People Australia

Ronald James (Ron) Murphy (1917-1995) coalminer, prisoner-of-war and trade union official

Birth: 13 December 1917 at Ipswich, Queensland, son of Queensland-born Arthur Murphy (1876-1964), coalminer, and Gwenllian (Gwendoline), née Jones (1881-1952), born in Wales, United Kingdom. Marriage: 8 December 1945 at Ipswich to native-born Doreen Catherine Bell (1924-1969). They had two daughters and one son. Death: 21 January 1995 in hospital at Ipswich. Religion: Congregationalist (on service record). 

• Started as a coalminer on the surface at Caledonian Colliery, Walloon, Queensland, at age of 14 in 1932. His father was a miner at Caledonian, as were four of his brothers and two brothers-in-law. In 1940 he worked at Rosewood Colliery.
• On 15 July 1940, having served from 17 January 1939 in the 14th Light Horse Militia, and putting his age up by one year, Ron and his brother Walter — also a miner at Rosewood — enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. They both embarked for Malay with the 26th Battalion on 30 July 1941 and were captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942. The two brothers spent three-and-a-half years as prisoners of war in Changi. They were recovered in September 1945 and returned to Australia the following month. A third brother, Lionel John Murphy (1907-1988), also served in the AIF in World War II.
• Demobilized on 21 November 1945, Ron returned to mining at Caledonian 3 mine, West Moreton, Queensland. He was active in the 1949 coal strike. After the strike, he became chairman of the Caledonian branch of Queensland Colliery Employees' Union.
• He was elected a member of the Miners' Federation’s Queensland central council in the 1950s. Replacing Pat Conway, in 1959 he was elected as Queensland District check inspector, joining Charles (Digger) Murphy who had been elected two years previously.
• The two unrelated Murphys were joint district check inspectors until Digger was elected Queensland president in 1964.
• In 1972 both men rushed to the Box Flat mine site, where an explosion had occurred. Ron later recalled that “the smoke and destruction rivalled anything that I saw in Singapore . . . and one of the first things I learnt was that my brother Wally was one of those who had been underground at the time of the explosion”. Wally was one of the seventeen men killed and one of the fourteen miners whose bodies were not recovered.
• Ron retired as check inspector on reaching retirement age (60) in 1977. In 1985 he was a trustee for the Queensland union. His wife Doreen had been an active member of and inaugural president of the West Moreton Womens’ Auxiliary. This body’s members made up most of the Black Diamond Theatre Group, which produced concerts and revues in which performers included Ron and ‘Digger’ Murphy.
• Cause of death: cerebral embolism and carotid endarterectomy (4 days). 

Sources
Pete Thomas, The coalminers of Queensland: a narrative history of the Queensland Colliery Employees Union. Volume 1 Creating the traditions (Ipswich, 1986); Common Cause, 4 December 1973, 11 July 1979 p 2, 1 October 1986.