FEATURE - Hinterland History - Take a Moment in Time

by Cate Patterson, Montville History Group

A random photo in an old copy of Montville Memories – A Pictorial Journey published in 1987 inspired this story of little Constance Gertrude Lottie Witton, who stands in the foreground of this 1915 photo featuring mailman Owen Callaghan’s coach and four standing in front of the Montville Post Office and Store.

She is a tentative four-year old with a finger to her mouth, standing in a lacy frilled dress and distinguished from the local children. What we can’t tell from the black and white photo but learn later is that she is blonde-haired blue-eyed and fair complexioned like her father.

Connie arrived in Brisbane in April 1915. It was a tumultuous time in Australia’s history with the landing of Gallipoli, and men leaving the land and their families, to enlist and support the war effort. 

Despite the unsettled times, Joe Witton, his wife Gertrude and young daughter had boarded the Roscommon in London for the two-month voyage determined to settle in Australia and become dairy farmers.

Joe purchased just over forty acres from Remington and Burnett, early Montville settlers and called his dairy property, Beverley. 

With about 20 acres felled and grassed for grazing and ten acres cleared for an orchard, the property promised lush feed for cattle, high yielding citrus, and the rich volcanic soil would grow healthy crops. It boasted a well and springs in the gullies with two tanks for water storage. 

The high set home had four rooms and a verandah all around with its local timber boards and iron roof cladding was a very different house from their stone cottage at Winfarthing South in the North district of Norfolk.

When Connie started school in 1916 she had a two-mile walk from her place along what is now Balmoral Road. Her best friend was Jean Muirhead, a year younger. 

Winning a scholarship meant Connie could study teaching. She became a Junior Teacher at Kelvin Grove Girls and Infants State School in 1929 where she worked for six years.  By 1933 she had gained her two-year teacher training and been promoted. 

This was the same year that Connie met her ‘tall, dark and handsome’ – Roy Greenham, an ambitious young 25-year-old.  The couple became engaged, with Connie prepared to resign from teaching and support Roy’s aspirations to gain his science degree.

Always a popular friend and teacher, Connie was treated to a farewell lunch by her fellow staff in Brisbane. At Montville, her friends entertained Connie at several pre-wedding afternoon teas and hosted a social afternoon for her at the Montville School of Arts in April, 1935. 

In addition, her mother hosted two dozen friends to show off Connie’s trousseau as the wedding promised to be quite the social event for Montville.

The wedding was held in Montville at St Mary’s Church of England, with the Reverend Spencer-Booth officiating and Mr. Herbert Coulter at the organ. The bride wore a moulded gown of magnolia satin, featuring a fish-tall train and carried a sheaf of gladioli grown by the local florist, Monty Dart. 

Connie chose two bridesmaids; her friend Jessie Stevenson and Maisie Greenham, Roy’s sister. They both wore a chalk-blue gown slashed with silver lame. Their headdresses, held with halos of forget-me-nots, were of stiffened tulle, and they carried cherry-pink gladioli. Frederick Whyatt and Leslie Greenham were groomsmen.  

The reception was held at the Manjalda Guest House at Montville, a practical choice as it was just a short walk from the School of Arts and offered magnificent views, as does the current Mayfair Complex now located on that site. The couple enjoyed a brief honeymoon at Alexandra Headlands. 

In the following years when work for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company took Roy overseas to Persia, the United States and New Guinea, Connie came to Montville and stayed with her parents. 

Even through the war years when Roy became a Captain with the RAAF flying Avro Ansons, Connie visited her parents and friends in Montville. 

Connie died at her St Lucia home aged 92 in 2003. Although she had no siblings and no children, we have a photo of a fair-haired girl from 1915 and snippets from newspapers to piece together a whole life from just that one moment in time.