Lillian Coyne – the Matriarch of Bauple

Lillian Coyne out the front of the Bauple Museum

Fraser Coast Libraries is undertaking an oral history project in 2017 around the theme Having a Voice.
Our first clip is of Lillian Coyne who provided us with a fascinating insight into earlier times in Bauple. Lillian was born on the 12th of April, 1926 making her 91 years old this year.
Lillian has written several books on Bauple including:
1. The Bauple Bus Service / Lillian Coyne and Alex MacKellar,2002, Bauple Mount Bauple and District Historical Society
2. Bauple : looking back to pioneering times / Lillian Coyne, 2003, Bauple Mount Bauple and District Historical Society
3. Tinnanbar as I have known it / Lillian Coyne, 2002,Bauple Mount Bauple and District Historical Society

Copies of these can be found in the Libraries.

During our chat Lillian talked about trips to the Gundiah dances from Bauple in a bus that the boys had to push up the range. She explains how Bopple was changed to Bauple and shows us the 80 year old Bauple Nut trees her Grandfather Fred Bertram planted out of fruit tins.

The 80 year old Bauple Nut trees that Lillian's grandfather planted, opposite the Bauple Museum.

Other topics include the sawmill, sugar mill, the band and the war.

Images of the mills;found on the Bauple Museum walls.

Lillian has been instrumental in the establishment of the Bauple Museum that has records and mementos of a town that once thrived with seasonal mill workers and their families.

Bauple Museum - in the background you can see the instruments belonging to the Bauple Band from the early 1900.

She reflects on her life and changing times in our talk. “It takes the hard times in life to make you who you are and appreciate things” Lillian concluded.

These oral history clips will be launched during Women’s Week – the 6th to the 10th of March, 2017 at the Maryborough Library e-space.

Lillian outside the Bauple Museum.

In Lillian's in-depth history of Bauple called Bauple - Looking Back to Pioneering Times. Lillian acknowledges this area was very significant to the Aborigines. The first Europeans to venture into the Bauple region were "convicts escaping the harsh punishment meted out in the penal settlement of Moreton Bay".

She tells of one convict Pamphlett. Armitage p.29 (in Coyne 2003,p.7) remembers,
"He was inevitably a person of note in convict circles, if only for his story of his journeys north into the jungles between Caloundra, Noosa and Wide Bay. For him, the Toorbul and Bribie blacks who had repeatedly saved and fed him represented the kindliest memory of his life".

After hearing these stories, lots of convicts absconded, looking for a better life and some returned starving and others were adopted into Aboriginal tribes. John Graham, David Bracefield and James Davis (Duramboi) are three well known examples of this.

Lillian found that explorers including Andrew Petrie consulted with these men when planning excursions to the Wide Bay. Her research tells us the earliest accounts of Bauple were recorded by Andrew Petrie and Henry Stewart Russell in May, 1842. Having met up with escaped convict David Bracefield  he 'took bearings of Bopple'  and Bracefield was able to point out the entrance to Wide Bay from the South (Coyne, 2003, p.7).

Lillian claims (2003, p.6) that "in the early days of European settlement. Bauple district (had) two very different cultures fighting for two conflicting views of survival in one land - both convinced at the time of the validity of their actions and the justness of their cause".

This well researched and entertaining insight into Bauple is available for loan from the Fraser Coast Libraries.

The Butchulla People are the Traditional Custodians/Owners of the Land, and their continued connection to the land on which we walk, work and live is acknowledged. Fraser Coast Libraries acknowledges and pays respects to the Elders past, present and emerging.

References
Coyne, Lillian (2003) Bauple - Looking Back to Pioneering Times

Tags #oralhistory #bauple #museum #frasercoast #maryboroughlibrary #sugarmill #sawmill #Bauple #pioneers #lilliancoyne #localhistory.