The detail carved into the entry door to the Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve Discovery Centre stuns visitors every day.
Richly coloured and with breathtaking depth, the sheer size of them standing tall is awe-inspiring alone, but it is the life depicted on them that makes people stop and stare. Strangler fig and wonga vine appear to wind their way up trees on the cedar doors, which entice visitors inside the centre to learn about the natural wonders of the area.
The doors are the work of master woodcarver David Southern, a softly spoken, modest gentleman who crafts and shapes wood both in his timber-scented workshop at the back of his north Maleny home and with his fellow Blackall Range Woodcrafters Guild Woodies carvers.
At 88 years old, David’s hands are as steady as they were when he started carving. His ability to shape lifeless timber into works of extraordinary beauty is astounding. Perhaps the most remarkable part of David’s work is the emotion it evokes. He says the effect of his carved items can be almost magnetic, with hands reaching instinctively over to touch the shaped lines and polished surfaces.
David discovered carving after he retired. An executive for engineering firms, he spent his professional life happily buried in work until retirement offered him the opportunity to pursue activities that nourished and challenged him.
“It is a second life in a way, I suppose,” David says.
David is familiar with reinvention. Raised in England, he left school at 15 and worked as a junior draftsman before entry to the army as part of the post-Second World War National Service system a couple of days after his 21st birthday. The world as he knew it evaporated.
“I’m a 21-year-old and I didn’t smoke, drink or swear and I really didn’t do anything that I shouldn’t. And suddenly I’m in a barrack room with 26 other blokes from all walks of life. And I’ve got to say, this was a rude awakening,” David says. “I think for the first two weeks, I just held on and then I remember sitting on the toilet, and I’m thinking, ‘David, you’ve got to get out of here’. I had no idea how, even though I could be quite inventive at times. But after that, something clicked and instead of trying to fight it, I thought I’d go along with it.
“Adapt or die. Roll with the punches. So that is what I did. And by the time I’d done my 16 weeks initial training, I had a totally different approach to the military, and I can honestly say from there on in I really enjoyed it.”
David could play the trumpet and was signed up to the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Staff Band, which took him to Singapore and Malaya. “I look back and I reflect on that time and I see it formed me who I am now,” he says. “Because I’d gone from this sort of old-hat engineering company and a predictable, unadventurous life and suddenly I’m in this environment that’s totally different and I’m enjoying it and making the most of it.”
David had married his wife Irene and when their daughter Kay was born, he returned to civilian life, still playing in a band but knuckling down in North Derbyshire. His parents migrated to Sydney in the early 1960s with his younger siblings, and David and his young family followed suit.
“I think it was the opportunities that appealed the most: in England, there’s a lot of division and a class structure that restricts your opportunities. So with my accent, even if I’d gone to London and applied for a managerial position, I would not have been employed because of the way I spoke; not because of my ability, just purely because of where I was from and how I sounded. And when we came here, none of that came with us. So there were a lot of changes that were quite pleasant, such as the sunshine and lack of discrimination and, of course, the way of life.”
David had worked for steam locomotive company Beyer, Peacock and Company in England and once he came to Australia in 1972, he worked for British forklift company Lansing Bagnall, and later for Nichiyu Forklifts Australia. In his corporate life, David worked his way up and held management positions, including state manager and chief executive officer, before retiring in 1998.
“I had done a little bit of painting and I thought that in retirement I would do more of that,” David says. “I started, but then I read this woodworking magazine and there was a guy who was a professional wood carver advertising classes in western Sydney. I wanted to see if I was any good, so I rang up and I went there for lessons once a fortnight for about three years. It was $55 a lesson, so it was not cheap at the time, but once I’d started, I thought ‘I’m going to keep this up’.”
David says he was always a creative type and would give most things a go.
“I was always pretty good at drawing, and in the first house we had in England, we had very little furniture, so I made everything. I did all sorts of things – fitted this, built that – and I enjoyed doing it. I really liked to work out the problems of a project on paper first, or working out how to do it in a way that made it balanced and functional but also appealing to the eye. It had to look right.”
Before the elaborate Discovery Centre doors, David led a Woodies team in creating the doors of the Maleny Community Centre. He said the processes were similar, but he had learnt some efficiencies between projects and loves that both projects serve a practical purpose while being beautiful.
“What I like to do is make things that are useful and decorate them with carving,” he says. “For example, I like to make a piece of furniture and also make it unique. I don’t want to make something that you can buy in Harvey Norman – I want to make items that are still practically useful but pretty too.”
David and his elegant wife Irene have been married for almost 66 years. “My wife still turns heads, you know,” he says. “She is 85 and she still has such beauty.” Family is their focus, and their daughter, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren brighten their world.
Inside his north Maleny workshop, where every tool has its place, David proudly shows the roughed-out start of a very personal project: his family crest. At 88, he is still creating beauty from wood – one careful cut at a time.