Formative Years 1888-1913
After raising $100,000, a committee led by John Honan, restored the Wilkins family homestead - Netfield - after it had been abandoned by the Wilkins family nearly 100 years before. This report on the ABC's Lateline of the opening is courtesy of Brodie Bowers.
‘Netfield’–the Wilkins family homestead. Not clear when this image was taken but possibly in the late 1930s
Beginning in South Australia’s Mid-North
George Hubert Wilkins was believed born on 30th October 1888 to Harry and Louisa, a woman already in her fifties and the previous barer of 11 or 12 children. Like much of the Wilkins story exact details are not always available. He was raised in Netfield, a homestead in Mount Bryan East, an area about 20kms from Hallett, in the South Australian mid-north, it, in turn, now about 2 ½ hours’ drive north from Adelaide.
A shot taken while in Trinidad for the filming of a promotion for Cadbury Chocolates. c1912
A promising career begins
After enrolling in the School of Mines at Adelaide University (now the Engineering School), the teenage Bert (as he was then known to family and friends) skipped town to Sydney, to be involved in the fledgling cinema and movie industry. There, running a projector, he met a man who promised him work in London if he ever got there. By means uncertain, he got to England around 1912 and took up an offer with the Gaumont Media Company. They then sent him on all manner of assignments to capture the news of the day and to help film advertising documentaries for such entities as Cadbury Chocolates.
Frontier Photographer
When he was offered the opportunity to join the august collection of war correspondents covering the First Balkan War, Bert Wilkins couldn’t jump at the chance fast enough, starting what became his long list of firsts that adorned his life thereafter. These included the first to film a battle and to fly over enemy lines.
True Adventure Thrills–The Stowaway
In the 1930s, Wilkins took to writing a series of radio plays–what we may now know as podcasts–that told various,terrific stories about his adventures in life to that time. In this, the first episode which has recently been transcribed and edited from the fading original held at Ohio StateUniversity’s Byrd Polar & Climate Research Center, he talks of how he stowed away to Algiers. Just how much of all these are truth and what fiction will never be known.For example, in this instance,we know his departure out of Australia took place from Sydney, not Adelaide. Nonetheless, so many of the stories are so good, no writer of fiction could ever have conceived them
Read True Adventure Thrills Episode One
