John David Leake

JOHN Leake is credited with being the first Australian into the Changi prisoner-of-war camp as the Japanese surrendered in World War II, as well as later becoming a pioneer developer of farmland in South Australia.

A first-class athlete and horseman as a youth, he was an optimistic and intrepid soldier as a young man and an innovative and hard-working farmer in adulthood.

Mr Leake was born in Sydney in 1921 to a Presbyterian pastoral family from the Hunter Valley.

When he was two, his mother took off with an English naval officer and his father died soon afterwards.

The boy was reared by a committee of aunts and teachers, chaired by his formidable grandmother Eleanor Fleming. He soon learned self-reliance.

He shone at athletics and swimming and initially enjoyed life as a jackeroo.

The significant periods he had spent at boarding school in Sydney and Scotch College in Melbourne had taught him to march in step, a skill that saw him promoted to corporal at his first parade when he joined the army in 1940 following the fall of France.

War took Mr Leake to many places, first to Malaya (now Malaysia) with the 8th Division and then to Burma and China with the British Commandos.

He returned to Malaya six months before the end of the war and journeyed to Singapore, where he witnessed the Japanese surrender to Earl Louis Mountbatten.

When he was only 21 Mr Leake cemented his reputation for optimism by driving a truckload of detonators up the perilous Burma Road into China.

Cut off for nearly a year in China, he weighed only 50kg when the remaining members of his unit were evacuated to India in 1943. While there he learned chess from a junior master.

After being repatriated to Australia, Mr Leake joined the newly formed Parachute Battalion in Mareeba in far north Queensland and was commissioned.

During that period he married Peg Espie before being sent overseas again, this time parachuting into Malaya, close to Singapore.

His mission was to find PoW camps, evacuate downed pilots and help prepare for a planned invasion of Malaya.

Mr Leake's map of prison camps in Singapore at the time still hangs in the bar of Adelaide's Naval and Military Club.

He and his five companions were in Johor, on the fringes of Singapore, when the war-ending atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.

The group was ordered to contact the Japanese, who they were told had agreed to surrender. They commandeered a truck and after a long discussion with Japanese officers, went to Changi prison.

This went better than they expected and in Changi, Mr Leake became the first Australian to greet his countrymen, some of whom he had joined up with in 1940.

He was demobbed as a captain and returned to the bush with his wife, first to a station near Daly Waters in the Northern Territory and then to Darwin, Adelaide and rural South Australia.

He went into partnership to develop more land near the Padthaway wine district in South Australia, where he lived for 20 years working hard to bring up and educate his children during a period of mostly falling prices and rising costs.

He was a pioneer in the feedlot industry, serving as vice-president of the first lot feeders' association and developed innovative ways to use lands affected by salinity.

The South Australian coastal town of Robe became an important part of his life from about 1950, first as a holiday destination and then as a home from 1975, when he bought land at Cape Jaffa.

He played golf and tennis, and was president of the Robe Golf Club. A competitive soul, he was quick to have a beer at the end of the game.

He also liked Australian ballads and could recite much of Banjo Paterson's works.

One of his sons, also called John, said of his father: "He was a fine man, hard working and loyal, and sorely missed by us all."

Mr Leake's wife Peg died seven years ago and their daughter Diana died 25 years ago. He is survived by his sons John, David and James, 12 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.