Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Jack was born in Emmaville, a tin mining town in NSW, and was the eldest of the 13 children born to Samuel and Winifred O'Hara (nee Mariner).

Jack was put to work at a very early age and his formal schooling was limited, but he never expressed any resentment, or thought that life had been unfair to him. He simply got on with it and found enjoyment in the ordinary things of life. He was not a religous man, but did own a bible that was presented to him as a boy, for his attendance at Sunday School.

Jack was wounded at the battle of Tarakan in 1945 and during his working life, he always wore a leg brace on his left leg.  He called it a leg iron. It slotted into his special boots and had a leather top that fastened around his leg, either just below, or just above the knee. He was given a new pair of boots every now and then; probably when 'Repat' could no longer mend the old ones.  On one occasion, he sent the boots away unpolished, and they came back with a curt little note telling him that "applying boot polish will preserve the leather".

After the war, Jack worked as a station hand on properties around the Inverell District.  He and Gladys had six children when he was working at "Hillside" outside of Yetman. But when the one-room school at the back of the property closed, they moved to warialda and the family later increased to seven.  Jack and Gladys had four sons and three daughters.

Jack was happy working for Quinlan Brothers on their farm at Warialda, but fate intervened and he retired with a heart condition when he was forty-eight years old.  He could no longer do the heavy lifting that was required of a station hand. Jack died ten years later, on 2nd May 1967.  Gladys had died three years earlier in October 1964.  They are both buried in the Warialda cemetery.

Jack's parents and some of his sibling also lived in, and around Inverell. They didn't visit each other very often, but when they did, it was always a happy occasion.  Remarkably, for such a large family, they genuinely seemed to like each other.  Perhaps it was because they all enjoyed a jolly good chat.  

Jack's brothers also served in WW2, but in later life when his brother, Don, was asked what they all talked about when they got together on the verandah of their parents home, he said "I can tell you what we didn't talk about; we didn't talk about the war".

Jack in the 1950's, was much like every other Australian male.  He wore long-sleeved white shirts rolled up to the elbows, and a hat that he would raise when greeting women. Jack's birthdays usually came and went without any fanfare, but on one memorable occasion in the late fifties, he was given a birthday present.  It was a pale blue, short-sleeved shirt in the latest synthetic material, and he was both surprised and delighted, exclaiming "Hokey pie! I'll be a mug lair in this"

There may be many ways in which you could describe Jack O'Hara, but not under any circumstances, or in any coloured shirt, could he be described as a mug lair.