very busy family daycare service at the time so I was helping her out with that. When I left Barham High School, there were over 300 students there. Now it is half of that. We had raised our kids to become independent and honest citizens and I think their Scout training certainly helped with that also. They were all self-sufficient, so when they all left home, while we missed them, we were happy for them to begin the next chapter of their lives. Marg and I did a trip around Australia the year after I retired for 8 months. Then in 2010, I decided to join the show committee. Marg became involved in her church group and after Joan Simeon retired as secretary of the show committee I took over. It was a big job, bigger than I thought it would be.”

Locals had formed a committee to try and get a brand new skate park built in town for kids and when the Wakool Shire suggested they’d need to raise $10,000, the committee turned to the Lions Club for their help. Graham became President of the committee. Together with fruit fly traps distribution and Lions donations, they raised the money. A government grant was secured to build the Skate Park.

“Yeah, we were pretty pleased with that outcome. At first, the skate park was going to be right in town but then they decided it was better to have it across from the footy oval. I think it’s been a very welcome addition to the community. We are now getting a BBQ built on the site.”

As we wind up the interview, I can’t wait to see how Graham answers my final questions, starting with - what has he learned?

“That family is first and foremost. Be involved in some way in your community. If you’re involved in groups, when you retire you’ve still got purpose and belonging. Everything slows down in retirement. Marg and I used to run around, now we just walk because there’s always tomorrow. We potter more, we get into the garden and we’ve seen more overseas travel. In November last year, I had a heart attack when we were in Cambodia and ended up having a quadruple bypass. It was pretty scary. This year has been pretty quiet and we’re enjoying taking it easy.”

What would you like to say to Marg and to your kids?

“Well, let me think…” (ponders for few moments), “to Marg I would say that I love you and thank you for loving me. To my kids, I would like to say that I’d like you to bring your families up the best way you can and be involved with them the best way you can. Treat the world the way you wish to be treated.”

And finally, what defines your happiness these days?

“My family and the community I live in. I love being at home, but I still love to travel. I have six grandchildren who I adore. Yeah, I’m pretty happy.” 

Graham Minnis, thank you so very much for the chat. It has been a pleasure.