Alan James
Culture | February 10, 2025By Claire M Brereton
Alan James was born in Brisbane in 1954. He and his sister were Australian children growing up in Wynnum Queensland. But Alan and Janet were unusual for that era because their mother had survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the Americans in 1945.
Alan’s mother was a Japanese bride who had been granted Australian citizenship during a time when the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 guided Australian immigration policy.
This racially discriminatory Act, colloquially called the White Australia policy, continued until 1958.
Alan’s father a fifth-generation Australian career soldier, had fought in the Second World War (1941-1945), and served in Japan as part of the occupying forces (1946-1952) where he met and married his Japanese bride. He fought in the Korean War (1950-1953) and retired from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in the mid-1970s at the end of the Vietnam war.
“To get married mum and dad had to jump through a lot of hoops,” Alan says
“They had three marriages; a Japanese wedding, an Australian wedding and they had to get married at the British consulate as well,”
“They often joked they would always stay together because it would be too much drama to get a divorce,” he chuckles.
When Alan was a teenager his father was posted to Malaya (now Malaysia) and Singapore during the 1960’s communist insurgency in Malaya, and was promoted to the rank of Major.
Alan recalls living overseas as one of his best life experiences.
“You see that not everything is like it is here in Australia, there are different cultures, religions, and ways of life,” he says.
In Malaya Alan and his sister Janet went to the private British school set up for army kids on the Army base.
“In Malaya we attended the Slim School in Malacca, where we did a British curriculum and I got my O levels,” he smiles.
For a few months during a failed communist uprising school had been cancelled.
“When things settled down, we went back to school in a convoy on the back of an army truck,” Alan recalls.
“It had canvas covering and a machine gun turret on the top, with gunners at the front and back,”
“I never felt unsafe because it wasn’t like they were shooting in our streets,”
“We thought it was exciting and asked the soldiers to let off a few rounds but they never did,” he laughs.
The Australians were the last contingent to leave at the end of the colonial era. The Malayans were trying to reclaim their sovereignty and reverted the official language back to Malay.
Alan recalled that as a child he thought English was the universal language and it was a bit of a retro step going back to the Malay language.
“Of course, as an adult, I realised it was partly to prevent the dominant Chinese and Indian business dealings,” he says.
When the family returned to Brisbane, Alan completed his HSC and went to University in Brisbane to study architecture in 1972.
Alan admits he had a broader point of view than many Australians because his mother was Japanese.
“I knew there was more than one religious point of view for a start, and different cultures,” he acknowledges.
“But it didn’t dawn on me that I was different from the other kids in Australia when I was young because I lived in a community that was colour blind to skin colour,”
“I obviously looked a little bit different, but I didn’t realise it was a thing until the mid 1970’s when the idea of multiculturalism came along,”
“Then suddenly people were asking me where I was from. That was the most striking thing I noticed,” he recalls.
In 1976 during the US bicentenary, Alan went to America as a tennis coach.
“Australia was the powerhouse of tennis at the time so I was a bit of a novelty,” he laughs.
Alan had traveled to take up a tennis coaching job in Miami but had trouble getting a green card. He was unable to work so he decided to make it a holiday and hitchhike across America.
“Hitchhiking was common in the 1970s and I was a bit of a novelty because Americans knew nothing about Australians,”
“It is too bad hitchhiking is not safe now, because it was a great way to meet people,” he says.
After university, Alan sat the entry-level Commonwealth Public Service test that put him on the merit list for a job offer. He was soon offered a job at the Post Masters General office which became the Postal and Telecommunications Department and later divided into Telstra and Australia Post. Alan worked there for 20 years.
During this time Alan bought a yacht and lived on it for 10 years, first in Manly Boat harbor and then at Water Front Place where Alan had a key to use local shower facilities.
Water Front Place was a floating marina between the botanic gardens and the city. It had a view of the Stony Point Bridge.
The Port Office Pub in Edward Street was close by, it was within walking distance to Alan’s work.
On weekends he would occasionally sail around Moreton Bay for fun.
“The markets came to me on Sundays,” Alan jokes.
“After 20 years at Telstra I put my hand up for a retrenchment and I set off to sail around Australia,”
“We didn’t get far because suddenly we had a child on the way,” he says.
Alan soon got a job cleaning debris from the Brisbane River and this job continued for 20 years.
Alan attributes the muddy water in the Brisbane River to the dredging of the natural sand and gravel from the river bed. An industry that was finally banned in 1996.
