Jim McHugh

I left England in 1957 and sailed to Melbourne, Victoria, in a vessel aptly named the "New Australia". We settled in Moorabbin, a suburb just south of the Melborne CBD and I went to Brighton High School. This is the Oz equivalent of the Grammar School. I went right through to year 12 but just missed matriculating. I nonetheless won a scholarship to enter the Creswick School of Forestry near Ballarat some 100 Kms east of Melbourne. I did the three year diploma course and then went out to set up pine plantations in a Forest District on the South Australian border.

After three years I went back to Melbourne and qualified to go to University as a mature-aged student. I received my BSc Forestry from Melbourne University in 1970.  There I met my first wife.  We had three kids.   Professionally, during this time I managed a forest park and got the bug for public recreation in natural areas.  I did a year's forest research and didn't like that much so the opportunity came up to join the Victorian National Parks Service. I went to Portland in SW Victoria and ran a region for five years, fought a few bushfires, learned all about dealing with local government, got used to snakes again.

Eventually my wife decided she had had enough of country Victoria and I landed a job as a Regional Manager with the South Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service in Adelaide.  That marriage went foul not long after and then went belly up. In 1990, I became Manager of Regional Operations for parks then in 1994 I took a secondment to the Premier's Department doing para-legal work associated with common law land titles of the indigenous Aboriginal people. They settled the country about 60,000 years until the Brits invaded in 1788. Its been a one-sided bunfight ever since. As is usually the case with the old British Empire, the indigenous people didn't fair too well and efforts are now being made in Australia and Canada to repatriate some of their lands, their law and their dignity. There is a fair way to go yet. Of course it doesn't go as far as we white folk coming back home. It is not possible to turn back the clock. As you can see working with Aboriginal people has been a bit of a passion. It has been truly fascinating.

1991 saw me marry again and I have an eight year old son with Carol. They say at my age that having kids again keeps you young. It is not, however, the youth I remember. I wouldn't trade him for quids, though. 

My final job before I retired in 2001 was Manager of Policy and Planning with Parks having got back into my old agency.  Retirement is fine. I spend some time doing contract HR and conservation planning with National Parks and Wildlife South Australia. The rest of the time is spent renovating our 1920s house, a dwelling you would probably refer to as a bungalow. We live in a suburb about 9 Kms SW of the Adelaide CBD.

My wife is the Registrar at the School of Business at Adelaide University.  My eldest daughter is a geologist at Roxby Downs a large copper mine 500 kms north of Adelaide in the arid lands of South Australia. She is married to a metallurgist and they are the parents of my only grand child, a boy. My youngest daughter is a primary school teacher in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and my eldest son, between the girls in age is a film maker in London UK.

That is really all I have to show for myself after all these years. But I really love this place and do not regret one bit the decision my parents took to emigrate. The weather is great, the life style leaves little to be desired. South Australia is not quite Queensland where they say it is beautiful one day, perfect the next, but Adelaide is a very easy place to live.