Community & Business
4 April, 2025
Millie Minchin – A life lived well
Mildred Evelyn Minchin (nee King) was born on 20 October 1926 at a small, private maternity hospital on the east side of Malanda Falls, and died on 11 December 2024 at Ozcare, on the west side of Malanda Falls. In between was a life well – and sometimes hard – lived, mostly in the old Eacham Shire.
Millie’s father, Ronaldson King, died when he was thrown from his horse when she was two. Her mother, Pearl, with a toddler and a new baby, remarried into the large Lloyd family of Barrine.
Millie helped with the milking and egg gathering from a very early age, living in the farmhouse her stepfather had built for her mother on Lloyd Road.
She attended Lake Bank School, then went to Boar Pocket School, and at the end of scholarship, spent two years boarding in Herberton while a pupil at St Mary’s Church of England School. Here she clandestinely indulged in her lifelong love of reading - in bed at night behind the blackout curtains, with a candle.
Her first job was at A.L.& S. in Peeramon, then she moved to the Malanda branch. By now it was wartime, with 100,000 troops on the Tablelands, either convalescing, or waiting to be redeployed. Lake Barrine Guest House became an army convalescent camp, and civilians were invited each month to a dance.
Millie’s stepfather always took the girls there, and to the dances at the school, and occasionally held one at their own farm, to raise money for the soldiers’ Comforts Fund. Chaperoned within an inch of her life, Millie was courted by Alf Minchin, one of the Rats of Tobruk, who had been invalided to Lake Barrine with leg wounds.
When she was 18, her stepfather died, also in a fall from his horse, so Millie became the “man of the farm”, milking 40 cows by hand with her mother, and swinging 6-8 gallon cream cans onto the back of the cream pick-up utility.
The farm was sold, and Pearl and the three girls moved to Lismore to live with relatives. After a few months, when Millie was 19, she and Alf were married.
They worked in Western Australia for two years before moving back to Lloyd Road, working for her late stepfather’s brother. After two years they moved to their own farm at Boar Pocket, where they stayed for 18 years.
Their daughter, Helen, was born in 1952, and their son, Ron in 1958. Alf began working for the Forestry Department, and later with Rankine’s Mill, eventually becoming the bush boss. While he was away working, Millie kept the farm going by herself, and when the children were at school, for 10 years she also went to work at Lake Barrine as Mrs Curry’s right hand super woman.
Each day she would milk 20 cows, see the children onto the school bus, go to Lake Barrine, wait on tables for breakfast, wash up, prepare lunch, wait on tables again, tidy up, dash home to milk, and be back by 6pm to wait on tables for dinner, then fill the fridges and the lolly stands and generally tidy up.
After finishing up work at Lake Barrine at the end of the 1960s, she picked potatoes for two years until the farm was sold; they then moved to a property on Andrickson Road.
In 1971, Millie joined the DPI, becoming the first female herd recorder in Queensland. For several years, six days a week she went to a designated farm with a collection of testing instruments, took a selection of milk samples, tested them for various components, went home, often with children from the farm having their first “sleep away”, and returned early the next morning for more samples, which were all recorded before she started again.
When contract testing came in, milk samples were sent to Wacol, and Millie was out of a job. However, each Monday the DPI arranged for Millie to pack and dispatch the samples by the White Car, enroute for Cairns Airport and Brisbane.
When Millie became the 2004 Eacham Shire Citizen of Year, her nomination summed her up exactly and included:
“It is difficult to categorise Millie’s community achievements. Self promotion is not in her vocabulary, and finding out what she has done is nearly impossible, because she so rarely mentions it. For nearly 77 years, when something – anything – needs doing, Millie doesn’t ask; she is already in there doing it.
“If a family is in need, she has, and will, look after children and old people; milk their cows; feed and exercise their animals; garden and water; come over with a meal; clean the house; and mend and iron clothes.
She keeps an eye on several elderly neighbours, taking them shopping, to the doctor and other appointments; has a chat and a cup of tea, or makes a meal, and alerts their families when required.
“She has helped organisations like the Lionesses and the Show Society, without feeling the need to join. She is one of Eacham Shire’s quiet achievers. Millie is the salt of the Eacham Shire’s earth.’
She retired from the DPI in 1995, just before Alf died, and spent the next 25 years going quietly about her community. She was President of the Laurel Ladies (widows of returned servicemen) for many years, Treasurer of St Matthew’s Guild’s Busy Bees Thrift shop, on the committee of Friends and Neighbours organising tours and meal venues, and she knitted - hundreds of beanies and mittens and blankets for Carinya Care, for St Vincent’s Home, and for the RFDS’s Near and Far Auxiliary, as well as winning the knitting section at the Malanda Show on several occasions.
Alf and Millie took their holidays to follow friends in their vintage car to Alice Springs, then followed their motor home to Darwin, Melbourne, Adelaide and places in between. Millie drove.
Bitten by the travelling holiday bug, she saw most of Australia from a variety of coach tours, and even tried an adventure holiday, going on a camel trek when she was in her early 80s and experiencing a special scenic flight over Antarctica.
Millie started getting old in her 90s. She still knitted and read and enjoyed visits to and from her friends. She chose to keep on living in the house in Lions Street, where the only help she would accept was her lawn being mowed.
Early in 2024 she made her final move to the safety of Ozcare, where she appreciated the care and comfort that was provided to her while she lived there. She was 98 when she passed away.
