Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

John Hinton “Jack” Edmonds was born in Cowell South Aust in 1911, the eldest son of Eyre Peninsula farming couple Ernest Harry Edmonds and Mabel Jane Haines, and grew up in the Wudinna area with his two brothers and one sister, where as a young man he built his own “bitsa” car and his own motorbikes – which he raced at Elliston Speedway. He later married local girl Ella Osborn in 1934, and Jack and Ella worked their own farm for a while, but later he became a truck contractor in the district.

With the outbreak of war, Jack tried to get into the RAAF or the Army in their Transport Sections, but with nothing available he enlisted in the AIF in Adelaide in mid 1940 and began basic training at Wayville, his young family moving to Prospect in the city. When Jack was discharged unfit for the infantry, and was transferred into the Munitions Workshops at Islington, where he worked for the next two years gaining Fitter & Machinist skills, also attending technical classes at night.

In November 1942 Jack enlisted again, this time into the Aust Electrical & Mechanical Engineers (AEME, later RAEME), and after stints in Melbourne and Townsville, in March 1943 as a “Group 1 Fitter MV” was transferred to Pt Morseby on the “Duntroon”, then moved out to the 11 AA AEME Workshops on the Laloki River, ap 12 kms northeast of Pt Moresby.

After about 18 months in the Army Workshops in Papua, Jack returned home to Adelaide on leave, but transferred up to Brisbane after 4 weeks, to the workshops at Rocklea, where he saw out the war, only to be placed on the Seriously Ill List, and eventually be operated on by an Army MO, which left him with serious lifelong medical problems, and after stays in Vic’s Heidelberg and SA’s Daws Road Repat Hospitals, was discharged in mid 1946.

The rest of Jack’s life was as a single man, and with the exception of a time in his fifties farming, he always worked with machinery, gaining a reputation for meticulous work and ingenuity, while also following his passions for travel throughout Australia, and for photography.

Jack ended his days in 1990, after some 12 years in the house he built himself in the small town of Denham in Western Australia, leaving three sons, many grandchildren, and a host of friends from all over Australia. His headstone aptly reads –

TO THE MEMORY OF
JOHN HINTON “JACK”
EDMONDS
Craftsman, Traveller,
Father & Friend.

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