His descendants walked from Brisbane to Booligal with a baby in a pram. A long, and hard journey which took three years, and saw the birth of a second baby along the way.

A farm boy from birth, he has had his fair share of trials and tribulations related to the hardships isolat ed living can bring.

Neville Eade is a face that most would recognise, enjoying a happy quiet life, with his only daughter Amelia just across the road.

Sharing nightly dinners with her, his grandson Christian working at IGA, and Kyesha with two lovely children of her own.

There is so much behind a face. Neville has a wide and winding family tree, the Eade family being a fixture in the district for nearly two centuries.

As was very common in his time, Neville did not receive much of an education, a year of high school marking the conclusion of his education.

“I left school to go to work on the family farm, Green Tree Farm,” Neville said.

“It was 1000 acres across river country, and always had about 500 breeding ewes. Some of it was leased country.”

Neville always worked on the farm, although at times there was not enough work with the sheep.

His father had various mail runs, including Gunbar, Barnes Place near Jerilderie and West Burrabogie.

Neville would often accompany his father on these runs.

He also ran the garbage cart, and the night soil collections.

Most of the toilets used to be located at the back of the properties, easily accessible from the lanes.

On the odd occasion, there would be some not so accessible.

There would be boxes at the back of the toilet room, where some would lift out and some did not.

On the odd occasion, someone would accidentally leave a dog loose, and Neville’s father would be chased, throwing the pan in his haste to outrun the dog.

His brother Colin, had a bad accident at the age of 16. They were in the paddock cutting burrs, and their cousin was staying with them at the time, along with his friend.

“They began walking out through the paddock to come and see us, and they stopped at the car, spying the rifle in there, and took it out to play with it.

“Geoff, one of my brothers became angry and told them to put it back, it was not a toy.

“Next thing we knew, we could hear shots.

"They had accidentally shot Geoff, and narrowly missed his heart, and hit his spine. He very nearly died.”

Out in the bush, they knew that time was of the essence, so they picked him up and laid him in the back of the ute, and drove to Hay Hospital.

“We raced right past Dad, but did not have the time to stop and tell him what had happened, but he turned around and followed us,” Neville recalled.

He was rushed from there to Melbourne, and spent considerable time in hospital, and then rehabilitation.

It was there that he met Martha, his future wife. In 1970, Neville suffered a terrible accident. which proved close to nearly taking his leg completely.

To this day, his left leg is a good inch shorter than the right, and he constructs his own lifts onto his left shoes. Neville was a kangaroo shooter for over 25 years.

This is something he enjoyed doing for a living. He had his own chillers for the carcasses.

“People would ask what happened to my leg,” Neville said.

“I would tell them that the rest of it was left out in the paddock.”

He was working for Bill Baird at the time, who had the property adjoining his family property.

“I would always grease up the machine before starting work,” Neville said.

“I had a box that I would put on the slasher that would carry the grease gun, and the pump.

“I forgot to put the grease gun in the box, and when I hopped off to pick it up, my foot went under, and then pulled my leg under.

“It was a seven-foot cut slasher.

“My ute was parked a good 50 feet away, and I crawled over to it.

“My mind was reeling, thinking how I was going to keep going, and get to help.

“It was a manual ute. I pulled myself up on one leg, so much going through my mind.

“I resolved to use my good foot to put the clutch in, and bend down, and use my right hand to push the accelerator.

“First gear was good enough, I was moving.

"When I got into Hay Hospital, the doctor there could not do much for me, he put the leg in a half cast and sent me straight to Wagga.

“They pulled pieces of bone out and put it back together.

“I spent 10 weeks in traction, basically. There was a foot lock at the end of the bed.

“Then the doctor would come to see me, the specialist, and told me I could go home for six weeks.”

Neville did indeed go home, in a plaster for six weeks’ convalescence.

His return heralded bone grafts, and putting the pieces back together, joining the fibula and tibia together with screws, and other interventions.

He was allowed to go home for a further eight weeks after this, and then returned for bone grafts.

Bed rest for six weeks at the hospital followed, with another return home for six weeks.

This cycle continued for some time, with Neville returning for skin grafts, and wearing big army boots on doctors’ orders that came up over his shins.

When asked how he dealt with that long road to recovery, he said that he just went with the flow, accepted it, and took things as they came.

The hospital ward where he stayed had two patients to a room, and he was in a room with another man who had metal all through his leg.

“One night, three nurses were walking past, the other fellow grabbed one of the nurse’s hats, and threw it over to me.

"He was blocking her way, so she could not get directly past and over to me to retrieve her hat.

“She then decided that she would get down on her hand and knees, crawl under the bed, and out of his way.

"At that unfortunate time, the sister in charge of the ward appeared, and sternly directed the nurse to her office.

