Port Lincoln’s Harry Letton was surprised by family and friends at the Great Northern Hotel last week, with more than 60 guests helping him celebrate his 95th birthday.
Partygoers came from far and wide across the country, including Whyalla, Wudinna, Dubbo, Western Australia and Queensland.
“I was talking to my son and daughter and I said, ‘well how many’s coming for tea’, and they wouldn’t tell me nothing, so they said, ‘about 10 people’ and I said, ‘alright I’ll book a table for 10 people’,” Mr Letton laughed.
“They said, ‘don’t worry about it, we’ll sort it’, so I said, ‘alright I’ll leave it with you’, and I walk in the door and there’s about 60 people there.
“The cake was about two-foot square, it was a beautiful cake, the food was brilliant, I had nieces, nephews and grandchildren, everybody was there. It was a wonderful, wonderful night.”
Mr Letton has an extensive resume: he has had his pilot’s licence for several years, was a builder, and pioneered land in Western Australia.
“I had my pilot’s licence for about eight years and I had my own small aircraft,” he said.
Mr Letton was born in Adelaide but grew up in Cummins and when he left high school moved to Port Lincoln.
“I came down to do an apprenticeship for building, carpentry and joinery, I served as an apprentice for Reg Sellen, I did my apprenticeship and stayed on with him for another two years because he was a great man,” he said.
“I bought his business because he got ill, he was a returned man, so I bought his business and went into it myself.
“I went into my own joinery shop and built houses, I did them all over the place, Port Lincoln, Streaky Bay, Elliston, three or four houses in Cleve – all over the place.”
The joinery shop was located on Stevenson Street attached to his house, and Mr Letton would also build furniture there when he was in town.
On October 9, 1951 Mr Letton married Shirley Paterson in Port Lincoln and over their years together became the proud parents of four children.
Mr Letton continued to travel for work with his team – the likes of Phil McCuspie, Darryl Staunton, Wayne Dunning and Jake Renton.
“I had that business for about 20 years, I suppose. The reason why I left it was because I applied for some three-and-a-half thousand acre scrub blocks brought out by the Western Australian Government for anyone who wanted to take them on, you had to buy them but they were pretty cheap,” he said.
“So I applied for one of them and I got one so that’s why I sold out of here and went over there, went out into the scrub, cleared it all, there was nothing. We were 32 miles out of town by road.
“We cleared it all and turned it into growing wheat and barley, and we had two-and-a-half thousand sheep to finish up with, a hundred pigs – it was a big farming block.”
Together with their children – Brian, Bev, Daryl and Ronnie – the Lettons made the move to WA in 1966.
Daughter Bev recalled all the family belongings being trucked over with them across the Nullarbor, travelling for almost two weeks.
“Mum cooked in the scrub on a plough disc over the fire; mum and dad just worked their fingers to the bone, so did the boys, I was lucky enough to get shunted off to school,” she said.
“It ended up all fenced, damned, cleared and developed into a prosperous working farm, it was an incredible achievement, they stuck it out there for so many years.”
The Lettons named their station ‘Karinya’, which meant ‘A Happy Home’ in the local Aboriginal language, and stayed there for 16 years.
“The boys all went into different trades – building, boiler-making – and Bev did her own thing and got married and went on her way,” Mr Letton remembered.
“With that amount of country to manage and the stock it was a bit over the top so I thought, well, I think I’ll give it away – so I sold it up.
“I went and did a bit of building again for a while, and then the Western Australia health department was looking for a building inspector so I applied for the job and because I had my builder’s ticket I got the job.”
On the side of these experiences, Mr Letton was evolving a passion for music.
“My eldest son Brian and my youngest son, they were into music, I was very interested in guitar music, Slim Dusty, his lead guitar Barry Thornton, I thought the world of him,” he said fondly.
“I got to know him through Brian and I learnt guitar through him virtually, so I spent a bit of time playing a bit of music, I started my own band for a while called Boston Country.
“We played all over Eyre Peninsula, I used to do a couple of bits with Brian at his shows, he used to do that just to make me happy. He plays at Tamworth all over Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.”
In 1980, while still living in Perth, Mr Letton bought himself a Gibson 335 guitar. It is not a coincidence that it is the same guitar Barry Thornton played.
Over his years with the health department, Mr Letton would check over hospital buildings across Western Australia, but his home base during that time had remained Perth.
“When I turned 65 they said, ‘I’m sorry we can’t employ you anymore’, so I was a bit upset, so I said, ‘right it’s too hot here I’ll go back to Port Lincoln’,” he laughed.
By 1994, Mr Letton was back in Port Lincoln – still strumming his guitar – and in 2010, he was inducted into the South Australia Country Music Hall of Fame.
The Lettons were involved in a fair amount of volunteering in the Port Lincoln and surrounding community – raising funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, helping with Santa’s march at the Tumby Bay Christmas Parade and playing music at Matthew Flinders Care Home for the elderly for more than a decade.
Today, Mr Letton can still whip out a Barry Thornton CD if he wants to have a listen, while spending his time fixing things around the house, barracking for the Adelaide Crows and tending to his fruit trees.
“I’ve got flowers all around the place, I’ve got fruit trees out the back, the flaming parrots beat me this year they ate up nearly all the fruit,” he said with a smile.
“It’s good, it keeps me out of mischief.”
Mr Letton said he was grateful to see all his family and mates at his birthday.
“The greatest present anyone can give me is what the family put on,” he said.
“I could’ve collapsed on the floor when I walked in and saw all those people there.”
But he hid his gourmet box of goodies he was gifted until his family has gone, “so I can keep some for myself,” he joked.
