AS STAFFORD Woodrow gathers his family together over Queensland's summer holidays, he'll be thinking of the poor, frightened, fatherless boy in war-ravaged England who once closed his eyes and wished for a better life.

Stafford is 77 now and still helps out as a volunteer first responder for medical emergencies at his home in Kilkivan, west of Gympie, rushing off in his immaculately polished boots to traffic accidents, heart attacks and even overdoses.

He's well aware how fragile life can be.

It was in the dead of night in April 1942 that the air raid sirens pierced the cold air above Junction Rd in Norwich, England, and Stafford's father Leonard - a bricklayer by day and volunteer ambulance driver by night - bolted from the family home in the boots that Stafford had just polished to a mirror shine.

The German bombers were coming. Leonard kissed his wife Kathleen, a nurse, goodbye and told her not to worry, saying: "Chin up, duck, I'll see you in the morning."

Stafford says: "But Dad never came home on that awful night. My mother was only 31 and she was suddenly a widow with four young children. She even had to borrow the black clothes to wear to my father's funeral."

Life over the next few years became almost unbearable for Stafford and his family, with food rations and constant fear.

"Often we had to hide in the bomb shelters and once we all had to huddle under our kitchen table with our dog as the bombs exploded all around us," he recalls.

"I often saw planes attacking each other above us and I remember seeing a big American plane that had been hit, passing over our house so low that you could see the faces of the airmen trap-ped inside. All of them were killed."

The war ended in 1945 when Stafford was nine and already the man of the house. He learned about Australia at school and decided sunny Queensland sounded like a welcoming place for his poor mother and siblings to start a new life.

Two years later, Stafford closed his eyes, made a wish and in his childish hand wrote a letter, addressing it "Any Farmer, Queensland".

"Dear Farmer," he began. "My name is Stafford and my sister and brothers and myself want to come to Australia when we grow up. Do you think you could find us pen friends so we will know something of the country by the time we are able to come?

"Our ages are sister 131/2, brother, 10, and youngest brother, six.

"Our father was killed during the war so we only have Mummy, and so you see she would have to come, too."

Stafford's letter might have gone nowhere, except for a postal worker in Brisbane who directed it to Queensland's Department of Agriculture.

From there, it made its way to Queensland's State Migration Officer David Longland.

Touched by Stafford's words, Longland wrote back to the small boy and his mother and told them he would sponsor their migration to the Sunshine State and that the Queensland CWA would give Kathleen a job as a hostel matron in Ipswich.

It took 18 months of planning, but finally Kathleen and her four children left London on August 19, 1949, for the eight-week voyage out to Australia on the SS Ranchi.

"When we arrived in Sydney, we didn't have a penny to bless ourselves because Mum's purse was stolen on board," he says.

He started work at 14, helping a cabinetmaker, later drove cabs and trucks and opened Singer sewing machine shops.

"We all made good lives for ourselves in Australia," Stafford says.

"I'll always be grateful to Queensland for answering the wishes of that little boy all those years ago."