“Luckily, she must not have gotten into much trouble, as she appeared again the next day.

“The specialist commented the next day that ‘us boys must have been playing up last night,’ and laughed.

“The sister was not a bad old stick. She caught a patient smoking and threatened that if anyone gave him another cigarette that she would remove all the smokes from the ward.”

Neville also recalled with a chuckle having a nightly drink in the ward.

“Cyril Weeks, who used to be manager at Hay Services Club for a time back in the day, and then was manager of another in the area at the time I was in hospital, would bring me two longnecks every night.

“I would sit with Cyril behind the curtain that divided the room, and enjoy the beer.

"He would then take home the empties with him.

"His daughter would come and see me daily, also. They were a very good family.”

It was during this time, the blurry time of travel ling for medical interventions, and then coming home for six weeks, that his father tragically passed from a heart attack, at the age of 61.

It was a solid 18 months before Neville could stand comfortably on his leg.

One time when he travelled home for convalescence, he was laid up in bed, his father suffered a heart attack.

The people staying with the family at the time, and Neville’s brother bundled him into the car, but alas he passed before he reached Hay Hospital.

They only told Neville what had transpired once they returned home.

“I was determined to get out there and make the crosses for the cemetery,” Neville recalled.

“I had a lot of help.”

Once Neville had finally reached the end of his long bouts in hospital, he knew he had put on a fair bit of weight, understandably.

So, after brainstorming what to do next, he settled on rabbit shooting. Beginning this new career path in 1976, he concluded shooting in 1990.

He prided himself on his affinity for the task, working professionally, safely, and averaging 100 rabbits per night. He could manage this task by 12 am to 1am.

“Sometimes I would have a young man that I would hire to come and pick up the rabbits.

“I was good to him, pulling up just on the left hand side of the rabbit, and he would just get out, and not have far to go.

I enjoyed teaching him the aspects of the job; using guns responsibly, safety, how to pick rabbits up correctly.

“It is never advisable to pick the rabbit up by the leg, it could still be kicking and a person would get blood all over them.

“Picking it up by the skin on the back is the better method.”

Neville started duck shooting on rice properties, from 2002 to 2011, which he also enjoyed.

His emotion when talking about his beloved mother, Annie Parsons, is palpable.

“She was a lovely person,” he said.

“I still have pictures of her all over the house, my favourite being one that she had taken with Santa Claus.

“I was happily devoted to her, doing all the jobs she needed done, and taking her away whenever she asked.

She was not too far off 100 when she passed away.”

He said that he has lived a good life, one for which he is thankful.

“My daughter Amelia, lives just over the road, and looks after me.

“I go there for dinner nightly. It is really good to have family close by.

“Life is funny, I only had one child, my mother’s sister had 21 children, and my father was one of 17 children, and I was one of 10.”

Ruth and John Eade settled in Tooragany Creek, Booligal, after arriving in Australia in 1815. Their son George put together the funds to sponsor his parents to come to Australia.

One of the babies who made the trek with George and Mary-Ann from Brisbane to Booligal, George Jnr had sadly passed away by this time.

Ruth, Mary-Ann, and other family members were all laid to rest at Tooragany once they passed.

The mind boggles at travelling from Brisbane to Booligal on foot, with a baby in a pram. John, who was blind, had bought a mare somewhere along the way, and it gave birth to a foal.

The foal died, so the couple, acclimatised to the times and making do with what they had, used the mare’s milk to feed the baby.

Once they made their settlement in Booligal, at Tooragany, George would leave for extended periods, pursuing employment to keep food on the table for his family.

While he was away, Mary-Ann had a legitimate fear of wild pigs, animals that were plentiful in the area, and voracious.

She sourced a large box which she would stow away in the fork of a tree, where she would hide baby George and John Thomas, and climb in her self.

They would often stay there until George or another person would come and scare the pigs away. George proceeded to construct a fence out of twigs for safety.

He placed the twigs close together, and in between he fixed post and rails top and bottom to hold everything together.

Even after her child died, Mary-Ann steadfastly did everything she could to keep the family going, carrying on with life.

Cooking for her family on an open fire, battling the elements such as extreme heat with no luxury appliances or indeed, anything at all to pro vide respite from the dangerous weather conditions.

George had built a makeshift house with bark walls and lignum thatched roof. Earth floors and kangaroo skins serving as mats.

This harsh land and start the pair forged together paved the way for generations of family to live on that land.

The life and family chronicles of the Eade family is one of the most fascinating rabbit holes to fall into.

A taste of the harsh and unrelenting life of settlers in Early Australia, and how they forged on and thrived into one of the oldest and most well known families in the district.

The strength and perseverance clearly lives on, clearly seen once given a glimpse into the highs and lows of the life of Hay man, Neville Eade.