page_title: R. M. Williams
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: R. M. Williams / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: ruins at the rear of Yatala Labour Prison, Grand Junction Road, South Australia. Mostly part of the former property of R.M. Williams
context_page_description: Reginald Murray "R.M." Williams AO, CMG was an Australian bushman and entrepreneur who rose from a swagman to a millionaire, he was born at Belalie North near Jamestown in the Mid North of South Australia, 200 kilometres north of Adelaide, into a pioneering settler family working and training horses. R.M. had many adventures in Australia's rugged outback as a bushman, and became known for creating an Australian style of bushwear clothing and footwear recognised worldwide and the company that bore his name.
context_section_description: From Welsh ancestors, his maternal grandfather Richard Mitchell being from Cornwall, Reginald Murray Williams was born to Joe Williams and his wife.
  When he was 10 years old, R.M.'s family moved to Adelaide so that he and his two sisters could attend school there. School did not agree with R.M. and so, at 13, R.M. packed his swag and left for the land he loved. At 18 he started work as a camel driver and spent 3 years trekking through the Australian desert, living with Indigenous Australians and learning to survive the harsh conditions. During the Great Depression, R.M. 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 of land behind Yatala Labour Prison, South Australia. There, R.M.  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, R.M. 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.  In 2003 Williams died at his home in Toowoomba on the Darling Downs in Queensland.
caption: Stockman's quarters on R.M.'s property at Dry Creek
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