Bill O'Brien, a former coal miner from Bowral with a distinguished career as an amateur boxer and rugby league player, died on June 3 in Burradoo. He was 81.
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His brother Bruce said the cause was pneumonia following a stroke 12 years ago.
"The outstanding boy was Billy O'Brien. He has everything to make a good fighter – strong, rugged, and enterprising," the Moss Vale Mail reported in 1955. "O'Brien fought hard from the opening round. Towards the end O'Brien chased his opponent relentlessly around the ring, to win with plenty to spare."
O'Brien was a well-known character in the Southern Highlands. Though born in Sydney, he lived most of his life in Bowral, attending Bowral Public School and Bowral High and playing for the local rugby league team.
"He played football when he was a young fella, and represented in Group 6 and Group 7," his son-in-law Stephen Jackson said.
He and his brothers started training as boxers in Moss Vale, but their father, Jack, didn't like the way they were trained so he pulled them back home and set up a boxing club in their back shed.
Billy O'Brien was a welterweight, competing across the region and in Sydney. He was on his way to the Empire Games (now Commonwealth Games) when fate stepped in changed his course in life. "He was going to the Empire Games, but he met my mother and decided she was better than the games," daughter Sue Lee said.
His brother Bruce said he remembered the summer they met Gwen in Bermagui, with Bill turning to him and saying: "I'm going to marry that girl." They married in 1958 and had three children: Bill, Cheryl and Sue.
O'Brien took an apprenticeship as a baker but it wasn't long before he followed in his father Jack's footsteps into the mines, joining the Medway Mine as a clipper before heading underground to become a wheeler with draft horses pulling the skips out to the surface. "He then went on the pick and shovel with his father till he was cavilled out in 1967 because of introduction of mechanised mining," Mr Jackson said.
O'Brien worked as a coal miner for 44 years before retiring to a life of fishing, bowls, and spending time with his 9 grandkids and 12 great-grandkids.
"Travelling with the caravan became their lifestyle, but only when there was nothing growing in the garden," Mr Jackson said.
He became president of the Mittagong Bowling Club, and later president of the Bermagui Bowls Club during his years living on the coast but was dealt a blow in 2006 when he had stroke, though never losing his fighting spirit "he gave it everything he could to beat the horrible condition that had struck him.”
“Bill was a strong and determined man who every time you spoke to him he'd say he was going beat it. He gave it his best shot; not once did he ever admit defeat," Mr Jackson said.
"Billy O'Brien was a coal miner. A man of old school values handed down to him by his parents with a work ethic second to none that would mould his family into the solid unit it is today. Whichever way you remember Bill, he had a huge impact on all of us. Bill did it his way with respect and dignity he played life to the fullest."