With the 75^th anniversary dinner of the Tin Can Bay School being held this month, we continue to visit with former students still living in the Bay.  Tom Wilson, classmate of Trevor Mason of last issue’s “Where I Hang My Hat…”, started at the school in 1944 and left at the age of 15 in 1954 to join prawn trawler the “Winnie Vee”. 

“Mum made me stay at school as long as possible,” says Tom.  “When I started at the school it went to Grade 7, so I was looking forward to leaving when I was 13 or 14.  But just my luck, in my year it started going up to Grade 8 so I had to stay on the extra year.”

His favourite memories of his later school years involve teacher Margaret McDougall.  Although employed as a preschool teacher, she regularly organised trips for the older children and would take them on the ferry or down to the point for a bonfire. 

“About eighteen months ago a car pulled up to the house, and Ann Alexander who I also went to school with asked if I recognised her.  I told her of course I did, and she then said she had a surprise for me in her car – it was Margaret McDougall, aged 84, here all the way from Western Australia and wanting to have a look around the place she lived all those years ago.  I told her she hadn’t changed a bit.”

Tom’s strong family ties with the local area start with his mother Agnes, who was part of Goomboorian pioneer families Gillis and Ross.  His fisherman father Bill was born in Maryborough in 1890, and along with Tom’s grandfather Thomas Wilson ran a successful Boonooroo business selling smoked fish.  They were also oyster merchants, with 13 local oyster leases, and caught crabs by hooking them out of their holes on a rod.  Customers included the governor of Queensland at the time, Sir Leslie Wilson – who a very young Tom mistook for a relative and greeted him with an embrace around his leg and a hearty “hello Uncle Leslie”!

Seven years travelling up and down the Queensland coast on the trawler followed Tom’s school years, with annual visits back home to his parents in Tin Can Bay.  Tom still lives in the house on The Esplanade that his parents built circa 1950, on land his father purchased in 1930.  His father died in 1953, and a few years later Tom left the family house with caretakers and moved to Redcliffe to accompany his mother, but made regular trips back to the area.  After 25 years in Redcliffe, and a stint in Deception Bay, Tom retired in 1992 and returned to Tin Can Bay, where he has remained – fishing and crabbing regularly – ever since.   

“I’ve lived near the water all me life,” Tom says.  “I’m not sure I’d survive being away from it for any length of time!  Even a few miles inland I may as well be in the desert.”

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