09/06/2026
I only have this photo because someone, at some point, thought to print it.
I never got to meet my grandfather, Bernie Byrne.
This is the only way I’ve ever seen him. A photo of a photo, taken sometime in the early 1960s. He’s behind the wheel. My dad is seven years old, squinting in the sun. My grandmother Betty is holding the camera.
Bernie started a Ford dealership in Brisbane with basically nothing. Sold the family home. Put a caravan on a block of land in Chermside and started selling cars. He died young. Bowel cancer. He was 43.
Betty took over. On her own. With three kids. The industry bet she’d lose everything in six months.
She didn’t.
My dad grew up, bought the business from her, and built something remarkable with it. That business was the backbone of my whole childhood. It shaped my family. It shaped me.
And it all started with this man I never got to meet.
The Irish have always understood this. That the stories don’t carry themselves. Someone has to keep them.
Print your photos. Someone who hasn’t been born yet needs to see them.
__
Eleanor Byrne. Australian family and lifestyle photographer. Considered work, made to last.
