Teman Communities - life+style - Winter 2021

Resident story
Graham and Thea Bytheway
Fitzroy by Teman in Rockhampton
We met and married in Dubbo, N.S.W. after
Graham emigrated from England aged 22
and we lived in Dubbo for another 10 years.
Graham joined The Ambulance Service and
after completing his training, which included 3
stints in Sydney, he was transferred to Mudgee,
He then joined the Queensland Ambulance and
after six months in Brisbane he took a position
up in Rockhampton with the Q.A.T.B.
We loved Rockhampton and being so close to
the ocean Graham got involved with sailing.
We decided to build a 34ft sailing catamaran
on our two-acre block, 16kms out of town.
After five years of building the catamaran, we
launched it at the old wharf (which is no longer
there) on the Fitzroy River and christened it
“Teagra”. What a day that was. A crane loaded
it on a truck then drove it along the Bruce
Highway with an escort vehicle and two Police
cars stopping traffic all the way through the
southern side of town. We arrived at the river
and our nerves were high as the crane lowered
our pride and joy into the water.
Graham left the Ambulance Service due to ill
health and in early 1998 we rented out our
house, moved onto Teagra then went to the U.K
for 3 months. We lived on the boat for three
years sailing along the Queensland Coast and
around the islands, especially Great Keppel.
During that time, we saw many amazing sights
like watching sea horses being born, rowing
our dinghy beside a manta ray doing back flips
and a pod of dolphins herding fish early one
morning, not to mention the beautiful sunrises
and sunsets and the stars in the night sky.
2000 saw us move back to our house after
selling our boat. We bought a 1974 Viscount
Caravan and started exploring outback
Australia. We sold our home (2004) and went
caravanning for 12 months, mostly in Western
Australia. We really enjoyed our time in the
Kimberley, exploring many gorges and sharing
campfires with new friends. We travelled all the
way down to the south and across the bottom
of our wonderful country before returning to
Rockhampton and bought another house at
Stanwell, where we lived for fourteen years. We
still hit the open road in the caravan and loved
to garden when we were at home on our acre
block. We moved into Fitzroy by Teman in 2018,
when things go a little too much to handle.
We love the community here, being close to
everything in town after rural living for 30
years, no more worry about rainwater tanks,
pumps, cleaning our roof guttering or mowing.
Over the years we have also enjoyed some
overseas travel with five trips to the UK, the
first in 1975 with our two sons (aged 2yrs and
9mths respectively) for 13 weeks, a 30-day
European Tour visiting 16 countries, France,
Spain, N.Z. and Vietnam (which was our last
in 2018) thoroughly enjoying all the new
experiences.
Winter 2021 | 11