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!

Cowboy Ray

By

Ray would annoy the hell out of me when we were kids, as younger brothers do. He’d always want Mum to dress him up like a cowboy.

She must have done the second-hand shops over in Charleville, as he would get around Cooladdi in his daggy old jeans and his elastic-side riding boots two sizes too big for him. He thought he was something. Roy Rogers wouldn’t hold a candle to him or at least he would have thought!

Never been on a horse in his life except for the one he made from Mum’s old straw broom. (I think Pontius gave him a hand to make it as they used some strips of leather for the bridle that was left over from when Pontius was platting a belt.)

I hear him talking to his horse one day, saying, ‘Come on now, we gotta round up to do.’ Then I’d hear him, click it up, ‘Giddy up now, boy.’

What little boys will do to amuse themselves! He’d drive me crazy.

Away he would go galloping, chasing after Mum’s chooks, turning them this way and that way, and right there in among them would be my pet budgie, scared as hell from this raving lunatic.

I never laughed so much in all my life as I did the day he fell into the creek in his wonderful riding boots. Me, Neicey and Roy… sorry Ray (haha) were down the creek fishing one day and the fish weren’t biting, so Ray came up with a brilliant idea to make them bite.

There was this gum tree leaning out over the creek, so with this idea in his head out he goes, jeans and boots on, when suddenly he started doing a pee into the water.

Me and Neicey had no idea what he was up to until he started peeing and then we realised that this was his marvellous idea of getting the fish to bite!

The next thing we knew was his riding boots started slipping from underneath him and that’s when his cheekiness turned in to panic.

As much as he tried to save himself from falling into the creek, it was to no avail – there was nothing that he could grab onto! So, splash straight into the water he went… ‘Good job,’ I thought to myself, ‘Serves you right for big-noting yourself and peeing into the nice clean water!’