On the 10th. September 1940, Gordon Paul Campbell was born in the house known as Stronvar which overlooked Loch Breachacha near the South end of the Isle of Coll.
Donald and Jean Campbell and their other three children - Colin 9, Maryrose 7 and Donald 18 months, had been living in France when war broke out and had just got out in time. Donald had been working with International Harvester Company as an accountant in their farm machinery factory in Roubaix near Lille. They went back to Edinburgh for a short time but as Donald thought that Edinburgh was going to be within the range of the German bombers, he decided to evacuate the family to a safer spot and chose the island of Coll.
Jean Campbell's sister Cissy Thripland came over to the island to help Jean when Paul (as he is known) was born and at the same time 'Wee' Morag MacKinnon - then 19 years old - helped look after the rest of the family - particularly young Donald as he was only 18 months old at the time.
Cissie recalls being given strict instructions if the contractions were to start at night. She was to take a torch and go over the fields to where Hughie MacKinnon (West End) lived and wake him to go and get the Doctor. Hughie was the one who slept furthest from the door in the bed and she was to reach over Grandfather MacKinnon to wake him!!
Colin and Maryrose went to the one roomed school at Acha in the old mill house: one room, one teacher and about eight students.
After a while, it became evident that Edinburgh was beyond the range of the German bombers so the family moved back to the mainland and spent the rest of the war in Pentcaitland, just outside Edinburgh in East Lothian.
In 1946 Donald was offered a position with International Harvester Company of Australia and the whole family emmigrated to that country leaving in March of that year and travelling on board the Blue Funnel Line ship, the 'S.S. Nestor'.
Australia became home to the family and the children grew up and married and had children of their own who, in turn, grew up and married and there are now several second generation Australians.
Donald and Jean Campbell were both tragically killed in a shipping accident on the River Plate in May 1972.
Donald had retired late in 1971 and had decided to go back home to Scotland for a holiday, stopping on the way to visit one of Jean's sisters who lived in Buenos Aires. On leaving Buenos Aires, the ship they were travelling in, The Royston Grange, was involved in a collision with a tanker, the Tien Chee, and all on board were killed. There were a few survivors of the Tien Chee but they did not include either the Captain or the Navigator so no one knows how or why the accident happened.
In September, 1992, Colin Camp bell and his wife Bev, wound up in London at the end of a business trip and they decided to take a fortnight's holiday. Colin wanted to show Bev the country that had produced such a 'braw laddie' and at the same time, revisit some of the places that were only a hazy memory to him. Colin still had two aunts - including Cissie - several cousins and many nephews and nieces living in and around Edinburgh and he and Bev spent a very pleasant ten days visiting them and the places he lived in as a boy.
But he had a yearning to visit the island that he had left fifty years before, so early on Monday morning 28th. September, they caught the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry the Lord of the Isles to Tobermory and Arinagour. The first stop was at the Coll Hotel where they had made a booking for two nights and where they were warmly welcomed by Kevin and Julie Oliphant. The next step was to try and find if the house that Paul was born in was still there, so off down the road to the southern end of the island and sure enough little changed in fifty years, the house called Stronvar with the bay in front of it and the two castles, one now refurbished, on the headland. That afternoon they visited Hughie MacKinnon who told them that his namesake who came from the West end of the island had passed away the previous year, but that his sister Morag was still alive. Hughie also told them that the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages was now the Postmistress Catherine MacLean so the next morning they visited the Post Office and arranged for an extract of birth 'from the island of his birth' to give to Paul as a Christmas present. That afternoon, they visited Wee Morag now Morag Kennedy and spent a very pleasant few hours going over old times. Morag's clearest memories are of young Donald who was a curly black haired, blue eyed little angel of just 18 months.
Time passed quickly and too soon it was time to catch the Lord of the Isles back to Oban, drive back to Edinburgh and then fly back to Melbourne - back to the place that had been home for 46 years and where family and friends now live. But never to be forgotten were those rekindled memories of a time long ago, of a place which was home for a short while, of the Isle of Coll.
