Chairman of Well-Being Australia Mark Tronson says it has been his privilege to have been a receiptent of wisdom from numerous such people leading up to and during his 18 years of founding the Sports and Leisure Ministry, 17 years as the Australian cricket team chaplain, and now 29 years in faith financed mission.
One of these people were my parents Seymour and Joan Tronson.
Mark Tronson picks up the story - Part 2 - Prior to his marriage in 1947, Seymour established his dairy at Crediton (Eungella, Mackay) in 1938. His knick name was "Trust to the Wind" for when clearing the land, he'd partially axe a row of trees down a gully and wait for the wind.
His brother Davis came for stints to help and for two years he ate and slept in his make-shift humpy. His parents Walter & Jessie helped construct the dairy infrastructure. Walter was a keen photographer, and we have many photographs of this early period. His diary can be read at:
bushorchestra.com/family_logo/life_of/TronsonBiographySeymour.html
Seymour planted grass seed and his diary of this period speaks of his ingenuity in finding water, how he worked for other farmers and road contractors to keep the money rolling in without ever borrowing.
Walter his father gave him 20 heifers from his Tewantin dairy and Seymour rode with them (sleeping too) from Coroy to Netherdale (the bottom of the Eungella range) in the cattle wagon collecting fresh grass for them at rail sidings.
The Livestock Bulletin magazine ran a story of this journey. Seymour had them trucked to the top of the range and then walked them the 13 miles to his plateau farm. He named each heifer. Raised on a dairy and with a God-given knack, he could talk "horse" & "cow". It was astonishing to see! This can be read in the Livestock Bulletin at:
bushorchestra.com/family_logo/life_of/TronsonBiographySeymour_files/page0001.html
Seymour was the first Crediton dairyman to have milking machines, he owned a motor car and upon the advice of his parents Walter and Jessie, brought an old shop building at Sarina, unpicked it, numbered each board, trucked it to his farm and re-erected it on hard-wood stilts "Queenslander style". The side of the house sported an advertising sign "Kinkara Tea".
He was the first Crediton dairy farmer to have a septic toilet. After the war his sister Illma & husband Wally (ex serviceman) came to Crediton allowing him to go on a working holiday "to find a wife"!
Joan Wynne in pre-war Sydney attended Central Baptist under the Ministry of the Rev Wilf Jarvis, a great Baptist preacher. It was here that Joan's Christian faith became passionately evangelical. Her most quoted passages were associated with those whom the Lord especially loves, the widow and the orphan.
Joan met Seymour who was fruit picking at Batlow and sensed God's hand on this strong meek man. He held in his heart that he'd marry a little English girl, indeed Joan was just such a woman.
Meanwhile in an age of sectarianism, from Gympie his grand-father T B Tronson (Irish Protestant) dramatised the Protestant martyrs to his children and grand-children. His son Walter (Seymour's father) sparred his children the dramatics. Yet Seymour's heart was stirred.
In 1954 Seymour's horse fell in a cyclone on the Crediton farm braking his left leg in three places necessitating moving with their three children into Mackay. Every night we three children were read Bible stories, we were given an evangelical philosophy, we were much loved, and our parents were founding members of the Mackay Baptist Church.
We were given a Protestant work ethic and in that era, they had a passion to provide their children the education they were not afforded, hence the moving to Canberra in 1960 to give their children the educational opportunities they did not get.
Our childhood was great fun. Seymour's steadiness was something else. As my elder brother Kim said at dad's funeral, they were parents on whose shoulders we could stand.