Malcolm was born in the family farmhouse on Gibbs Hill, Houipapa, South Otago on 20th December, 1918. He was the youngest of the 11 children of Henry John Gibbs and ??? He had 10 brothers and sisters!!

He walked the 3 miles down the hill each day, either in barefeet or his boots, to school at Houipapa. There was one classroom with kids from 5 to 12 years old. He had a very good memory. One day the school inspector from Dunedin, came into his class and said a poem, by Barry Cornwall,

THE SEA! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.

At the end of the day the inspector asked who could remember the poem - Malcolm could! He left school when he was 11 and worked on the family farm. His Mum and Dad couldn’t afford to send him to high school.

He loved working on the farm especially with his favourite draught horse, Dolly. When she was ploughing the paddock she would fart as she worked!! Malcolm also shot and trapped rabbits to stop them destroying the ground. The rabbits used to scream very loudly! He used to pull the bark off the tree fuchias and roll it up to make his own smoke. It must have had a nasty taste!

Malcolm with his 22 gun which he used to shoot rabbits which were over running the land

Once a year his relatives would come from Dunedin by horse and cart to stay at the farm. There were so many people to fit in that Malcolm, being the smallest had to sleep in a drawer or the bath!! His brothers and sisters used to apple-pie the relatives beds. They weren’t used to farm ways. One brother, Davey, kept bees so the kids put a few drones at the bottom of their auntie’s bed.
”Oh there’s biddy-biddies in the bed”, she yelled!

Malcolm loved his mother dearly and used to take her with his friends on picnics.