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Milestone celebration

Emma ClaytonMelville Gazette

The former farmer lives with his daughter Dawn Burr and son-in-law in Melville after an active life in the Wheatbelt.

After leaving school at age 14 to drive a team of horses on his parent's Northam farm, he began work to start raising enough money to buy his own.

In 1941, he volunteered for the army and was sent to Palestine, where he and one of his three brothers were part of the 2nd/3rd Machine Gun Battalion.

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"As they were returning to Australia via Java, they and their battalion were captured by the Japanese," Mrs Burr said.

"They spent 12 months in Java, 18 months in Thailand working on the Thai/Burma Railway and another 12 months in Japan working in a coal mine under the sea.

They were prisoners of war for three-and-a-half years."

After returning to Australia at the end of the war, he bought a farm with another brother south of Cunderdin, and was a successful wheat and sheep farmer for 35 years.

He returned to Thailand with other members of his battalion for Anzac Day several times between 1986 and 2003, taking his daughters Dawn and Wendy and four grandsons with him on different trips.

In 1988, his first wife Doris died and in 1989 he married Peg who died 2005.