Profile | Painter of orchids on a colourful Hong Kong childhood, developing a passion for plants and swapping his brushes for pencils late in life
- Botanical artist Mark Isaac-Williams tells Kate Whitehead about high jinks living in The Peninsula hotel post-war and how his passion for painting flowers grew
- Now retired from Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, his book The Hong Kong I Knew: Scenes and Stories from a Childhood in Kowloon has recently been published
In the early 1930s, Britain was in the grip of the Great Depression. My father had passed his final master’s certificate exams in Cardiff, south Wales, in 1934, but couldn’t find work in the British Merchant Navy.
In 1935, he accepted a position as second mate on a ship going to Shanghai on the understanding that he could return to Britain with the ship, or stay on in Shanghai and join the Chinese Maritime Customs Service.
With so many people leaving Shanghai and my father unreachable, my mother decided to pack up and move to Hong Kong. She stayed at a guest house on Mody Road in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, and my father joined her in early 1939 and they moved into a house on Prat Avenue. I was born in November that year, my mother was rushed to Kowloon Hospital by rickshaw.
Down under
In late June 1940, my father phoned my mother and told her to pack a small suitcase and prepare to board a ship to Australia. With the advance of the Japanese, the Hong Kong government had declared that all women and children must leave. My mother and I took a ship to Manila, in the Philippines, with 2,000 other Europeans and were there for six weeks until they could find a ship to get us to Australia.
