Tony Marrinan gets a feel for the teller’s counter at 122 on Charlotte his grandfather would have occasionally stood at when he was the manager of the building in its Bank of New South Wales days. Photo: Cape York Weekly.
Imagine your first experience of a town being to wake up in the building your grandfather once ran a bank from and your father and his six siblings called home more than nine decades ago.
That was the scenario experienced by Brisbane resident Tony Marrinan last week when he made his maiden trip to Cooktown with his wife to check out the town, and particularly bed and breakfast 122 on Charlotte.
Mr Marrinan’s late grandfather, Con, was the manager of the Cooktown Bank of New South Wales branch from 1929 until 1937, and the bank moved into the premises at 122 Charlotte Street in 1935, something he said he believed coincided with an addition to the rapidly-expanding Marrinan clan.
“I’m speculating, but it’s probably got something to do with the growing family,” he laughed.
“My father (Denis Marrinan) was born in ’33, and he was the youngest of seven; the eldest, my oldest uncle, would have been 11 – I think seven young kids would have probably just fit.”
He added his first trip to Cooktown had been a surreal experience, with both sleeping in his family’s old residence and uncovering an unknown fact about his grandfather’s ability as a horseman adding to the feeling of awe.
“It’s been fairly awe-inspiring,” he reflected.
“When you’re upstairs, you think ‘okay, my grandparents probably slept in this room’ in the room we’re staying in now, and then you realise my father was running around here as a two-year-old.
“There is a photograph of him (Con Marrinan) at the [Cooktown History Centre] on horseback we found; I had no idea he ever rode a horse.”
Mr Marrinan’s wife, Alison, also has a strong familial tie to the region that dates back more than two centuries.
In 1819, her great-great-great-grandfather – naval officer, surveyor and explorer John Septimus Roe – completed a survey of the Endeavour River while aboard the cutter Mermaid during a circumnavigation of Australia, said to be the most detailed since Captain Cook’s in 1770.
Con Marrinan also served in the military and fought in the First World War at Villers-Bretonneux in 1918 before returning to Australia at the end of the conflict to build a reputation as a man who went above and beyond for his community when his employer would not.
“When he was here, that was the depression,” Mr Marrinan said of his grandfather.
“So, the story that my grandmother told me was that when he was here as the bank manager, he couldn’t lend people money, because it was desperate times – they couldn’t afford to live, so he would then give people money out of his own pocket.
“He was known, I’ve been told, to give people 40 pounds and say ‘I can’t lend you the money, but here’s 40 pounds, pay me back when you can’.
“It’s been very interesting to be here and see where that happened.”
122 on Charlotte co-owner Tania Taylor said historical tourism was bringing more and more visitors to Cooktown each year, adding she believed there were still plenty of secrets for the old building to give up.
“It’s great that people like Tony and Alison can come up here and learn about their connection to Cooktown and experience it by staying in the old bank,” she said.
“There’s things here that we don’t know what they were, we don’t know what they were used for, and we’re still hoping someone will come in one day and tell us and solve a piece of the puzzle of this building.”
An 1819 plan of the Endeavour River surveyed by Alison Marrinan’s great-great-great grandfather John Septimus Roe while he was aboard the Mermaid on her circumnavigation of Australia. Photo: National Library of Australia.
