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Life in the Pine Rivers region - Mill memories
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TitleLife in the Pine Rivers region - Mill memoriesDescriptionFrom sleeping in an empty corn bag, to eating peanuts from Kingaroy, growing up at the Paisley cornflour mill was full of memories for Brian Francis.
This is an extract from a longer oral history.
Transcript
In my early childhood I can remember I was brought up in the cornflour mill and I spent lots of time at the cornflour mill looking at how it was all done, and dad would talk to me about the improvements that he was going to make and things like that.
I can remember distinctly that one of the things if I’d been good as a child, I was allowed to get up at 2-o-clock in the morning with my dad, because that’s when he used to go to start the mill up.
I would go to the mill and I would actually go round with dad as he started the process going at 2-o-clock because he used to do that by himself and then, if I was still very good, I was allowed to sleep in an empty corn bag and that was a very, very big privilege! One corn bag would be rolled up as a pillow and I would hop inside another corn bag and sleep on the floor of the mill while he went about the manufacturing process.
The only reason he could do the manufacturing process by himself was that it took some time from when he first started to get the mill going until the finished product was coming off the end where you needed more people to process it.
He would work until about 8-o-clock in the morning and by that time a lot of others had started at 7.00am and then he would go home for breakfast, or breakfast was brought to him because he lived quite handy, so a meal was only a hop, step and a jump away. That is a very fixed thing in my mind and I can remember those great days and the cornflour mill became part of my blood. You lived for the days when you worked in the cornflour mill.
When I was at school, I used to work of a Saturday morning and I used to get pocket money for actually emptying the bags of corn into the hopper which used to go through a cleaning process to take any sediment out of the corn.
When you got your corn from the Kingaroy district there was always a bonus because the bags had often been used to transport peanuts and the cleaning machine would extract the peanuts to one side so you would have a free feed of peanuts – nice fresh ones after you’d emptied all the corn into these big vats.
TranscriptPersonal intervieweeFrancis, BrianDate18 June 2001LanguageEnglishProduction creditsPine Rivers Shire CouncilRecord typeOral HistoryFormat typemp4Format descriptionDigitalDuration00:03:04File size77MB
This is an extract from a longer oral history.
Transcript
In my early childhood I can remember I was brought up in the cornflour mill and I spent lots of time at the cornflour mill looking at how it was all done, and dad would talk to me about the improvements that he was going to make and things like that.
I can remember distinctly that one of the things if I’d been good as a child, I was allowed to get up at 2-o-clock in the morning with my dad, because that’s when he used to go to start the mill up.
I would go to the mill and I would actually go round with dad as he started the process going at 2-o-clock because he used to do that by himself and then, if I was still very good, I was allowed to sleep in an empty corn bag and that was a very, very big privilege! One corn bag would be rolled up as a pillow and I would hop inside another corn bag and sleep on the floor of the mill while he went about the manufacturing process.
The only reason he could do the manufacturing process by himself was that it took some time from when he first started to get the mill going until the finished product was coming off the end where you needed more people to process it.
He would work until about 8-o-clock in the morning and by that time a lot of others had started at 7.00am and then he would go home for breakfast, or breakfast was brought to him because he lived quite handy, so a meal was only a hop, step and a jump away. That is a very fixed thing in my mind and I can remember those great days and the cornflour mill became part of my blood. You lived for the days when you worked in the cornflour mill.
When I was at school, I used to work of a Saturday morning and I used to get pocket money for actually emptying the bags of corn into the hopper which used to go through a cleaning process to take any sediment out of the corn.
When you got your corn from the Kingaroy district there was always a bonus because the bags had often been used to transport peanuts and the cleaning machine would extract the peanuts to one side so you would have a free feed of peanuts – nice fresh ones after you’d emptied all the corn into these big vats.
TranscriptPersonal intervieweeFrancis, BrianDate18 June 2001LanguageEnglishProduction creditsPine Rivers Shire CouncilRecord typeOral HistoryFormat typemp4Format descriptionDigitalDuration00:03:04File size77MB
REFERENCE
Reference numberMBOH-0003-028-03
PART OF
Oral historyBrian FRANCIS - Interviewed on 18 June 2001
CONNECTIONS
PlaceLawnton (Qld.)PersonFrancis, BrianOrganisationPaisley Cornflour MillTranscriptLife in the Pine Rivers region - Mill memories - TranscriptExhibitionLife in the Pine Rivers region
ACCESS
Access restrictionsUnrestrictedRestrictions on useCopyright appliesConditions of useYou may copy or download content for private research. This video may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes with acknowledgement. [e.g. Recording courtesy of City of Moreton Bay, reference number MBOH-0008-001]. For permission to use this content for commercial purposes contact local.history@moretonbay.qld.gov.au.
Life in the Pine Rivers region - Mill memories (18 June 2001). Moreton Bay Our Story, accessed 16/06/2025, https://ourstory.moretonbay.qld.gov.au/nodes/view/50894
