“Dear Max, when you left home you promised to write, and tell us about your wonderful flight.
“The plane and the pilots and the hostesses too, and all that you learned upfront with the crew…”
Thus begins the somewhat poetic first letter Maurice Bannah ever wrote to his son, Max, on 10 April 1954, a couple of weeks since the sickly seven-year-old had left his family in steamy Cairns to live with relatives in Sydney, where it was hoped the milder climate might ease his chronic bronchial condition.
The gently chiding letter, illustrated with Mickey Mouse and Goofy cartoon drawings he had copied from a comic book, is a strangely eloquent and moving missive from a man who had little education but a natural gift for art and design, and whose love for his little boy shines through the jokiness of the aerogram’s single page.
Any parent would feel as Maurice felt, but few would have expressed it in such a torrent of love, laughter and no doubt tears, as the talented Mr Bannah Sr did.
And those kept letters from nearly 70 years ago provide the perfect platform for Max, now a 75-year-old Boreen Point retiree, to launch into a delightful illustrated memoir of three years of early childhood spent away from his parents and siblings in unfamiliar city and bush environments.
The best memoirs are like jigsaw puzzles in which key pieces guide you to the bigger picture, a life explained through episodes that have defined it.
In Three Times My Grandmother Called Me a Liar, Max Bannah achieves that objective by focusing on three defining and difficult childhood years, and tells us so much more about himself, his family and his time and place.
Of course no one who keeps abreast of the local literary community should be surprised at this.
Just last year Max designed and illustrated the beautifully presented local history, Boreen Point… Not Just Any Small Town, written and researched by wife Sylvia Bannah.
Together for more than 50 years, the Bannahs had rich and fulfilling creative lives in London and Brisbane, she as an academic, he as an animator and illustrator, a bit like Dad’s dream life, before retiring to Boreen Point in 2012.
The book covers the years 1954-56 during which young Max lived with an aunt in a southern suburb of Sydney, and with his aging grandparents at Carmila and St Lawrence on the Central Queensland coast, experiencing life in the big smoke, on a small property and in a declining rural town.
Although the excitement of Sydney was intoxicating for a seven-year-old, particularly after seeing his matinee idol Hopalong Cassidy live on stage at a local theatre, Max’s book really comes to life when he is sent to live with his paternal grandparents, Mabel and Frank Bannah, at Carmila Glen, a small property south of Mackay.
Grandma Mabel is an interesting character more than a decade older than her husband, the daughter of French-Canadian migrants whose obsession with Max telling the truth at all times – where the book’s title comes in – masks a rather economical use of it herself.
Grandad Frank is a gentle, likeable soul, also with a colouful and slightly checkered past, whose passion for the demon drink only becomes apparent to Max when Grandma throws him out, banished to their town house in St Lawrence.
While adult Max is honest about the failings of his grandparents, little Max wanders dreamily through the landscape, his fascination with his carers and their environment portrayed in heartfelt prose and black and white illustrations that perfectly evoke 1950s’ rural Australia.
When Max and Sylvia retired to Boreen Point a decade ago, the downsizing from their Brisbane home meant eliminating many belongings they no longer needed, but Dad’s illustrated letters came with them.
“High on the list of must-keep things was the album containing my father’s letters,” Max said.
“After some time I decided to deposit it with the State Library, but before handing it over, I felt the letters would be more meaningful if I explained why they had been written and added what I could recall of the three years they covered.”
This was the genesis of Three Times My Grandmother Called Me A Liar.
In his postscript titled Things I know now that I didn’t know then, Max writes: “Once, in my adult years, when I asked Dad about the effort he had made with his letters, he said, ‘I just did it to keep in touch with you.’ I’d like to think the ‘it’ was more than just wanting to stay in touch.
“If there is a silver lining to my early years of chronic illness, it is surely the power of his letters to reveal something fine – a deep moral core shaped by love and generosity – my father’s best-self acting on instinct.”
This well-crafted book about family could be described similarly – a dutiful son reflecting honestly and lovingly on the events and the elders who helped shape him.
Three Times, launched by former Noosa mayor Bob Abbot in Boreen Point this week, is available at all good book stores. For further information email boreenbooks@gmail.com
