Abstract

Born in Warwick on 24 August 1927 just before the Great Depression, Jim (James Craig) Galletly’s early life was one of disruption and substantial poverty for his parents Janet and Stewart, and for Jim and his four older siblings Neil, Stewart, Jean and Naomi. Stewart Galletly, a trained UK metal draughtsman and model maker who helped lay the keel of the Titanic, and art and physics teacher Janet McKelvie from Undulla Station west of Tara, met when Stewart was posted to the Miles area as a Presbyterian Bush Brother. Marrying in 1915 the day before the Gallipoli landing, Jim’s parents struggled for survival despite their skills and education, beginning their family life on a property at Culgara near Undulla at the time prickly pear was rendering thousands of hectares of country unproductive. They moved for work to Warwick, Glen Innes, and then on to Woodridge – firstly living in a ‘bag palace’ with bark roof, bag walls and a dirt floor, and then in a more substantial pise dwelling built from materials on site by Stewart Galletly, which featured in the Queensland Agricultural Journal, 1 August 1937.