A healthy baby boy, of 11 pounds (4.98kg), with pale blue eyes, Percy Alexander “Lex” Buchanan was born to Malcolm Buchanan and Ada May Stjernqvist on 28 of April, 1925.
His father was of Scottish heritage, and his mother Swedish.
His older siblings were Malcolm (known as Boy), Neil, Ivon, Eric, Maisie, and later a younger sister Margaret.
Years ago Lex handwrote many pages of his story and so the following is in his own words.
“As the fifth and last son and sixth child in a family of seven, my arrival on 28 April 1925 will not be chronicled in history books.
“While my memory of the occasion is naturally somewhat dim, (the same now applies to events of last week), I do recall my mother saying that winter came early that year, and on that morning, frost was visible in the hollows below Kotoro Nursing Home where all seven of us were born.
“This site, on Gympie Horseshoe Bend, is presently occupied by the Gympie Church of Christ.”
Lex’s father, Malcolm, had won a ballot for one of the 160 acre blocks in the Ross Creek Settlement.
He spent years clearing the land as it was dense scrub and hard going.
The farm became known as Rosslyn.
Lex’s home for his first six and a half years was the house Malcolm had built for his growing family.
After that they moved to the top house which was built by his Uncle Alex – 18 Buchanan Rd.
His older sister, Maisie, recounted that they were a very close-knit family, and that Lex was well-loved by all his brothers and sisters, and of course by his mother and father.
His younger sister, Margaret, remembers how they enjoyed chasing cows and calves, and that Lex had a good singing voice.
He and his mother used to sing duets while his sisters played.
Some of the childhood memories Lex recalled included playing cricket with his brothers and father out behind his home, his father shooting a marauding dingo, chooks roosting at night in the fig tree and his mum using his dad’s old .22 rifle to wing a hawk that was raiding the chickens.
He also remembers his dad being carried to the house when he slashed his knee with an axe while felling scrub and the ambulance coming to collect him, big fires and billowing smoke every October and November from burning the scrub and various patches of bananas growing on the hills.
“I remember exactly where I was when the very first plane flew over the district – everyone’s cows running home in fright to remain standing bunched up in the yard,” he recalled.
From five years old, Lex attended the small one-teacher settlement school in Ross Creek, located on Thompson Rd.
It was during that time he recalled a random flyover.
“… planes were few and far between for some years, and the sound of one approaching during school hours was the cause of pandemonium.
“The teacher countered this by having the big boys carry forms outside for all the younger kids to sit, with the bigger kids standing up behind.
“Long after the plane disappeared we reckoned we could still ‘see’ it, until the teacher wised up and packed us back inside.”
“In those days you could only attend high school by passing an entrance Scholarship Exam.
“Because of the sheer poverty forced on everyone during the depression years of the late twenties and thirties, only a few of my family had some secondary schooling.
“I was very privileged to attend Gympie State High School for 1939 and boarded with a family named Savage in Alma St.”
By September 1939, war was declared and the lives of all his family members were shaped by the coming events.
With compulsory training for all urban youth, it was deemed prudent for Lex to finish schooling and return to the farm.
By December 1941, all eligible youth were swept into the armed forces.
So at 16 and a half years, Lex had now to assume the responsibility of running the home farm, with advice from his father, who continued on with his town job.
“During virtually all of my teens we were a nation at war and there was little interaction between those under eighteen.
“At that age all males were required to register, undergo a medical exam and be allocated to one of the armed services.
“Shortly after I was advised of having passed the medical, the Government announced that all employees in food production and saw milling were to remain in those jobs.
“Having heard nothing further since, I was beginning to think they didn’t want me!
“So being tied to a seven day week, long hours, never ending job, my only source of relaxation was reading before going to bed.
(After the war, I realised that I had worked non-stop for some four years – all my fun teen years! Correction – I had ten days in bed with dengue fever).”
