In memory of a special bloke, Russell Hilton of Texas 4385.

(The passing of Alwyne about whom I blogged a couple of weeks back caused me to think of other notable people whom I've yarned with and who are no longer with us. Russell Hilton came to mind first, and when I was advised this week that the Stockman Hotel at Texas, Russell's local was on the market, I understood I should share this memoir of a time I spent with him at the pub a few years back)

A few years back, I was staying in Texas, Qld.  I was due out early next morning but Helen Rush, the publican told me about a local who'd be in early and was worth sticking around for. I figured he could wait until I came back but something made me stay. That next morning, not too long after opening time, Russell turned up with his betting form. I caught up with him down near the TAB window. 

Russell Hilton was a jockey-sized bloke, probably no more than 60 kilograms, pretty deaf by now, but with a firm handshake and eyes that looked into mine as he spoke, but which glazed as he tried to remember some detail to his stories.

He was born 89 years before at Silver Spur, about 20 kilometres east of town. There were 17 kids

who survived, and Russell was the youngest of the ten boys. In 1939 he knocked back school and started trapping rabbits.

"I’d wake early in the morning, when it was still dark, and go out and empty the traps. I had between 60 and 70 of them. I’d kill and gut the rabbits and then re-set the traps, take the rabbits home and clean up a bit. Then a few hours later I’d go back to the traps, empty them again, and usually move them. I’d do this three times every day."

Russell had to catch 120 rabbits every day.

"We’d get a halfpenny for each rabbit and I had to make five bob a day to give to Mum so that meant catching, killing and cleaning 120 rabbits every day. Otherwise we’d bloody starve.

Each lunchtime he’d take the pelts to the rabbit works at the east end of town where he’d be paid his five bob and the older men would sort, grade and pack them.

I’d ride in on my horse. I’d never been allowed to come into town until I was about 14 and then Mum let me come in to watch the pictures in that beautiful hall that’s still over there on the other side of the street."

Then war broke out and the army was looking for soldiers for its light horse regiment.

"I was too young. This was June and I didn't turn 16 until October and the army was needing 18 year olds. So went to see Doctor Burton who was the registered doctor in Texas and convinced him to make me a certificate saying I was 18 already. See I’d worked out that the army was paying five bob a day and for that, all I had to do was wake up, do some drills, go on parade for a bit and sleep all the night in my own bed."

Four of his brothers signed up with him and, with their horses, they caught a train to Toowoomba via Inglewood and Warwick and then for five weeks or so:

"We did all the training and that’s where I came to grief. We were out on a bivouac and we were doing a charge with our swords drawn and all the bloody rest of it but they’d taken my horse off me. They had this disease going around, see, and mine got sick so they put me on another horse, it was Jimmy Kemp’s mare. I’ll never forget it. Well we come to grief and she fell on top of me and buggered my hips up."

They put him in hospital in Toowoomba for a bit over a week, then when he was discharged, the army told him he was needed down in Gatton to look after the horses. His brothers Ernie and Dick went with him.

"By now my brother Ernie had the stripes, he was a bigshot. He was a corporal, but ended up a sergeant. Old Thomas Blainey came around and saw Ernie at work and said, ‘best bloody drill sergeant I’ve even seen.’"

It was in Gatton that Russell caught meningitis and he was rushed to hospital and was about to be discharged and pensioned out of the army but there was a hitch.

"They found out I was only 15. And the youngest you can be discharged from the army was 18 so I had to stick around. I didn't end up coming back to civvies until 1946."

When he finally was discharged, it was a Friday in June 1946 and Russell caught a train to Brisbane but there was no connection to Sandgate where his family now was.

"So I found a place to stay because the next day was the Doomben 10,000 and I hitched a ride with a fella I know and went to the races. At the turn of the big one, Bernborough was near last and I was near a bookmaker who shouted, ‘Nine to two Bernborough’. I had the 20 quid the army had given me in my pocket so I shouted out, ‘I’m on.’ The bookie looked at me and my uniform and said, I’ll make it an even 100 for you digger. Well Bernborough came flashing down and won, and I had 100 quid."

Russell didn't return to Texas but found a wife, and then went bush, cooking for shearers and sending money back to his wife. He kept busy on his visits home and pretty soon had five kids.

One day he returned from Windorah and his wife had her bags packed. She was leaving. This wonderful man, eyes weeping, tells me the details but asks that I don't share them. The boy who’d spent 18 hours a day catching rabbits to make five bob to feed his family, had become a father and husband who’d travelled the dry plains working to feed his children, never drinking or wasting a farthing, just sending every penny home. In his absence, his wife had him charged with being a delinquent father.

‘I sat in the front room and watched the policeman take my five children away. I never saw them again.’

In a bar in a small pub in Texas Queensland, two grown men, one almost 90 and the other just turned 60, sit in silence and wipe tears from their eyes.

Then he reaches for his wallet and pulls out a photo he’s kept there since it was taken over 85 years ago. It shows him standing to the side as his mother feeds the pet sheep and kangaroo.  He’s never lost his wallet and he’s never lost his love for his mother.

We didn't have a lot of food back then but we still had enough for a few pet sheep and a couple of  roos. But they all had names and the rule was that we’d never eat anything with a name. Those

The photo from Russell's wallet with him at right and his
mother feeding their pet (named) roos and sheep.

animals never knew how lucky they were!

Three months later Helen Rush, the extraordinary publican at the Stockman Hotel rings me. Russell has died. My tapes of our yarn may well be the last recordings of this extraordinary struggle of a life.

Russell Hilton and his brothers have a place in Australian History. 

They are the only set of ten brothers who all signed up for the Second World War and who all came home. Not all saw overseas service, but six did, all with the Light horse. Before this half dozen could return, they were forced to shoot their own horses. 

Russell, was the last of the line, he outlived all 16 of his siblings.

He taught me many things this man. Perhaps the most telling was to never travel thinking I shall return: to not ever not do something, ask something, record something, visit something, talk to someone because ‘I’ll do it next time.’ Next time so often doesn't come and every time the urge comes to not bother about doing something now, I think of Russell Hilton.