Bert Hyland and a highway

My father worked hard for the Country Party in 1940s and 1950s and some of the names I heard a lot were those of Bill Fulton, Les Cochrane and Bert Hyland.

I was a little surprised, then to learn that "Bert" Hyland was actually Sir Herbert John Thornhill Hyland, MLA for South Gippsland for a staggering 41 years. His order of knighthood was probably a KBE (Knight of the Order of the British Empire) but he seems not to have been too fussed about using the initials after his name, so I can't be sure.

I was also surprised to learn that there is a highway in Gippsland named after him. I've only lived in Gippsland for 76 years or so, and I had not heard of the Hyland Highway. Perhaps that is because I have that old habit of referring to roads by their destinations – the Longwarry road, the Koo Wee Rup road, and so on. The road from Traralgon down to Yarram is the Hyland Highway and has been so since 1990.

Hyland was chair of the La Trobe Valley Development Advisory Committee but there those who said this appointment was a payback from Premier Hollway for Hyland's voting, and later abstaining from voting, to keep Hollway in office. This followed a split between the Coalition partners in 1948-49.

'Bert' had advocated the two parties amalgamating and he toyed with switching to the Liberals, who were calling themselves the Liberal and Country Party.

None of this made him popular with the Country Party blokes and there was a move to expel him from the Party, but the heat went out of it all and in 1950 when the Country Party under Sir John McDonald, formed the Victorian Government in 1950 Hyland was a senior member of the McDonald Cabinet.

There were turbulent times. In October 1952 McDonald lost the election and Thomas Holloway became the Premier, listing himself in some places as an independent though he called his group the Democratic Reform party.

That lasted three days and then McDonald came to power again on October 31 only to be beaten on December 17 by John Cain senior and the ALP.

Bert Hyland was knighted in 1952 and elected leader of the Country Party in 1955, just before the election in which Henry Bolte came to power on June 7, 1955. There was a healthy competition between the Country Party and the Liberal Party and the inexperienced Henry Bolte found Hyland a robust competitor.

He was suspended from Parliament on occasion for unparliamentary language, though it was words like 'as silly as a billy goat' that would not raise an eyebrow today.

Through all this Bert Hyland represented South Gippsland for a staggering 41 years from 1929 to 1970, winning 15 elections – for 10 of them he was not even opposed. The reasons include that he was a genuine South Gippslander – though he did not live in his electorate all those years. I think the only election he lost (outside the Country Party's inner workings) was the first one he tried. He stood for the seat of Wonthaggi in 1927 and lost that one.

So who was Sir Herbert, really?

He came of pioneer stock, as they say. His grandfather bought land in what became the CBD at Melbourne's first land sales in 1837.

He was born on March 18, 1884 in Prahran. He went to Caulfield State School. His parents ran a store in the Caulfield area and Bert worked in a store in Glenhuntly when his parents became ill (both died while Bert was very young) he went to work, though he was only 12 years old.

He worked in Welshpool for a time and then in the Kongwak Butter Factory. By 1914 he had a grocery in Leongatha and, I think at the same time, a dairy farm there.

He also had a wife. In 1912 he married Mary Amelia Barrett and they had a stable marriage until her death in 1968 – marred, though, by the deaths of their two children before their own passing.

He worked very hard for the community in many ways, including being very active in supporting ex-servicemen after the Great War. He'd been ruled unfit for service and felt this keenly. He was an active leader in the Victorian Dairyfarmers Association, President of the Leongatha Progress Association and of the Leongatha Waterworks trust.

In 1923 he was elected to the Woorayl Shire Council and he served as president of the shire in 1928-29, from which positioned he campaigned for and won his seat in the Legislative Assembly. For 41 years it was to be exactly that – "his' seat.

When he was first elected to the state parliament in 1929 he sold his businesses and moved to Melbourne, but this move did not seem to cut him off from his constituency – the people of South Gippsland sent him back to Parliament year after year.

During those years he served as the Minister for State Transport, for State Development, for Labour, for Decentralisation and for Transport and Prices and was Chief Secretary. Those portfolios, the first in 1938 and the last in 1952, made him an obvious choice, all politics aside, to head up the Latrobe Valley Development Advisory Committee I mentioned earlier.

In 1967 his majority was the largest of any member of the assembly. He decided though, that at 86 he was too old to contest the 1970 election. Nonetheless, before he left the Parliament he proposed to the Manager of the Parliamentary Dining Room, a 48-year-old divorcee. She accepted and they were married on 2 January 1970 in East St Kilda, at his home.

He died on March 18 1970, only three months after his second marriage. Lady Hyland, "Lady Elsie" died in August 2013. He had been as astute investor as well as a hard worker, and he died a very rich man but still a very 'grounded' one.

The Hyland Highway was known at first as the Traralgon Creek Road, and then as the Traralgon-Yarram Road, a sensible way to name a road in my humble view. If you lived near the south end you called it the Yarram-Traralgon Road, of course.

From 1955 the Country Roads Board, later VicRoads, had declared it a main road, which meant that the shires had funding made available for it by the state. The money was never enough, and the road led through some very small communities without much political power. It runs through Willung South and Carrajung Lower, for instance.

In 1883 the Road Construction Authority (also later to be part of Vicroads) had it declared a State Highway, which meant that twothirds of the costs of maintenance were borne by the state. By this time the road had been moved to allow for the Loy Yang open-cut mine.

In 1990 it was renamed the Hyland Highway, a name it retains despite the numbering system that had it called State Route 188 in 1990 (the year it was also named the Hyland Highway) and then about 10 years later it became C482.

I don't know many people other than roads engineers and the woman in my GPS who use those numbers.

Free night out

Cardinia Shire council is "shouting" a free night out for the shire's primary producers.

Organised by the shire's economic development team the function will acknowledge the hard work and fresh produce of local farmers.

A highlight of the night on Wednesday, August 10, at the Pakenham Racing Club, Tynong will be guest speaker Simon O'Donnell, a former VFL footballer, Australian cricketer, cancer survivor and now broadcaster. The function will kick off at 7pm.

Mayor Jeff Springfield said "the local farming community has had it tough" and the event was a great way to come together and for council to say its thanks to them.

More information is available by phoning 1300 787 624 and bookings can be made at www.trybooking.com/CAPLK