THE ONLINE HISTORY OF GULGONG AND SURROUNDING DISTRICTS: HUGHES

Hilary Hughes

just before he joined the army

Hilary was born in Gulgong on 10 April 1921. During the Depression in the 1930s there was nothing to do around Gulgong but catch and sell rabbits. He had an uncle who worked in a big steel factory in Regents Park. He suggested that Hilary come down to Sydney to get a job. Eventually Hilary got a job with concrete constructions at Homebush. They were building a big new freezing works for the abattoirs and he worked there for a while. After that he worked with some people from New Guinea at a big mining company. It was 1940. World War II had started. Hilary worked on a big dozer in Central Park, digging deep holes which would be used to store explosives.

Meanwhile, back in Gulgong, all the young men were getting called up to fight in the war. Hilary went to Merrylands, the nearest enrolment place, and joined up himself. He did his National Service training there. We went from Wallgrove to Newcastle where we put in barbed wire all along the beaches. Then at Singleton it was very cold and Hilary got pneumonia. That put him in hospital for more than nine day which meant he was separated from his unit and had to start his training all over again. At Dubbo, Hilary and another man who had been in the army for 12 months by then, found themselves surrounded by young men who'd just signed up. They had to start from the beginning, marching around, lunging at bags of straw with bayonets. Hilary got sick of that and wanted to go back to his own unit, which by that time had moved to Western Australia.

From 1941 to 1943 they patrolled the beaches from Fremantle to Derby. Hilary and his unit were camped not far from where HMAS Sydney was sunk. Having started in Infantry, Hilary moved into Transport. He was later in Officer's school but got kicked out of that. After a bit over 18 months in Western Australia he returned to New South Wales where they had 24 days' leave. After that he went to New Guinea. He landed at Finchhaven and experienced conditions similar to the last stretch of the Kokoda Track.

Source: School talk at Red Hill by Hilary Hughes, 2010