General News
16 April, 2025
Former Mount Isa cabbie spins a few yarns at birthday celebration
The much-loved Mount Isan notched her 90th birthday with friends and family.
Yvonne McCoy can still pack a garden with friends and family at 90 years of age.
She celebrated the milestone birthday last week with more than 50 people sharing cake, memories and good cheer.
Yvonne has worn many hats in her long life and still maintains an active calendar as a volunteer for many community organisations.
But it was her 15 years driving taxis during the 1980s and 90s that was mentioned several times during the birthday celebrations.
She explained that her career as a Mount Isa cabbie began with a horse in Richmond.
Her sons were staying at a neighbouring family friend’s station near their Hamilton Downs property between Richmond and Winton in the early 1970s when word came through that one of her boys had been involved in a terrible accident.
Eight-year-old Eddie had fallen under a horse and had smashed his head. He was rushed to Winton hospital by ambulance and flown on a commercial flight to Brisbane.
Six seats had to be cleared on the plane to make way for the injured boy. He was unconscious for the next two weeks.
The event had a drastic impact on the direction of the family and Yvonne and her husband Terry left their property and spent 18 months in Mount Isa assisting Eddie with his rehabilitation, who had difficulty with movement on one side of his body for the rest of his life.
In the closing years of the 1970s, the family co-purchased a new station at Gunpowder, which felt intense pressure in the beef price slump and had to be sold off, which saw the family permanently relocate to Mount Isa.
“We came back to Mount Isa and had no job references because we always worked for ourselves,” Yvonne told North West Weekly.
“I applied for a job at the hospital – I had been on the board of the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association (ICPA) and had been president of the School of the Air’s P&C, so I thought I had a lot of expertise.
“But I went to the hospital, and they said they didn’t want to hire me – so I thought ‘bugger you, I’ll find my own job’.
“I didn’t set out to be a taxi driver, but I came to enjoy it.”
Yvonne said she got to know many families and married couples as she drove in the city – which had 30,000 residents at the time – meaning she saw people at their best and their worst.
While drunks doing unpaid “runners” and fare-dodging were an occupational hazard, Yvonne said only one person ever vomited in her back seat.
That bloke was banned from her taxi for the next 12 months and he even knew to keep walking if he ever saw that her vehicle was the next option at the rank.
Yvonne recalled there was also a specific married couple she regularly drove to and from a local pub.
One night the husband got into the back seat with a woman who was definitely not his wife.
Yvonne drove the pair back to where the man usually lived.
After he paid their fare, the man turned back to Yvonne and tapped his nose twice, indicating he expected her to keep the secret of his tryst.
“I never said anything, and I tried to mind my own business,” Yvonne said.
“My job was just to get them to wherever they were going.”
But the unexpected nature of the job could sometimes bring interactions a bit too close for comfort.
Yvonne recalled one man who worked at the old meatworks.
He didn’t have a licence and so would need regular fares to and from work. He lived alone and would always carry a row of knives for work.
“The knives never bothered me until on one specific day,” she said.
Yvonne collected the man, who asked to be taken to Kalkadoon Park. She felt he was in an intense mood and something was amiss.
“As we drove out along the highway, I felt more and more uncomfortable,” she said.
Looking for a possible route to safety, Yvonne recognised a passing vehicle. She waved furiously at the passing vehicle.
“I just hoped they noticed me, so someone knew where I was,” she recalled.
The man appeared to notice and within a minute he had asked for the cab to turn around and be taken back to his home.
A short while later that man was charged with several unrelated violent criminal offences, which only reinforced the potential dangers of being a taxi driver.
Yvonne said there was another time when she drove a man to the Mount Isa Hospital, who claimed he had several doctor appointments inside.
But after the taxi pulled into the bay, the man refused to climb out of the vehicle.
It prompted Yvonne to walk around to his side of the car and open the door, demanding he exit.
The man, seeing an opportunity, snatched the bag of loose cash Yvonne kept between the seats and made a fast getaway down to the riverbed along Burke Street.
It led to a short police chase to recover the bag.
Recalling some of the anecdotes that peppered her 15 years in the drivers’ seat, Yvonne said most days were uneventful and filled with casual conversation.
“We mostly just talked about weather,” she laughed.
“I don’t like politics, so I did not want to have those conversations.”
The nonagenarian still drives herself when possible, although increasingly relies on friends and family to get her from A to B in the city.
“Mount Isa has always been a wonderful community,” she said.
“I think I have been down just about every street and road there is this city.”