Rex Wright was President of the Boorhaman Young Farmers Association and became Young Farmers Victorian President also.
Rex fonder of his rabbiting years
The YMCLC Oral History Group invites you to take a step back in time as they reach into their files each month to present a story from days gone by.
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Rex Wright was a very active community member including Club President and District Governor Yarrawonga Apex Club; President Boorhaman Young Farmers; Young Farmers - Victorian President; CFA - Peechelba Captain; Local Government - Councillor Yarrawonga Shire Council, Councillor and Mayor for two terms Moira Shire Council; Australia Day Citizen of the Year; Junior Football in Yarrawonga - helped start the league in 1968 as a coach
Rex Wright when he was a young boy in the 1930s pictured with his brother.
When he was interviewed, Rex was very interested in talking about his early life and his love of rabbiting.
“I was born on 7th October 1932 in the Wangaratta Base Hospital,” Rex said.
Rex Wright was a very active community member including serving as a councillor on the former Yarrawonga Shire Council and then councillor and mayor for two terms on the now Moira Shire Council.
I had an elder brother and a younger sister. My younger sister died in a farming accident when she was about five or six. That puts a fair dent in the family structure.
“Education was Peechelba Primary - think it was up to year six. That led on to the Wangaratta Tech School to learn a trade, and the trade we learnt was farming. Well, that was pretty good because we knew half of it anyway, or we thought we did.
“At that particular stage, we lived six miles from the school so that made it fairly difficult to have afterhours contact with any of the kids.
“So, we didn’t tend to congregate with the children after school hours. The main activity when you did get together was rabbiting – that’s either ferreting or doing the physical bit, digging them out.
“We were on ‘if you want it you’ve got to work for it’; you had to do the work to reap the rewards. And I suppose I’m speaking here about catching rabbits, selling the darn things - selling their skins rather - so we had to learn to skin the rabbits.
“We found out that if you did it correctly, that was worth money, so we used to skin the rabbits that we got.
“And then what do you with the money – an eight, nine-year-old living out in the country? “That was a rewarding part because there was a fund rolling through the school where you saved your pocket money and invested that in the Armed Services.
“That made you feel good, it made you feel part of the whole war, I guess. Somebody was using that money to fund the war effort, and we were part of that.
“I was fairly interested in that because Dad was a returned soldier from the 1914-18 war.
“He was in the 18th Battalion, to which he achieved a Military Medal. It was a treasured piece of jewellery, we were quite proud of that.
“He still had some of his old army gear which we treasured; we were very much in love with this army gear because we could wear it when we wanted to.
“I think I was 16 (years old) when I bought my first pea rifle, and that I had until they banned guns on farms.
“So I lost my beloved .22 calibre Browning automatic. It was the love of my life.
“I used to carry it with me everywhere and if there was a rabbit to be seen, it was in danger. “It was mine. I bought it myself with my own rabbit skin money.
“I was very, very proud of it; used to give it quite a few cleans that it didn’t need, just because it was mine.
“It had a bit of a finished wood look about it, so you tended to give it tender loving care at almost every opportunity.
“I often wonder whatever happened to that; I had a lot of fun with it, and I just wondered who the bloke who got the thing had any fun at all bending it up, breaking it up.
“It was just one of those things, you weren’t allowed to have after that, so as a consequence, your skill of shooting deteriorated, because if you used the thing often enough, you got quite skillful.
“Skillful to the point where you would count how many rabbits you shot with fifty bullets. That was a bit of a challenge, you know, I only got forty-nine.
“I still miss those days. I wouldn’t mind going shooting every Saturday, Sunday, you know, just because, well, there was a challenge there, and we weren’t doing any harm.
“It didn’t seem to worry anybody much, and there was plenty of game because it was in the middle of the rabbit plague or part of it; and that was pretty good.”
The Yarrawonga Mulwala Community and Learning Centre Oral History Group are currently seeking new members to join our group. If you have skills in: basic IT, typing and/or audio editing it would be an advantage. Training and support are provided.
Please contact the Community Centre on 0357443911 for more information.
