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Note: Tom Hewett was one of twelve children. His father was a small farmer and railway worker, and died of alcoholism. He was a bright boy and became a Pupil Teacher, but had to leave school at eleven to be apprenticed to a carpenter. He moved to Melbourne and played the cornet on a river boat. At the outbreak of the Great War Tom enlisted as a sapper and survived Gallipoli. In France he was made a bombadier and distinguished himself by winning the Military Cross (highest honour for a NCO), the DSC and the Belgian Croix de Guerre
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Tom suffered form extreme motion sickness and jumped ship in Western Australia where his family eventually joined him. After he married Rene he became an investor and lived a quiet life - apart from dealing with the problems of his daughters. He had progressive ideas about environmental farming and education, but was a political conservative. he suffered from Menieres disease in his later years, a problem of the inner ear which gave him "giddy attacks" and caused him to move
very slowly. He died peacefully of a heart attack in Albany at the age of 72.
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