Roger Thompson has been a stock agent for 45 years, beginning with Ray Neale in Goulburn and later joining Gordon Cabot and Michael Laing at Cabot and Laing, which later sold to Landmark. Roger has been with Landmark for 14 years, and the company is now known as Nutrien/Landmark. Photo: John Thistleton.
When Roger Thompson left school at age 15 his headmaster assured him the only thing he was good for was football.
Still in the workforce in Goulburn at age 83, Roger can afford to shrug off the headmaster’s ill-considered remark all those years ago.
Reflecting on owning and driving trucks, farming and his current role as a stock agent, he is more inclined to agree with his father Joe, who put him to work the following year from school as an unlicensed truck driver to cover for one of his drivers who was struggling with alcohol.
The second half of his working life has been in the livestock industry around Goulburn. But those early years in old Jindabyne, seeing the Snowy Mountains Scheme leave the drawing board and carve its way into the heart of the mountains and soul of the nation were momentous.
The Sundowners starring Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr was filmed on Roger’s grandfather Fred Wallace’s cattle grazing property ‘Hiawatha’ in 1960. Roger, who helped drive cattle to and from Fred’s snow lease which ran from Island Bend to Smiggins Hole, met the two Hollywood stars and remembers Hiawatha’s pine trees being felled to reopen a view of the wide, silver expanse of the Snowy River and homestead for the movie.
The children of European immigrants flooded the mountain towns, enduring a torrent of torment from the local kids.
“They talk about getting a hard time today; I tell you those kids got a hard time and a lot of them who couldn’t speak English own a lot of Canberra today,” Roger said.
A good mate of his, Doug Nye, then 25, was among workmen injured 300 feet underground in a shaft at Island Bend when a piece of hardened concrete blocked a concrete pump’s hose as it sprayed liquid concrete lining on the shaft’s walls. Three men died in the horrific 1963 disaster.
In his early truck driving career behind the wheel of his father’s Maple Leaf Chevy, Roger delivered sand and gravel to help seal roads and on contracts for the Snowy. At times he nudged his truck over a bridge made of saplings roped together to cross the Thredbo River.
As the Snowy scheme wound down the family left and bought a property at Burra south of Queanbeyan. Roger began carting fine sand from Bungendore to a Fyshwick concrete plant.
Roger in the early 1960s, when he played as an inside centre. Photo: Thompson family collection.
Three years later they sold their Burra farm and he bought another property ‘Rosewood’ at Currawang, south of Goulburn where he and his wife Colleen, who raised three children, live today.
Earlier in his teen years Roger earned a life ban from playing rugby league for giving the referee, who he knew, a shake after a game that Jindabyne lost, that cost them a place in the finals. The following year, coinciding with Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Australia, a pardon was issued, and his rugby league days continued.
In the first grade ranks he had trialled with the Queanbeyan Blues, but the club’s supremo Les McIntyre advised him to go to the Canberra Tigers, where he played under the Kiwi legend Mel Cooke.
“I was playing against (Goulburn) United on Ainslie Oval and broke my leg,” he said. “So I missed that year and was in plaster until October,” he said.
Returning to Jindabyne, he helped the team reach the grand final in a spiteful game against arch-rivals the Cooma Rovers. In the second half the referee, a former Rovers player, attempted to send Roger off for arguing with him.
“I’ve had enough of you Thompson; you get off,” the referee had said.
“I said, ‘If I go, you’re coming with me,’” Roger replied, as tempers on and off the field boiled over. His own players had to restrain him as the ground erupted in an all-in-brawl. Roger never threw a punch.
But as he was leaving the field, a policeman said he had been charged with assault and asked him to attend the police station after his shower.
Jindabyne’s first-grade side in 1965. Roger is second from right, front row. Jindabyne, Delegate, Bibbenluk and Cooma Rovers and St Pat’s played in Group 19 from 1950 to 1970, with many of the clubs boosted by Snowy workers. Photo: Thompson family collection.
A week earlier, Colleen had given birth to their son Michael, who tragically died six days later. This meant Roger, who was due in court to face the assault charge the day after the match, instead attended his son’s funeral.
Fortunately his legal counsel had the case dismissed. A second life-long ban was later lifted too, following an appeal to the Country Rugby League. A witness had testified that the referee had placed a bet with him on the outcome of the grand final.
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