At the back of the Milton Showground on Croobyar Road is a simple horse trough with the inscription ‘Donated by Annis & George Bills, Australia‘. It is one of an estimated 7,000 troughs around Australia that were financed from the Estate of George Bills, who died in1927.
Sickness was the true scourge of the pioneers, with diphtheria, convulsions, scarlet fever and measles often causing the deaths of young children. Many women also died from complications of childbirth as there were no doctors. When Sarah Claydon arrived in Milton-Ulladulla in 1851, she began to care for those in her community who needed her most.
As a young Australian soldier lay dying, mortally wounded by shrapnel during the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign, Sister Kitty Porter stayed after her regular nursing shift on the hospital ship to care for and comfort him. Those “terrible days” early on in Australia’s participation in World War 1 marked the beginning of Kitty Porter’s four years of selfless war service in Egypt and France.
I was born in 1945 at the Old Milton Hospital from where my parents Leila and Elwyn (‘Tiger’) Anderson took me home to the family property ‘Wickham Hill’, Milton. Mum helped with the milking so as an infant I was put in a play-pen in the engine/wash-up room of the dairy.
