Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Frederick or Fred as he was known was born at Inman Valley on 12th January 1885, to John Palmer Hutchinson and his wife Elizabeth, nee Ansell. He grew up on his parent’s farm and went to school at Inman Valley on the Fleurieu Peninsular of South Australia. In 1900 when Fred was 15years old the family moved to Balaklava but in 1905 Fred moved back again to help his brother Andrew with his carrying business. He drove a hooded carrier van loaded with produce on it, leaving at sunset they traveled all night from Normanville to catch the early markets in Adelaide next morning.
Fred was one of 6 boys and two girls in the Hutchinson family and he and his brother Sam moved to Lameroo in 1910 clearing scrub for their brother in law John Marshall. Fred and Sam were two of the earliest pioneers of Marama in the Murray Mallee. They purchased Government land there in 1915 camping in a tent near Peebinga railway siding where a train went through once a month. There were no roads, only bush tracks to either Lameroo (43 kilometres) or Karoonda (32 kilometres) by horse and cart. The diet often consisted of stale bread and boiled potatoes. The only available water had to be carried from a government bore one kilometre away and as the horses had to be watered it meant carrying water daily, after a hard and long day’s work.
Fred enlisted for War service on 9th August 1916 in Adelaide and was allocated the 27th Infantry, listing his sister Elizabeth Amelia Tilley as his next of kin. He embarked from Adelaide on the ship HMAT Afric on 6th November 1916 serving in Egypt and France. In 1918 he was shot in the legs and invalided home.
After the War Fred had a two roomed cottage built of timber and iron through the Repatriation Department and a bore put down near an old station cattle camp named “Hop Hill”, because of the wild hop bushes growing there. Conditions in the Mallee didn’t improve much, as he still had to face dry seasons and low prices. Fred’s champion hack was “Wavelet” and he and his brother Sam won many prizes and Champion ribbons with horses both light and draught at the Karoonda, Lameroo, Murray Bridge and Tailem Bend Shows. He was a good rifle shot and could shoot whilst galloping on horseback, so he was chosen as a sniper in the early days when kangaroos were plentiful and also destructive in the Mallee country. Fred and Sam were two of the main instigators of the North Bore Sports Committee and donated the net profits towards the Lameroo Hospital, which bought a bed for one of the wards. It may have been on that bed in 1948 that Fred ended his days, as he was suddenly stricken by a stroke while feeding his horses one evening. He was found unconscious by the haystack and was taken on a stretcher by utility to the Lameroo Hospital where he passed away the next morning.
As he wished his body was taken back and buried in the Inman Valley Cemetery near to where he was born.