Jimmy Walker

Jimmy Walker competed in Alpine Skiing for Australia at the 1956 Cortina d’Ampezzo winter Olympics. While training in Austria prior to the Games, he suffered a ‘green-stick’ break to a bone in his ankle. He spent five weeks in plaster, but even after massage and exercise, the ankle was still very stiff. At the Games, he competed in his first event, the Giant Slalom, placing 84th, but withdrew from the Slalom and Downhill.

In 1955, he had won all three Australian Skiing championships, the Downhill, Slalom and Combined Alpine. Jimmy was conscripted at the end of World War II and was sent to help with the clean-up of Hiroshima. He was the son of Sydney stock and shares broker Egmont Palmer Walker, who died in December 1948 leaving an estate of 104,107 pounds, his racehorses and bloodstock. Jimmy’s aunt Dame Eadith Walker DBE was the owner of a property Yaralla in Sydney’s inner west, a Victorian Italianate mansion which was donated to the community for use as a convalescent hospital (Jimmy was a one of the beneficiaries of her estate and therefore Yaralla).

Jimmy and his team mates were early pioneers of the Thredbo Ski Resort, building one of the first chalets there. During the snow season and before chairlifts, they would have to walk up the ski slope. In the 1960s Jimmy was resident near the central Queensland town of Springsure, working as a grazier. In the 1970s, he established Jake Piggeries in Springdale, near Temora NSW, a pioneering business still in existence today. He was keen to educate his daughters (Kathryn and Emma) about the world and they lived on a ship and motored around the canals of Europe, initially in England’s waterways, then to France, putting his daughters into schools at each stop. After his daughters returned to Australia to complete their education, Jimmy crossed the Atlantic twice travelling to the Cayman Islands and Trinidad and Tobago. First time on a 39 ft yacht and second time on an ex-fishing trawler that was his final home.

While in the West Indies he had a third daughter Inger Williams. He discovered at Fort Lauderdale in America, ships disposed of white goods and furniture on the dock. He collected them and transported them to Haiti selling some but largely giving them away - a philanthropic exercise. On one trip in 1996 the coastal authorities were trying to contact Jimmy on his ship, but when they went on board they discovered he had been killed in his cabin. He was killed by blunt force trauma to the back of his head in a bungled robbery, on board his ship. His killers were eventually found and sent to prison in La Cieba, Honduras.

His daughter Emma, has gone on to become a leading Australian painter.