Frank BROOMHALL
At twelve years of age Frank Broomhall applied to emigrate to Australia. His father quashed the idea. He became a gardening apprentice and worked in the Royal Gardens at Windsor, among other places.
Enlisting in the 4th Battalion Wiltshire Regiment he was posted to Dublin. He re-enlisted in the Manchester Regiment after World War 1 and saw service in Mesopotamia and Persia in 1920 and then India for two years. He arrived in Western Australia early in 1923 at the age of twenty-two and selected a North Bencubbin block and worked as a farmhand.
Frank joined the Rabbit Department in 1926 and spent fourteen months on the Rabbit Proof Fence as a Boundary Rider, forming the basis of an interest that resulted in him writing The Longest Fence in the World. Poor seasons and ill health forced him out of full time farming in 1942.
He joined the Egg Marketing Board from 1945 to 1951 and then became O.I.C. of the Government interests in the State Alunite Industry at Lake Chandler until 1953, later becoming O.I.C. of Argentine Ant Control until retirement in 1965.
Ever active, he completed a B.A. at the University of Western Australia in 1968. His book on the history of the enrolled pensioner force of Western Australa, The Veterans was published by Hesperian Press in 1985 and reprinted in 1989. He has also written a local history, Mt Marshall.
