CENTURY IN SOUTHPORT
100 years in Southport ... then Norma’s planning a move
NORMA Haydock is quite possibly the last of a generation of Gold Coasters who can recall first-hand the modest roots of what is now one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities.
The 99-year-old lives just 50m from where she was born on a property where Cav’s Steakhouse in Labrador now stands.
It will be the end of an era for the born-and-bred Southport local when she turns 100 on June 21 and says goodbye to the war service home on Brett Street she and her husband acquired after World War II and moves north to live with family.
But as she reflects on her 99 years on the Coast, there’s not much the proud Queenslander would have changed.
“There were so many fishermen around at that time,” she said.
“There wasn’t the people around then. Frank Street was a gravel road.
“There were houses, odd places … but nothing like it is now. The train used to come down from Brisbane.”
The mother-of-three can still remember sitting on the front steps of the home built by her father Carl Hage in about 1914 and watching large logs being hauled by bullock teams from the Broadwater back towards Johnson and Freeman – a timber merchant based behind the Railway Hotel.
The second eldest of four girls, Norma’s parents moved from South Stradbroke Island to Southport, where she was born in 1917, as her father turned from oyster farming to fishing.
Norma lived through the Depression and went to school at the Star of the Sea convent in Marine Parade which was demolished in September to make way for a multi-tower development.
She joined the Women’s Australian Air Force at the outbreak of war after working as housekeeper for a World War I veteran.
She married her husband Neville in 1942, after the couple “met and flirted” at dances at the Southport RSL.
Neville served around the world as a driver in the Australian Army during the war including in Syria, Egypt and Papua New Guinea where he caught malaria 11 times and was deemed incapacitated – earning him a pension when he returned home in 1945.
Norma says it was directly after the war when her parents died and their property was sold to the Beef Baron (later Cav’s Steakhouse) that she first started noticing the Coast changing.
Neville worked for the Postmaster-General’s department before retiring and falling ill with bowel cancer.
Norma regularly visited him at TriCare aged care home at Labrador until he passed away 22 years ago.
Now, with six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, Norma says she will miss the place she has called home for so many years.
But it’s not ill health that sees the spritely 99-year-old moving away – it’s the lure of family and the desire not to live next door to the 12- storey, $20 million apartment tower proposed for the Cav’s Steakhouse site.
She will move north to Bribie Island after her 100th birthday to live with her daughter Ailsa.
“I hate leaving Southport … (But) it would be all dusty and everything like that (living here during the construction of a tower),” she said.
Norma will also say goodbye to her beloved Queens Park tennis club and Southport Bowls Club where she regularly plays cards and is a life member.
“This is her house and her garden – it’s beautiful,” said her daughter Ailsa. “But we worry about her.
“She’s going to move after her birthday. She’s going to have 100 years on the Coast.”
And while she attributes her longevity to staying active by keeping her independence, Norma doesn’t plan on slowing down.
“I haven’t got a walking stick, I haven’t got a pusher,” she said.
“(My doctor) said ‘how many steps have you got?’ I said 15 … he said, ‘that’s doing you good’.
“I pick the leaves (in the garden) up every day – people must think I’m stupid.”