"...Magpies, swallows, chippies or pardalotes, kookaburras, kingfishers and three species of finches, double bars, nutmegs or chestnut breasted finches and zebras. Great numbers of finches would fly up into the sky when frightened. They were no doubt attracted to the pannikin crops grown on the local farms." (Ron Sendall)

"What us young fellas would do, we get these slabs off the boxes and get on them and go down through this like that....and we was going down one day and I looked right through could see something sticking up and I said 'stop boys' and they run into me, 'I think that's a snake'. It was a snake it was in there. Yes that was an experience.." Harry Woodings describing skylarking on the conveyor belt at the Bacon Factory at Oxley in his lunch hour.

"Lobby holes that were down at the bottom of Tainton and McDougall Street that ran right along Long St East. We used to go down and catch the lobbies on bits of string and bits of meat tied on the end and we would go and get a tin from the dump and get some water in it and cook them right on the spot, lit a fire." Joyce Waddington (Tainton and MacDougal Sts cross Long St East in Graceville. Long St East ends at the creek.)

"When I first knew it, it was a lovely running creek you could dip a billy of water out of the creek anywhere to boil up the billy and that - that was way back in the 1930's. It's changed terrible since then there was no-one living out here and there was no-one along the creek then. ....Oxley Creek came right through the Military paddock (Greenbank), well there was no military there then, Stewart owned it and Brett had ten thousand acres at the back of it and there was a lot of wild horses. I used to run a lot of horses and break them in. I think there still could be a few in there. .... Well there were stacks of kangaroos and dingoes. I think there still are a stack of kangaroos but you would hear the dingoes howling even in the day time. Since the army came there used to be a lot of wild pigs down there. They must have got away from someone and they bred up...." George Sirett

Eucalypts at Sherwood State School
	" A series of water holes also ran from Lockwood St (Sherwood) on the western side of Oxley Road They meandered down towards the creek through the Hall St end of the Sherwood State School grounds past several large eucalypts which still stand today. Lobbies thrived in these waterholes too and the local children caught them on a string in the usual way. When weight was felt on the string it was hauled up. A small homemade wire scoop covered with mosquito netting was placed underneath the string and the result was a lobby and several tadpoles. The latter were put in a jar and taken home, the water was changed when necessary until the frogs either Green Tree or small Gracefuls were fully grown. They were then let loose in the home garden. The water courses eventually disappeared with the growth of housing and the filling of low areas.
	Tortoises also inhabited these holes They were about 12 inches in diameter, and their numbers prolific. The children were constantly on the lookout for the penny tortoises. the small ones which were eagerly traded and collected." Commentary, "Memories of Oxley Creek" Note: It would be inappropriate today to remove tadpoles or other species from a natural watercourse as wildlife is now protected, however this was an acceptable practice in the 1930s

Alf Edwards described his recollections of walks with his brother in the bush: "....We didn't see many wallabies. There's more wallabies around now than there were then. Sometimes we saw dingoes and foxes and plenty of birds. There used to be birds called Curlews ... When the foxes came into the area they killed all the curlews because they were ground-dwelling birds and they used to hide on the ground. The foxes stalked and killed them. We would catch possums and wallabies for pets. Possums were a bit of a menace because they crawled all over the inside of the house and knocked things down. I used to like going to the hills and mountains you see there at the back. We would take fat out of goannas and sell it for Goanna Salve. There was a big lagoon near where my home is now, but it used to be nice clear water. We used to swim in that and in the creek. It used to be good clear water in those days. We had some fishing holes where we used to catch fish......"		"I never saw any platypus not in that creek, I did in Burnage Creek - there was always fresh water mullet, eels and catfish and things like that. Yeh, I often used to catch a few in the afternoon - you would take line and throw it in and catch 2 or 3 fat mullet. There's none in there now since they've mined it, it's all gone. I would catch a few mullet, clean them and fry them up at night they used to taste really good to eat. I used to really enjoy them but now you wouldn't find one out there.		.... I always loved working in the rainforest it was always cool for the bullocks and a really free sort of life. I liked everything in the rainforest: the birds the pretty parrots. Well you see none of them now - the scrub turkeys. There used to be a lot of scrub turkeys along Oxley Creek but I bet you wouldn't find one now." George Sirett
		Carpet Snake Bearded Dragon Brush tail possum

Rainbow Lorikeet		"At various places in Sherwood there were little offshoots of creeks that used to run off the creek itself that was where a lot of people used to catch mudcrabs. One of the favourite things that used to happen was that when the mullet came up to spawn, I assume they were sea mullet that came up there, the older people used go down there at night (to the creek along Strickland Terrace, near Plumer Street) and have a row boat and on one side of the row boat they'd have a wire netting set up and a lantern in front of the wire netting and they'd row up and down the creek and that was what they called jumping the mullet, the mullet would jump toward the light and land in the boat." Ron Sendall (Tainton family) Aviary along Oxley Road		A great occupier of time was trapping these finches, something people would be unable to experience these days because they are now protected. There were different reasons for boys to engage in this activity, some of the birds were sold to pet shop dealers, others were just caught and given to local bird fanciers who kept them in backyard aviaries. These were quite large, hexagonal and made of stucco cement. A fine example of one of these exists today in Sherwood. Ron Sendall tells of his memories of trapping birds as a young lad: "They used to have trap cages. The main ones used to have four corner compartments and in the middle they had another area where they used to put a caller, they'd put a small bird in there as a caller. Then the trap guarder is spring loaded and held open with a little fork stick. When the bird came down we had a little bit of sorghum in the bottom of the cage and when they went in they must knock the stick and the stick flipped out and the trap came down. There used to be flocks of budgies used to come over there, there used to be blues and greenies they'd come over in hundreds."

References: Interview given on 5 June 1987 by Alf and Mavis Edwards to Greenbank State School Year 6C students (Aniess Johnston, Joanne Burgess, Allister Philips and Ty Lovell). Interviews with Harry Woodings, Joyce Waddington and Ron Sendall by Jocelyn Clarkson on "Memories of Oxley Creek", March 1997, (Audio tape) Interview by Ron Tooth with George Sirett, February 1998

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