Knightswood man bids farewell to community he wrote book about

So said Judy Garland in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz.

But what the homesick Dorothy may have failed to consider is - where do you call home when life has been spent in two places, split between the earliest memories of your formative school years and the rest of your life 10,000 miles away?

That is the conundrum for Iain Winton, the Scotstoun-born man of Oz who expects his current visit to the west of Scotland to be the final time he will set eyes on the streets he grew up on and the hills he climbed as a boy.

“Given my age, it will likely be the last time,” Ian says.

“That’s why I want to climb a Ben whilst I’m here, but my wife tells me I am too old to do it.”

Iain has penned a book about his childhood (Image: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd)

Born in the same Scotstoun-home his grandparents had occupied in 1943, Iain started life at Scotstoun Primary before heading to nearby Bankhead when the family made the switch to Knightswood to take up a promising proposal.

Dad David Waddell, who worked for the Glasgow Corporation - the pre-curser to the City of Glasgow District and now Glasgow City Council – was asked to look after a new venture called the Knightswood Community Centre.

“He opened it,” Ian adds.

“He was the first warden I think in the early fifties.”

The community centre opened its doors in 1950 with the original location at Dykebar Avenue before a move to its current home on Alderman Road in 1968.

38 Harefield Drive Scotstoun where I was born on 5th January, 1943 (Image: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd)

Bankhead Primary School 1950s, Iain is 2nd from left top row (Image: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd)

Growing up with a father who ran a community centre certainly had its perks for Iain, with plenty of kids his age around to play with. But it also contained its drawbacks, with the young lad roped into all sorts of pastimes, such as the violin, the cello, the pipe band and cub scouts - all at the behest of his old man.

But life was about to throw Iain a curveball, with the sometimes tearaway teen ripped from the life he knew when his dad set out plans to move the family to the other side of the world, where his future lay.

Iain continued: “I wasn’t a great pupil.

“I wasn't really interested in school.

“And I think dad thought I was running about with too many of the wild crowd.”

So it was on a mild May morning in 1959, alongside his parents, two sisters and brother, Iain moved to Sydney, Australia, at 16 years old, on a journey that took the family six weeks to complete.

Iain continued: “It didn’t really hit me we were leaving until you were on the ship and out at sea and realising; ‘will I ever be back here?’

“You know, I was kind of like a fish out of water when we arrived.

The P&O liner S.S Strathaird, which the family sailed to Australia (Image: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd)

Victoria Drive Senior Secondary School (Image: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd)

“But I joined the Surf Club and so that was a real good way to learn to become an Australian because I had some rough times.

“They used to call me a £10 'pom’."

Iain spent his professional life as an accountant but managed to return to Glasgow on many occasions throughout his life.

Recently, he went back to Knightswood Community Centre to present the book he has written, his memoir about life growing up in the Scotstoun and Knightswood locale during the 1940s/50s, titled ‘The Last of the Lucky Childhoods’.

And he detailed why he decided to pen his childhood memories.

Iain said: “It was written for my grandkids. My two girls, who are 51 and 53, said when they read it, they never realised that’s what my childhood was like.

“Because kids don’t ask questions about your childhood anymore.

“My grandparents, they would tell me what they did when they were growing up.

“That’s all been lost because of social media.”

Admitting his schoolteachers used to describe him as “useless but saveable,” the man who considers himself both an Aussie and a Scot admits he will be sad to leave these shores once and for all.

In '55 they had an exchange group from Finland. This is taken outside Knightswood community centre before they took the group on a tour of the Trossachs. Somehow Iain managed to get in the centre of the picture (Image: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd)

And he revealed his disappointment that his 'Pop' – who was integral to early plans for bringing a swimming pool to Knightswood - never got to see the completion of the indoor facility when it was opened at the Alderman centre in 1970, more than a decade after he had left town for Australia.

As Iain gets set to bid farewell to Scotstoun, Knightswood and Scotland one final time - this time by air - he revealed he will be sure to once again look back towards the land of his birth, and this time know there is no need to ask the question he asked himself 64 years before because he already knows the answer – never.