Died: May 6, 2024
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Neil Gordon Childs was born in Ararat, Victoria on November 6, 1939, the fifth of 11 children for George and Kathleen Childs.
With his father working away and the family often on the move, he attended a number of different schools.
This included Geelong Grammar School, which was probably the reason for his ‘posh demeanor’ and his support of the Geelong Cats.
When he was 16 he left school, initially working for a tyre business before taking to the road.
He worked as a roustabout in shearing sheds in the Mildura area, learning the trade so he could send money home to assist his mother in raising the other children.
After a few years he gave the shearing away and hitchhiked home to Mathoura where he was able to pick up work in a number of areas.
But most importantly, he met the love of his life, Valerie Watt.
A few years later they were married and moved to Melbourne for a short time before a serious accident involving a young family member brought the couple home.
Neil worked as a farmhand on ‘Green Gully’, and the couple’s first child, Jo-Anne, was born.
The couple later ran the Tarragon Holiday business at Picnic Point and welcomed their second child, Paul, before Neil returned to shearing with Harry O’Connor.
In the 1990s he entered the timber industry after acquiring a portable electric sawmill — one of the early incidences where the mills went to the trees rather than the trees being felled and transported to the sawmills in town.
He operated it successfully for many years.
In 1995, having had the required injections and equipped with all the necessary medications for protection against malaria, Neil travelled to New Guinea with others in the trade from Queensland to inspect equipment and generally check out the area.
When the unvaccinated members of the group came down with malaria, Neil generously shared the medication he had with him.
While his friends lost their lives, his generosity in sharing his medication resulted in his health also suffering badly as a result.
Neil — or Chilla, as he was better known — was a great sportsman and shared his skills with others.
He played senior football for Mathoura and coached the reserves at the same time.
Premierships were won by both teams.
His other sporting love was boxing.
As well as competing in the country areas, he had a number of bouts at Melbourne’s Festival Hall and was awarded membership of the Festival Hall Past and Present Boxers’ Association.
In his usual form, Chilla passed his skills on to the youth of Mathoura by operating a Police Youth Club in a building at his home.
The local police officer delivered participants and later took them home — that was after they had done justice to some of Vallie’s tasty morsels.
When it came to fundraising by local organisations, Neil’s generosity knew no bounds — he loved helping them.
There were few groups that didn’t receive a donation of some kind
Other than family, his greatest love was the forests. He knew them like the back of his hands.
His door was the first place police knocked whenever there was someone missing in the forests, and in his usual manner he brought them all safely home.
— contributed by Eileen Day.
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