“My farming career (that is, in charge of the farm) started suddenly with the Japanese invasion of the Eastern Asian mainland and southward through the Pacific countries to the Australian border and further with the heavy bombing of Darwin.
“So at age sixteen and with a two year apprenticeship, I was suddenly in charge of Rosslyn.
“My father was Secretary/Loader of the Gympie Fruit growers’ team and had no choice other than to continue as we all came under man-power regulations whereby the Government directed everyone as to their employment.”
During this time Lex developed a love of reading, through reading the Courier Mail, and became interesting in many things including scientific research regarding farming technologies.
Sometime in 1944 some neighbours arrived next to Rosslyn farm at the end of the road – the Staib family who had two daughters and twin sons.
It was rumoured, the eldest daughter, Delphine, was not impressed at first by her neighbour Lex, and there is a story about her having seen him riding on the farm one day and saying ‘There goes Prairie Pete’.
However, in the not too distant future, the tables had turned and apparently both Dell and Lurlene saw Lex Buchanan’s winning ways.
He would come to pick them up for Christian Endeavour meetings and the story goes that Lurl would quickly get in first to sit near to Lex and Dell would be on the outer.
Then they would continue on to pick up Dudley and when they arrived, Lex would promptly get and put a wooden box on the back for Dell and he to sit on and Dudley would drive the rest of the way to the meeting, sitting next to Lurl, the start of courting.
He would go to dinner at the Staib house while courting, and would be trolled by Dell’s two younger brothers Noel and Don as they hid under the bridge in the dark on the way home they would jump out to scare him as he was leaving to go back home.
These two were also the culprits who tied a cow bell under the day bed while Dell and Lex were courting lest they got too amorous while talking on the couch The bell would ring each time they moved and the boys would be under the house laughing each time they heard it.
Lex and Dell were married on 16 June, 1948.
They lived in the bottom house on the property and were blessed with six children; Geoff in 1949, Jan in 1951, Paul in 1953, Keith in 1955, Carolyn in 1960 and Don in 1962.
Aside from working as a farmer, he was an active leader in the Queensland Dairyman’s Organisation and the Queensland Farmer’s Federation and was one of three delegates from the QFF to meet with Australian Prime Minister John Howard after the Mabo announcement.
Here, Lex tells the story in his own words.
“We made an early start per the government’s plane which was housed in a different area from the commercial airport.
“We were quickly given clearance and headed directly for Canberra …
“When we were some half hour from Canberra, (the pilot) advised the airport of our approach and we could hear that airport tell other approaching aircraft to go around until the government jet had landed.
“On disembarking we were met by two commonwealth cars complete with uniformed drivers and each car accompanied by three mounted motor cycle police. “We were escorted to Parliament House, all common traffic giving way.
“There was the usual barrage of mics and cameras, but we were escorted to a prepared room where we had a fairly relaxed discussion with PM Howard.
“It was very evident that he had a grip in great detail of the need for some enabling legislation.
“Details are a little hazy now but I do remember we were all intent of finding practical solutions to a very complex situation without detracting from the main aims of the Mabo judgement.
“I seem to remember phoning Dell to impress her with what her husband had been up to.
“More impressive is that the subsequent legislation, despite the usual well reported cries of horror and indignation, has given legs to the intent of the Mabo judgement while allowing industry of all kinds to get on with the job.
“To date, the legislation has stood the test of time,” Lex wrote.
He retired from the QDO in 1996 and the QFF in 1998 after devoting over 30 years of service to the industry.
Lex’s faith and his commitment to Christianity and its principles were a stabilising force and the social glue to his life, having been involved in forming the first Sunday School in Goomboorian, which lasted 56 years and helping host a yearly Christian convention on the property, with people camping in tents and caravans.
It ran for close to 60 years until 2013.
An elder of the Gympie Church of Christ for 20 years, he was also a director of Cooloola Christian College for about 22 years.
Lex was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his services to the dairy industry in the Queens Birthday Honours list of 1992.
He will be sadly missed.
