Community & Business
20 July, 2023
Mayor reflects on 40-year-career
Retiring Toowoomba Region Mayor Paul Antonio reflects on a four-decade career in local government and his involvement with Pittsworth and the place he still knows as home, Millmerran.
For it was around Millmerran, of course, that it all began - the country upbringing, a love of the land, and his first steps into local government.
Cr Antonio, pictured in Pittsworth this week, recalls among his earliest memories waiting for a new tractor to arrive at the family farm, a Fordson Kerosene with steel wheels. And, later, riding his pony to school in Grade 2 and getting thrown when Teddy was having an off day and having to walk home.
He completed Grade 8 at Millmerran, then high school at Gatton Agricultural High School. After graduating from Gatton University, with the help of his father, he bought his first land in 1969.
“It was actually on the day man landed on the moon... we went in to Toowoomba to settle then came home and watched the landing.”
He married Judy and they had three children and “lived in a little tiny old house for a start.”
“Then we bought where I am now and it’s got the original homestead off Foxwood.”
He recalls on of his very earliest days in community involvement, being asked to chair the committee for Millmerran’s centenary celebrations in 1981.
“A good friend of mine called Harry Curtis and he said I think we ought to do something in Millmerran to celebration the contribution of the pioneers and I can think of nothing better than to build something like a retirement village and that was the beginning of the Yalambee.
“We raised the funds and built 24 rooms and now it’s grown to have around 60 residents, and it’s been taken over by a private company.
“When my career started, the first seed that was sewn by a gentleman called Reg Whitbred who had been the shire chairman for quite a while... he took me aside in the street one day and said Paul, you’ve been away at Gatton Uni and you’ve done some studies and you’re back home here, I would love you to think about being on the Millmerran Council.
“It was a simple job in those days, being a councillor you’d probably get about $500 a year for the job so I nominated when it came around.
“The Antonios at that stage were probably fairly ordinary farmers, involved in the pig industry and so when I nominated I did get a call from someone telling me that … well, words to the effect that I didn’t come from the right side of the tracks to be in local government.
“When I told my late father, he was not happy at all, and in very colourful bush language advised that he thought I should stay home and do my work.”
“But I nominated and that’s where it all began.”
He was a Millmerran Councillor until 1997 when he became deputy mayor then stood for the mayoralty unopposed twice in 2000 and 2008 - the year eight councils amalgamated into Toowoomba Regional Council.
“It’s probably one of the most brutal things that’s happened to places like Pittsworth and Millmerran - you lost your voice,” Cr Antonio says.
Which meant it was important for organisations like Pittsworth Alliance and Millmerran Progress, to “fill that gap and have that passion for their town.”
See the full story in the print edition of this week's The Pittsworth Sentinel.
