BAG pipes heralded the 100th birthday celebrations for the mountain’s oldest resident from one of its founding families, Allan Rosser, at Tamborine Mountain Historical Society.
“I am the oldest living descendant of one of the early settlers. My grandmother, Grace Rosser, came her in 1895 to run a boarding house in Yulong Street,” Allan shared.
“I feel very proud of the history of the family here.”
Widowed at 34, before moving to the mountain, Grace later married William Henry Davidson who educated and inspired Allan’s love of the environment.
“When I was four William became my step-grandfather. He had a white horse, and he’d put me on the front and ride around where the passionfruit grew and give them to me. He’d take me down to the creek and explain things to me,” Allan said.
Born on the November 15, 1925 at Canungra Hospital, Allan was the third child of five born to early settlers, Stanley and Rosa Rosser.
He spent his life on the mountain and his knowledge of its history, and the early settlers is unique.
“The mountain was home,” he said.
But he had a love of travelling and every year he and his beloved wife of 64 years, Joycelyn took a long cruise.
“The biggest thing in my life was when I married Joycelyn. We met when she became the receptionist at St Bernard’s Hotel,” Allan recalled.
On the August 11, 1951 he and Joycelyn married at the Ann St Presbyterian Church.
Allan helped build their first house in Fern Street, which was all electric and the first to have an electric hot water system on the southern end of the mountain.
He ran a dairy farm milking 100 head of cattle a day and grew avocados and kiwi fruit before going into commercial business.
During the celebrations Allan recalled how as a child he would ride the horse to Canungra to deliver the mail, following the telephone line and fixing it whenever it broke, simply tying it back together like a fence.
At one stage his mother ordered him to urgently fix the line because a woman was due to have a baby and needed to be able to call the doctor.
He hopped on his faithful horse with ladder in hand and in order to reach the line stood on the ladder on top of the horse.
In 1980, at the age of 55, he fulfilled a lifelong ambition – obtaining his licence to fly a small aircraft.
In his younger years he was sports mad and a keen cricketer and tennis player.
Keen to celebrate Allan’s 100th birthday and honour his work with the Historical Society, which began with its inception in 1982, members, friends and relatives turned out to wish him well.
President of the Tamborine Mountain Historical Society Carmel O’Neill paid tribute to Allan announcing that a new streetscape was being built with one half being named after him and the other half named the Joycelyn Rosser walk after his wife.
“He has a mind of steel and his contribution to the Historical Society has been enormous,” Carmel O’Neill said.
“I’m thrilled about it (the naming of the streetscape), more so for Joycelyn as she was the one who directed me,” Allan said, noting that the Society was vital to maintain the history of the mountain.
The Historical Society is just one of the many organisations Allan is a member of.
Others include the Tamborine Mountain Cricket Club, St Bernard’s P&C, the Queensland Dairyman’s Organisation and Probus.
“It’s these organisations that bring community together,” he noted.
“I’ve enjoyed living on the mountain and everything I’ve been able to do on the mountain for the public.”
“I’m happy to become 100 because my health at the moment is so good. I didn’t knock myself about with drink and didn’t smoke and I played a lot of sport and still exercise.”
