Joseph William Hutchinson: 1879–1960

When Father Pat phoned me a little over a week ago and asked me if I would be prepared to speak about my father at this Mass my response was to give him about six good reasons that this was not appropriate in my case. However, as many of you are aware that Father Pat can be very persuasive, I could see that I had very little hope of getting out of it, so here I am.

On reflection, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak about someone of whom I had a great deal of respect and affection. My father, Joseph William Hutchinson, was a tall man, just over six feet in height, at a time that the average height of a man was five foot seven inches. His formal education only went as far as sixth grade but he was very intelligent.

I will commence by talking a little about his life before he married my mother. He was aged 48 at the time and my mother about 13 years younger.

My father was born in 1879 in North Melbourne. His father was born in Durham, England and his mother born in Dundalk, Ireland. They married in Sunbury.

His first job was in a grocery business in Chapel Street Prahran, which included “Delivering groceries to the mansions up the hill in Toorak.”

In the 1890’s Victoria was hit by a severe depression and he found himself out of work. An uncle of his wrote to him advising that there was plenty of work in Kalgoorlie, West Australia, and to come over there. He immediately got a job at one of the mines but unfortunately like hundreds of others working there at the time contracted typhoid fever. He spent his 21st birthday in the Kalgoorlie hospital. The death rate was very high and included five of the St. John of God sisters, who had come up to the goldfields to help.

He remained in W.A. for about twenty years in various occupations. To quote him “Anything that was hard work.” His brother who had served in France in WWI and had been given a soldier settlement block in the Wagga area of N.S.W. wrote to him to come over and help him getting established. He found that his brother was living in a tent on the block and the first thing my father did was to build a two room house for them. This is a story in itself. His brother died in 1924 and my father struggled on with the farm for a few more years. One year his crop was ruined by a hailstorm and another season by a mouse plague.

He sold up and came to Ballarat, where he met my mother. At the time of their marriage he had leased a hotel in Snake Valley, about thirty kilometres West of Ballarat. He bought his first car while there. He had never driven a car before, just went into Ballarat, got the salesperson to show him where the gears were, etc. and drove it home. The next day he drove it to the police station to get his licence. Things were much simpler then.

My sister Margaret was born in 1930 and I was born in 1931. My father had purchased a hotel in Smeaton at this stage (about 35 kilometres North of Ballarat). He was active in community affairs, president of the local anglers club and other activities. I can remember going fishing with him in a local creek which had been stocked with trout; also going with him on rabbit and hare drives. They were in plague proportions at the time. He had a thing about snakes of which there were plenty in the district. I remember one day out in the car he spotted a snake on the road. With my mother screaming at him to leave it alone and armed with the crank-handle of the car, he took a swipe at the snake and missed. The tiger snake, the second most venomous in Australia, struck at him and fortunately missed his arm by centimetres and kept going. This story would have been much shorter if it had bitten him.

In 1939 we moved to another hotel at Landsborough, Victoria about 35 kilometres North of Stawell. In 1944 my mother died of cardiac angina and my father had to sell the hotel and move to Ballarat where he bought a family grocery business. This was in 1945. I was a boarder at St. Patrick’s College, Ballarat and my sister a boarder at a convent in Ararat while things were being sorted out.

Two of my father’s sisters who had not married came to live with us and we became a family again.

I think at this time I really got to know my father. The grocery shop was one in which on three days a week he went out in the morning and took orders and in the afternoon delivered them. I am sure he enjoyed the contact with our customers and they all seemed to look forward to his visits.

My father and I enjoyed the occasional afternoon out fishing. He was also an excellent shot with a gun. I remember him taking me to task for shooting a rabbit while it was sitting. That was just not good sport in his view. He enjoyed having a bet Saturday afternoons on the races. His claim to fame was that in 1949 he backed the Caulfield/Melbourne Cup double, sixty-five pounds to five shillings,a lot of money in those days.

Unfortunately, over some years he became crippled with arthritis and for his last couple of years, bedridden. My sister looked after him and the shop. During this period some of the customers liked to pay him a visit. One lady told my sister that visiting my father always made her feel better. He was always cheerful. I assisted as much as I could but had to look for work outside the business.

My father died in 1960. My sister Margaret joined the St. John of God Order of nuns after his death. She died in 1999.

What impressed me most about my father was that despite more than average setbacks along the way he always managed to overcome these problems. During his final few years he suffered terribly with arthritis but we never heard him complain. Although not what you would call a religious person I remember that when he was able he always knelt down each night to say some prayers.

He certainly set an example for me to follow. I think that if he had a philosophy about life it would be – “Just get on with it.”

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