Norma Mills
Norma Mills has had ties to Kelvin Grove and its surrounding areas since 1936. Her brother, Bob ‘Lucky’ Simpson served in the AIF and was a POW on the Burma-Thailand Railway.
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Transcript
Lucky for Some
My parents lived at Herston when I was born in 1936. At age five the family moved to the Newmarket end of Ashgrove Avenue, so Kelvin Grove Road became our thoroughfare to the city, the Royal Brisbane Hospital, and also to visit my aunt in Hale Street, Petrie Terrace. My first recollection of Kelvin Grove was the army barracks where my brother Bob, who later became known as ‘Lucky’, and who was 15 years my senior, joined the militia at 17 years of age. He attended courses every week and spent weeks in camp every year. In July 1940, Bob enlisted in the AIF at Kelvin Grove and became a gunner in the artillery and a member of the 2/10 Field Regiment. He left Brisbane by train on the 1st of February in 1941 with the regiment, and from Sydney on the Queen Mary, bound for Singapore. He was one of the original members of the regiment. He became a POW on the 15th of February 1942 and was sent to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway. He died in that camp on the 18th of February 1944 and was buried the next day on what would have been his 23rd birthday. This was something we as his family were not to know of until after the Japanese surrender in August 1945. In 1949 I attended North Brisbane Intermediate School to finish my compulsory schooling to scholarship in Grade 7 or age 14. The big sandstone college building on Victoria Park Road, which was originally the North Brisbane Intermediate, and later the Teachers Training College. We weren’t in the big sandstone building—we were in the huts put up by the army down the hill during the war. Some of the other huts were converted into public housing. The only time we got to use the sandstone building was for domestic science classes. There was no playground for us—just gravel. We played around the college, under the building on the concrete. There was plenty of bush nearby but we didn’t play in it. I left NBI the last school day of 1950. By then I had turned 14. In June 1950 I started work at what is now David Jones, the big department store. I moved away from Brisbane, but on my return in 2003 I lived in School Street, Kelvin Grove, for eight months. I am now at Hilltop Gardens Retirement Village. I’ve seen a lot of changes to the area over the past 66 years, and all for the better.