Garry Sonny Martin

My name’s Garry Martin, but most people know me as Sonny.

Welcome to my Blog! I will be updating this page with new stories from time to time. 

I write stories about my childhood growing up in western Queensland to show the next generations what it was like growing up as a Blackfulla in the 1950s and 1960s.

I write these stories with the help of my daughter, Angie Faye Martin, to preserve memories of the past for future generations. Above all, I hope my granddaughters – Lailah and Ruby – find joy and meaningful connections in these stories.

I started documenting my childhood when I was in Oakey with my brother, Owen (Poe), and my mother, Zona Martin née Leslie. It was a quiet and nostalgic time for me – I finally felt time and space to really reflect on the past. My daughter was calling frequently from Melbourne during the Covid lockdowns and wanting information about the past for her debut novel, Melaleuca. She was particularly interested in stories from the yumba and how life was back then.

I hope you enjoy these yarns, have a laugh and remember our loved ones. There’ll be more coming soon!

Arrivals in the Wagonette

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I remember waking up one morning to the site of an old wagonette and a mob of hobbled horses up the town end of the swamp.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing as I’d only ever seen a wagonette like this in the western movies at the pictures, so I ran back inside and told Mum what I saw.

As we found out later it was our cousins, Auntie Dorie and family,  from Walget in New South Wales and they had moved to the Yumba in Charleville for a new start in life.

They, like everyone else living on the Yumba would build their home by using the pine trees as posts and rails, and sheets of tin and other scrap pieces found at the local rubbish dump. Because they knew Uncle Eric and Auntie Dot, they built their home nearby them.

Auntie Dorie’s mother, Hellen Leslie, and my mother’s father, Eric Leslie, are brothers and sisters. It was destiny in the making – the move from Walget to the Yumba in Charleville. A love affair that developed from humble beginnings of living on the Yumba as both my cousin’s, Les and Jean Suey, would become lifelong partners. Auntie Dorie eventually moved her family from Charleville to Toowoomba in the early 1970s, and Les and Jean who had obviously started a romantic relationship would also move.

It was so funny seeing Les doubling Jean around the streets of Toowoomba on his little old push bike.

I don’t know how he did it, peddling up and down the steep hills with his skinny little legs, but I guess when you’re in love you’ll do anything to be together. And, to see them still together today I am filled with such admiration and respect for their sustained commitment to one another… Simply amazing and congratulations to them both.

Over the years, many more family arrived on the yumba, and it was the people who made the place special.