R. M. Williams

From Welsh ancestors, his maternal grandfather Richard Mitchell being from Cornwall, Reginald Murray Williams was born to Joe Williams and his wife on 24 May 1908.

When he was 10 years old, Williams's family moved to Adelaide so that he and his two sisters could attend school there. School did not agree with him and so, at 13, Williams packed his swag and left for the land he loved. At 18, he started work as a camel driver and spent three years trekking through the Australian desert, living with Aboriginal Australians and learning to survive the harsh conditions. During the Great Depression in Australia, Williams returned to Adelaide, where he met Thelma Ena Cummings, who would become his first wife. After they married, they settled in South Australia's Flinders Ranges and had six children.

After the marriage broke up in the 1950s, Williams purchased 55 hectares (140 acres) of land behind Yatala Labour Prison, South Australia. There, Williams constructed a homestead, planted vineyards and thousands of roses, and ran rodeos on the floodplain of Dry Creek. When the land was compulsorily acquired during the time of former State Premier Sir Thomas Playford, Williams left South Australia for his Rockybar property in Eidsvold, Queensland, vowing never to return to South Australia.

He remarried in 1955 to Erica, had four more children, living at the North Burnett

cattle station in Queensland. In 1985, he co-wrote his autobiography, Beneath whose hand.

Williams died at his home in Toowoomba on the Darling Downs in Queensland, on 4 November 2003. He was 95. His life was celebrated at a state funeral at Toowoomba, Queensland, on 13 November 2003.