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(Pte) Eric Ronald Inglis (3 June 1898 - 16 February 1991) was an Australian World War I veteran who served in the 11th horse regiment. He lived near Longreach, Queensland, most of his life on a property called Wellshot. Wellshot Station was regarded as one of the largest and most successful of the nation's sheep stations at the time. The Inglis family excelled in an industry that produced much of the country's wealth at the turn of the 20th century. His life was spent on the land in central western Queensland and he maintained a successful career as a jackaroo and eventually owning his own sheep property, despite constant setbacks including numerous droughts, floods and two World Wars.
Early life
Inglis was born at Eddington Station in Cloncurry, Queensland, to Scottish parents. His father, James Inglis, a native of the Isle of Arran, Scotland, was long associated with the Australian Pastoral Industry after arriving in Australia in 1880 (according to family records, the day notorious bushranger outlaw Ned Kelly was hung). James married Elizabeth Nicholson in Sydney before settling on Eddington station in Queensland, where James was the station manager. Elizabeth died at age 57 after a small foot operation in Longreach Hospital 29 October 1916, two years before Eric went to Egypt with the 11th Light Horse Regiment.
Eric Inglis had one older sibling, sister Bessie. They grew up on Eddington Station until 1906, when their father became Station Manager of Wellshot Station, Central Western Queensland, when Eric was 8 years old. Inglis offers an account of life on the land for his family at this time: "When we arrived at Wellshot many of the facilities were run down and below standard, and Father had much renovation and rebuilding work done. This was greatly appreciated. There were usually about five or six jackaroos at the station, as well as an overseer, book keeper, blacksmith, engineer, horse boy, a head musterer and about seven musterers, and a married couple. The male half of the married couple would cook and his wife would do all the housekeeping at the station."
Inglis attended Rockhampton Boys' Grammar School and one year of Gatton Agricultural College in 1915. He then returned home to be a jackaroo on Wellshot in 1916. He enrolled in the Army as a light-horseman and travelling with the 11th Light Horse Regiment, in 1918, to Egypt. When Inglis was ten, he and his family travelled on the mail ship HMS Otranto through the Red Sea and the Bitter Lakes. He later wrote in his memoirs, "Little did I imagine in those days that in about eight years time I would one day be bathing a horse in Lake Tinsah." Inglis continued his jackaroo work upon his return to Australia until 1922, when he purchased land he called Inkerman Station.
Military career
In April 1918 Inglis travelled on the SS Wiltshire to the Suez Canal, Egypt. The journey took about three weeks, and for some weeks thereafter the men were without horses as they were sent over later on another ship. When Inglis joined the 11th Light Horse Regiment in 1917 he was nineteen and many of the men among him had rarely used a rifle except at a rifle range. There was limited training after he arrived in Egypt (maximum of three weeks) and as the war progressed, the officers in charge were increasingly under trained, as men took up positions to which they were not accustomed.
During the Great World War many well-educated and clerical men were enlisted whose qualifications could have been better utilised had they remained in Australia during the war. "A lot of people who were necessary here (in Australia) were enlisted," Inglis states in his interview, but they went to war "because there was pressure to go". on 11 October 1923. The local paper described their departure from the ceremony, "The bride and bridegroom left for Sydney by the midday train, the bride travelling in a frock of navy crepe meleor with coloured embroideries, which were also repeated in her small navy hat."