Mary has hands full
FROM boarding at the St Anne’s School in the 1950s to enjoying an active retirement, it’s fair to say Mary Gallagher has seen Townsville undergo a few changes over the years.
Even at 77 Mrs Gallagher certainly isn’t slowing down, playing an active role in the Anglican community.
Mrs Gallagher is a lay minister for St Matthew’s Mundingburra and a canon for the Anglican cathedral. This week she has been busy hanging artworks for the annual St James Cathedral arts and crafts exhibition.
She also runs the book show for St Matthew’s and proof reads and edits work for her husband, writer and researcher Don Gallagher.
“People say you get busier after you retire and it’s true,” she said.
Before she retired Mrs Gallagher worked as a library manager for TAFE.
“It was really wonderful – you would put people in touch with books and just help them out,” she said.
Mrs Gallagher met her husband in Brisbane where they both studied English literature. After they graduated he went on to work at the University College of Townsville, now known as James Cook University, while she worked at the University of Queensland.
After meeting again some time into their careers, the couple married and moved to Townsville in 1969.
They have two adult daughters, one living in Brisbane and one in New York.
Mr and Mrs Gallagher have mainly lived in Townsville throughout their married life, with a few overseas trips for research, including London and Austin, Texas.
But Ms Gallagher’s first taste of Townsville life came well before adult life.
Growing up on a sheep station between McKinley and Kynuna, Mrs Gallagher was sent to board at St Anne’s Church of England Girls’ School.
This later became The Cathedral School of St Anne and St James.
The school was originally located in the CBD at the site now occupied by the Townsville City Council.
“On the weekend we’d all get in a crocodile and walk down to The Strand and sit and do lady things and then we’d walk back,” she said.
She also recalls the school relocating to Mundingburra in 1958.
“People said ‘ you can’t send children there – it’s in the bush’,” she said, recalling how wallabies and snakes were common visitors to the school campus.
“Of course we were all from the country, so it suited us quite well.”