BETTY’S RIGHT AT HOME
WHEN Betty and Bill Archer bought their Hyde Park home in 1948, Townsville was just a country town recovered from World War II.
Mrs Archer, 93, will mark 70 years of living in the Princes Rd home on October 17 and may just hold the Townsville record for living in the same house for the longest.
Mrs Archer said she could still remember the sense of pride she and Bill felt when they handed over the £ 1325 for the house.
“We thought it was wonderful because it was ours and it didn’t matter it wasn’t fancy,” she said.
“It included a lounge suite, bedroom suite and kitchen suite because those were the days when you had a sideboard in your kitchen.”
Mrs Archer said it was difficult to buy things because of the war so they could fit all their belongings in two suitcases when they moved in.
“Everything was still rationed so you couldn’t just go out and buy linen or anything fancy,” she said.
“I remember being so excited when I could eventually go to the shops and find undies with a bit of lace because we were starved of that kind of thing after the war.”
They paid the house off in seven years and added an extension as their family grew. Eventually they had nine children.
Bill died in 1995 but Mrs Archer has remained in the immaculately maintained home with its old family photos and knick- knacks. Her children, 23 grandchildren and 38 great grandchildren visit often.
Mrs Archer said it was a simpler time when they bought the house.
People would put their milk money out each night next to the empty milk bottles on the bottom step and you always knew the name of your neighbours.
“The kids didn’t have much and never wanted anything,” she said.
“We had a few books, a cricket bat, a ball and millions of kids in the street they could play with.
“People didn’t have a lot of possessions like they do now.”
In the 1940s and ’ 50s the western end of Princes Rd and Ethel St was part of a big K Wire factory owned by the Foster Brothers.
The brothers built a grand Queensland home each for themselves, one in Princes Rd and the other in Ethel St before building a rental property next door which Bill and Betty Archer would buy seven years later.
As Hyde Park continued to develop over the years, blocks of land were sold and houses were either built or relocated from other areas.
Mr Archer worked as a public servant and later as a taxi driver while he also had one of the largest Townsville Bulletin delivery runs.
Mrs Archer worked at Townsville’s first TAB once the children were older.
Her husband helped around the house at a time when that wasn't considered a man’s place and would bring home joeys he had found still attached to wallabies that had been hit by a car and left on the side of the road.
“My husband was a great one for bringing home baby kangaroos ... you’d find him going around the yard with a big sack around his neck and a kangaroo in it and was feeding it a bottle,” Mrs Archer said.
“I had such a good husband. He would cook meals and do washing so he was very domesticated.”