Bill Aiers

While many Dreadnought Boys went on from rural life to other pursuits, some becoming quite prominent, it is useful to hear of those who stayed with it. James William Stanton Aiers was one of these young men.

Bill was born in Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire UK, in 1906, but within a few years the family had moved to the Oakthorpe district in Leicestershire. During the First World War, when most fit men were away at the Front, Bill worked in the fields, starting straight from school. This continued after the war, but Bill heard from friends that it was a much better life in Australia. Both he and his older brother Ronald decided to go. Their aunt paid for their passage, with the boys accepted for the Dreadnought Scheme.

The Aiers boys travelled out on the Demosthenes, which reached Sydney on 27 November 1922. Although they both had farm experience, they were sent to Glen Innes in northern NSW for more farm training. On completion of training, Bill was placed in the Urbenville area (about 15km south of the Queensland border), evidently on the Connell farm on Beaury Creek. In 2008 Bill, aged 102, was interviewed by ABCTV- Landline’s Tim Lee who asked about his experience of the people at the farm. Bill was emphatic “They were really good…….they were good to me.” Bill met Hilda Taylor on a neighbouring farm, and they were married in 1929. By 1935, Bill and his family were in Urbenville and he was working as a carrier.

In the early 1930s, there had been a big controversy in Bill’s area about the cattle tick eradication programme. Through it, Bill had become a pioneer in the construction of the chemical dips used for tick control. But time had come to move on, and the end of the war years saw Bill living in Queensland; in 1947-48 he was involved with Brook Lodge, a well-known Palmwoods dairy cattle stud which specialised in Jersey cattle. From there he went on to Cooroy where he worked in banana and sugar cane production.

Bill went back to England three times for visits, but never wanted to stay. After one visit, Bill commented “The best thing I did in my life was coming to Australia.”

Bill’s wife, Hilda, died in 1977. His own long life came to an end, several months after the Landline programme was shown, when he passed away on 20 October 2008. Bill Aiers had done what the Dreadnought Scheme intended.