Special occasion at Bankfoot House to mark big birthday
Contributed by Ron Gillinder
AS a Great Granddaughter of the original settlers in the Glass Mountains and a resident of the district for the majority of her life, Ethel Burgess is well placed to recall local events and the people of the Glasshouse Mountains.
Ethel’s Great Grandparents, William and Mary Grigor, first settled in the Glass Mountains from their basic accommodation at the mouth of the Mooloolah River in 1868 and established Bankfoot House as a meal stop and horse-changing station for the Cobb & Co Coach service between Brisbane and Gympie.
The name Bankfoot was taken from Mary’s birthplace in the small village of Bankfoot in Scotland.
The Grigor’s youngest daughter, Clementina (1878–1963), married William Smith Burgess (1878–1946), son of Isaac Hudson Burgess and Isabella Landells Petrie (née Smith) from Mellum Creek, in 1902.
Clementina, known as Teenie, and William, Ethel’s grandparents, had four children — Mary (1902), Janet (1904), William Isaac (1907) and Kenneth (1910). William Isaac, Ethel’s father, ultimately inherited the 160-acre Bankfoot House property.
William Isaac married Jean Chalmers in 1936, and the couple, with their family, began pineapple farming on a portion of the original Bankfoot House property. Like most young men of the time, William was also a timber-getter, as timber was the main building material used, and the local scrub still held accessible and suitable trees.
Ethel, their eldest daughter, looked set to become an employee on the pineapple farm, but she had other aspirations. Despite early protests from her father, Ethel took up nursing training in Brisbane and graduated as a Registered Nurse. For many years she worked at Kilcoy Hospital and commuted from the family home in the Glasshouse Mountains. As a trained nurse, she got to know many of the families in the district, and her reputation as a caring nurse and professional was widely known.
The Bankfoot House original acreage was eventually split up, and the home property was reduced to two acres and sold to Mary and Jack Ferris following Clementina’s death in 1963.
Jack was the last person to live at Bankfoot House, and following his death in 2002, the Ferris family sold the house to the then Caloundra City Council on the understanding it would become a House Museum.
When a public meeting was called in 2006 to establish a volunteer group to assist Council in preserving the house and its contents, the two people who provided most of the back stories on the history of the heritage house were Ethel Burgess and Bill Ferris, son of Jack.
Ethel and Bill were absolutely the go-to people to answer the numerous questions arising when local historians were attempting to catalogue the collection of photos, documents and numerous objects. Both Ethel and Bill were installed as Life Members of the Friends of Bankfoot House incorporated group in 2011.
Following Bill’s passing in December 2023, Ethel remains the go-to person for local history information.
A special 89th Birthday celebration open to the public for Ethel Burgess will be held at Bankfoot House on Saturday, October 11, from 10am to 11:30am. Please RSVP to sharon.chapman@live.com.au.
