Taken in 1966, this is Bill, reportedly one of the last swagmen, on the road since he was discharged from the army in 1946. Given food by Canon Montague Nell, he was captured in this image by Dick Nell, a boy at the time who kept the photograph all his life. Photo: Dick Nell/ Goulburn Mulwaree Library.
A photo of a swagman called Bill has turned up in a family collection of newspaper cuttings, three books, photographs of small planes, vintage planes and a pilot’s accessories.
Bill looked out of place in the collection which belonged to the family of Dick Nell, who died in 2012, aged 81, after a lifetime of exhilarating flying and travelling adventures. His daughters Jennifer Nell and Jackie Ranken donated the collection to Goulburn Mulwaree Library.
Later cataloguing the collection, curiosity about Bill overcame library assistant in local studies Jennifer Guiver, who highlighted the ace pilot’s memorabilia during a presentation, “Inside the Archives” on 20 March.
She had contacted Jennifer Nell about Bill. Jennifer explained Dick’s father, Cannon Montague Nell had provided overnight accommodation in the church hall, a little money and food for swagmen like him. “I would say that’s why he took this photo from when he lived in the rectory as a boy,” she said.
Further into the collection it becomes apparent why this photograph would appeal to Dick, a resolute wanderer himself.
Many older residents remember Dick’s extraordinary flying, and his Tiger Moth, agile as a spring swallow, looping above the Goulburn Show, thrilling everyone with his aerobatics.
His second book, Motorcycle fever, reveals his wife Margarette happily looked after the children and encouraged him when he rode a motorbike across Australia to the port city of Albany in Western Australia.
Having talked his way onto “Cheynes 11’’, a 600-tonne ship chasing whales, he had to scramble up the tall mast into the crow’s nest as the ship rolled in heavy seas. The crew were testing his mettle.
“But I’ve got the hang of it now and all fear leaves me,” he wrote later. “I clamber into the crow’s nest, a barrel-like attachment, high up the mast.’’
Sighting their quarry, he yelled out “whales ahoy” and later felt extremely sorry for the sperm whale subsequently harpooned. (Years later, public opinion closed the Albany Whaling Station.)
A Depression kid born in Moruya in 1930, Dick had to make his own toys, giving him a great advantage of making things from then on. Following primary school at the small, one-teacher school at Binda, he became a border at Canberra Grammar, crashed out of school and became an apprentice motor mechanic. Branching out to welding and engineering repairs, he progressed to steel fabrication and making front-end loaders and other tractor equipment.
When he was winning national aerobics competitions, Dick Nell owned a Stampe plane and two Tiger Moths. He raced in the air too, sometimes taking his wife Margarette. Photo: Nell family collection/Goulburn Mulwaree Library.
In 1955 Dick learned to fly. All manner of air races and daring aerobatics followed. When he retired from his engineering business in 1985 he could finally take up a suggestion from Danny Kennedy, a Goulburn agricultural flying operator, to fly with him. This opened the way for flying perilously low as a crop duster pilot.
Danny first organised his lessons and licence through Col Pay at Scone, who, while putting him through his paces, rounded on him abruptly for bringing in a plane too quickly to land. (On the controls Dick had sensed a patch of sinking air that perhaps Col had not felt.)
“Get out!” Col had barked at him when the plane had come to a stop.
The flying crew including Dick had been staying at a hotel, where they later gathered at day’s end. Col asked him what he would like to drink.
“I’ll have a lemon squash,” Dick said.
“Lemon squash?” Col said, in disbelief.
“Yes, that’s right, I don’t drink beer.”
“You must be joking,” Col said, throwing his arms up. “Here, drink this,” he said holding up his fresh glass of beer.
“I shook my head and he turned away in disgust,” Dick wrote in one of his books, Flying on the Edge.
Always his own man, he got the licence he needed and performed at air shows.
His death in 2012 saw fellow pilots post tributes on Recreational Flying, including one remembering Dick a decade earlier on a low-hanging cloudy day, taking the flyer on a $20 joy flight in his Stampe plane from Goulburn airport.
Three books penned by Dick Nell and held in the Goulburn Mulwaree Library’s growing local history collection. The Nell family collection surfaced during the library’s presentation ‘Inside the Archives’. Photo: John Thistleton.
After climbing to 800 ft, then performing gentle loops, rolls and stall turns, Dick descended to about 200 ft over the Lake Bathurst area and they spent another 15 minutes chasing ducks off ponds, having enormous fun.
“I asked him what sort of money he wanted for such a splendid 40 or so minutes. Completely straight faced he said, ‘$20!’ What a jewel of a bloke,” he said, summing up the free-spirited swagman’s friend.
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