Barbara Treloar 'ahead of her time'

Sent off to boarding school during the war years, the young Barbara attended Somerville House Girls School in South Brisbane, until the school was evacuated to PGC Girls College in Warwick to make way for General Douglas Macarthur to establish his headquarters in the Allied campaign against the Japanese.

Despite dreaming of a career in journalism - a dream quickly quashed by her father - after completing her secondary education, the young Barbara went home to Bando. Already a capable horsewoman, she added 'proficient pianist' and 'talented artist' to her list of accomplishments.

Post-war western Queensland was riding high on the excellent price of wool and people revelled in an active and entertaining lifestyle. Miss Schmidt enjoyed a constant round of agricultural shows, dances, tennis parties, musical evenings and race meetings. Fiercely intelligent and stunningly beautiful, she was the focus of enormous attention from the eligible bachelors of south west Queensland. Disappointingly for the rest, she soon met the very dashing Peter Treloar and romance blossomed. They were married at St Augustine's Anglican Church at Hamilton in 1950. Their eldest son Harry was born the next year, followed by Michael and later, Angela.

Having initially settled at Avondale, Cunnamulla, Peter and Barbara moved their young family to Muttama, Coonamble, then to Armoobilla, Cheepie before relocating, in 1957, to Boothulla, Cooladdi, where they established permanent roots. Mrs Treloar quickly created an oasis of expansive lawns around the homestead and a glorious choice of seasonal produce, thanks to her thriving fruit trees and flourishing vegetable beds.

A crack shot with a .410, this always-elegantly-clad grazier's wife was a wonderful cook and warm and welcoming hostess to anyone who walked in the door; she was also a tough, resourceful, bush woman who is remembered by her offspring as a loving, nurturing mother who firmly believed in getting straight back on the horse when thrown. In fact, Mrs Treloar wouldn't let them have bicycles, trusting that if any of them was thrown from a horse and incapable of getting get back on, the horse would find its way home.

Remembering a childhood that resembled Huckleberry Finn's, all three children admit they regularly conspired to rid themselves of the unsuspecting governesses who had the questionable good fortune of teaching them. They'd wag school and head off down the Paroo River where they amused themselves lighting campfires to cook the yabbies and yellowbelly they caught. And at least one of them boasts of smoking 'gully root' just as their Aboriginal stockmen taught them.

After Angela followed the boys to boarding school, and with her husband gone all day, the spectre of loneliness loomed large for Mrs Treloar. Never one to wallow, she embarked on the journalism career her father denied her. Long into the night, she laboured over her typewriter. She sent her assignments off to her teachers in the same mail bag as the letters she wrote to her children and waited eagerly for the mail truck that carried responses from all of them.

As soon as she completed the course, Mrs Treloar began sending her opinion pieces to various newspapers. Very soon, their editors were requesting work from her. In her lifetime, she also authored two notable books, Fleeced and Something to Beef About.

Ever attracted to agripolitics, Mrs Treloar was particularly captivated by the affairs of the wool industry and soon became the voice of woolgrowers, brokers and manufacturers alike. She attended meetings and lobbied relevant government agencies and politicians on their behalf. In due course, she was asked by the National Party to stand for preselection for a Senate seat. After much deliberation she turned them down, deciding she preferred to be able to blast politicians of all persuasions with her sharply honed rhetoric.

A woman well ahead of her time, when she wasn't attending to her wool industry activities, Mrs Treloar was advocating for women in the outback. She exposed the isolation, loneliness, health and social issues they faced.

In the early 1980s, Michael and his wife Judy assumed custodianship of Boothulla and the family bought Coppabella near Woodford in the D'Aguilar ranges where Peter and Barbara lived until she relocated to Toowoomba. Once settled, Mrs Treloar enthusiastically embraced U3A where she enjoyed the opportunity to learn the technology required to enhance her communication skills and indulged her curiosity about the history of civilisation. For many years, she continued to write to politicians and publications alike, sharing her opinion on the wide range of subjects that engaged and/or inflamed her interest.

Mrs Treloar lived out her final years at Lourdes Home, in Toowoomba. Despite the fall which prefaced her final admission to St Vincent's Hospital, she was as sharp as a tack to the end. On April 9, 2019, after a few happy days surrounded by her much-loved immediate family, she gently and very gracefully slipped her hobbles, less than a month short of her 90^th birthday.