The couple decided to buy a houseboat which they towed to Oxley Creek by strapping it to Alan’s yacht. He moored the houseboat at the back of his mate’s waterfront property.
To child proof the boat, he rigged trawler netting around the deck for safety until his son learned to swim.
“This freaked out the grandparents but there was never an issue,” he laughs.
“All the neighborhood kids learned to swim off the houseboat, we just chucked them in the river,” Alan jokes.
“The ones who couldn’t swim would get a life jacket,”
“One day two of the kids parents came down looking for their children and I told them the kids were just in the river; but the tide had taken them up Oxley Creek,” he laughed.
“I reassured the parents the kids will be back when the tide changes,”
“Sure enough they floated back,” he laughed.
“We called them the mud kids, because we had Gregory Terrace Rowing club around the corner, and they would come past in their sculls all pristine and here is my son and his mates on the river bank just covered in mud.”
“There were eight or ten kids around the same age all living in the neighborhood.”
“The rule was you are outside playing until the sun goes down and all the kids look after each other,” he says.
Alan tells me these children went to university and now have good jobs. He reflects that some of them even shared a flat and embarked on overseas adventures.
Alan was living on his houseboat during the 2011 floods. He knew the flood was coming.
“I had set up to fend off the water coming downstream along Oxley Creek, but because they opened all the dam gates at once, the wall of water unexpectedly came up Oxley Creek from the Brisbane River.”
Alan was half asleep when he heard the sudden roar of water and trees banging on the hull of his houseboat.
“I could see everything was rising fast and I was letting out the mooring ropes so the boat could rise too, he says
“If I had abandoned ship I would have lost everything because it was not insured”.
“I didn’t have enough mooring ropes attached so I was tying bits of rope together,” he grimaces.
At first light Alan could see the floating jetty behind his boat was still attached with the safety chain, but two or three pontoons had broken free and were jammed up against the floating jetty. The attached jetty was swinging on the chain.
“If that snapped it would have smashed my houseboat into matchsticks,” he says.
“I could hear the chain zinging with the pontoons jammed against the jetty and it was drifting out into the strong current, then it would come wizzing back in,”
“I was looking at this, and the water was really gushing so it was very bad,”
“By this time the river had overflowed and was right up the hill and flooding my mates house,”
“I had my work boat tied to the back of the houseboat and I just thought, well it was too risky, if the pontoon chain had snapped it would be all over,”
“Trees and debris were smashing into my hull. It was sheer luck it didn’t get a hole,”
“I realised I had to get off the houseboat quickly,”
“I had the work boat tied to the houseboat so we jumped in that and left,” he says
“We tied the boat to a tree in waste-deep water and waded towards my car. My son was 15 at the time. I don’t think he realised how dangerous it was,”
“He just thought it was an adventure,”
“In the end we just had to get out because we were going to get stranded there,” he says.
Fortunately, Alan’s neighbours had moved his car up to King Arthur Terrace which had not flooded, although the Tennyson tennis centre was underwater.”
“We had all been looking after each other and they could see I had my hands full,” he laughs.
Alan and his son drove to Redland Bay and stayed with his sister Janet for about three weeks until the water receded.
When he returned, he was amazed to see his houseboat sitting there as if nothing had happened.
“I had six mooring lines but three of them had broken, the two main lines were tied to trees which flexed a bit.”
“If they were anchored they would have snapped,” he acknowledges.
There were two tall gum trees right beside the boat and it was on the bend of the river so I had expected it would have drifted into my mate’s back yard, but the gum trees held the boat in place,”
“It went up almost to the top of the tree and came down in exactly the same spot it was in before and with no mud.”
There was mud in all the houses until the Mud Army came in for several weeks and cleaned everything out.”
“The insurance companies didn’t come to the party and all the houses were unliveable, so we were the only people living in the suburb for quite some time,” Alan says.
“We lived in my mate’s house for about a year after that. The house was ruined but safer than the boat, besides there was mud everywhere,” Alan says.
Alan found the Cyclone Debbie flood was almost as challenging as the 2011 flood because the Brisbane River did not go over the banks.
“Things slowly came back to normal.”
“After that it was always fingers crossed every time it rained in summer,”
“Because you feel vulnerable now,” he says
“Every year I got nervous because two years after that we had the tail end of Cyclone Debbie,”
“Once the water goes over the banks the flow slows down, but before that, the current is really pumping,” he says.
The thrill of living on a houseboat had worn a bit thin for Alan when he was in his late 60s.
“After that, I bought a house and I am happily retired on Macleay Island,” Alan concludes.
