By Tania Phillips
Warwick’s John Telfer, who turns 85 this week, is about to combine two of his great loves – running and military history.
The Warwick/Stanthorpe Today History columnist, former teacher, avid marathon runner, local military historian and former Royal Australian Air Force member will have the honour of carrying the Legacy Torch as part of an International Relay for one of it’s legs through Toowoomba in May.
It is a chance to raise money for legacy and while most 85-year-olds might find it rather daunting, for John, who has run 17 marathons over the years including the famous London Marathon and still swims every day, it’s just a walk in the park.
It’s kind of a full circle journey for John, who started his working life teaching fitness for the Military.
“I had 12 years in the Royal Australian Air Force as a PT instructor, I was at school training at Rathmines up until they closed in 1960 – that’s how old I am,” he chuckled.
“Then I was sent down to Point Cook to the Airforce Academy there.”
As part of that role he spent time at Canungra learning to train flight crews before they were sent to Vietnam so they would be able to survive in the jungle if they had to ditch.
John had joined the Air Force at 17 straight out of school and ironically left the Forces to return to school – this time as a teacher.
“I had been a hopeless student, I was more into sport, playing all types of representative sport,” he said.
“I went to the Brother’s College and when I was 14 all my mates had gone out to get jobs, I wanted to get out too,” he said of his decision to leave school.
“But I was always a great reader of history from a very early age. I used to read anything I could on history, mainly on Australian history. When I went into the Airforce, I only had a primary education, not secondary, I was urged by an education officer who said you can’t play football for the rest of your life. He said JT you have to do something about your education. I said I want to play football he said no, what if you get an injury that’s the end of your football career. I was playing A grade football for Toronto in Newcastle at the time, I was only 18.”
Taking the advice he did a couple of subjects at Year 10 level, impressing his teachers with his writing on the history of the Olympics. Despite being more interested in sport, he enrolled in a matriculation course before being accepted into university but at this stage he was teaching Year 11 and 12 history at a school despite not having his degree and couldn’t balance university at work.
“I was just one lesson ahead of the class I was teaching,” he laughed.
“I was doing it pretty well and they were pretty happy with that.”
He eventually was able to complete a Bachelor of Arts in four year’s part time at Swinburne and then a Bachelor of Education before moving home to Queensland where he had to complete a Diploma of Education to allow him to teach in his home state. More than two decades later he retired as a history teacher and coordinator.
“I took an early retirement after 22 years and moved to the Coast to live at Tugun,” John explained.
“But we got sick of living in a unit at Tugun so we moved to Warwick.
“I had an air force friend living here and I’d visited a couple of times, it seemed to be a nice little place.
“I thought I’d go supply teaching, I was too young to retire all together and so I put my resume in at Scots College and by the time I got home the phone was ringing. They said come in and see us and then when I did they asked if I could start the next day.”
It was during his time at Scots College that he became interested in local military history.
“I was supervising a class in the hall and they had all these honour boards up, the World War II roll of honour, all of their captains and sports heroes,” he said.
“I looked up and saw that 34 of the 42 on their roll of honour were air force, that struck my interest. So I started to look in to it and then they held their Anzac Service and I helped them out and organized a really good Anzac Day Service – I’ve been doing that ever since, only finishing up last year.”
His interested piqued, he decided to write a story about the heroes as they were honoured each Anzac Service, writing each serviceman’s story until had done all 42. He has now written four history books for the school and 10 others for local companies and groups including the Killarney Co-op and Pipes and Thistles band.
“I’ve won three cultural awards from the Council for my writing and I’ve written about 250 short stories now for the local newspapers,” he said.
“But that’s how it all evolved.”
And now he has been selected to run in the Legacy Torch Relay.
“It started in Posiers in France about a month ago,” he explained.
“It’s going across to London and it will be in Australia probably about May. I’m running in the Toowoomba leg. I was selected out of hundreds of people, I was quite wrapped.
“The applications had closed about a month earlier and somebody said why didn’t you apply for it. I said I’d never get it. But then I decided to put application in and surprisingly I got a letter to say I was selected. I’m fund raising now.
“It’s sponsored by Defence Health, we get a uniform and do our run. It’s only a kilometre. I did the Commonwealth Games Queens Baton Relay through Warwick that was only 400m, I didn’t even get a sweat up.
“Even at 85 I still swim a kilometre every morning and bike 25 kms on Sunday’s just to keep fit.
“It’s just a lifestyle I played representative football, I ran the London Marathon and I ran for the Australian Veterans.”
John joked he was too old to write a story but it kind of sounds like it would be worth the read.
