Looking closer at this old photo from the Brisbane Ekka (exhibition/show) that recently appeared on several local history sites, I couldn’t believe it when I happened to see my Dad in it. In 1971 he worked at the chairlift after he and Mum returned from travels and working overseas for a couple of years and he did other work until he resumed his teaching job. (Dad is one of the blokes in red and white and is under the OR of the Escort sign above).
It’s the first photo I’ve seen of him working at the chairlift (unfortunately, I don’t know who took this photo to credit them) but incredibly there’s more to this photo than first realised. In the foreground, a short, brown-haired woman in pale blue looking toward my Dad appears to be Nanna Francesca. What is especially poignant is that they’d been estranged for a few years after my parents’ cross-cultural wedding (not so accepted back in the 1960s) and it was when they accidentally first saw each other at the Ekka chairlift that my Dad and his parents reunited and became close again.
Little did the person who took this photo know they’d captured such a time in my family that we’d only happen to see almost 50 years later.
Zoë Boccabella 