Unsung Heroes: How woodcarver John Ablett uses his collection of rare memorabilia to ‘mentor’ and ‘encourage’

A regular face around the South West, John Ablett is well known for his decades of volunteer work with sport clubs and regional committees, but the woodcarver’s life holds as much history as the private museum he built from the ground up. Hidden behind two heavy timber doors at the back of John Ablett’s Australind Featured Wood Gallery and Museum is a trove of historical treasures that not only tell a story of war, cowboys and culture, but are a tool used to “shape the minds” of the South West’s youth. Well known for his volunteer work at Harvey-Brunswick-Leschenault Football Club and decades of service on the Harvey Agricultural Society and Harvey Tourism Board, Mr Ablett is also known for his collection of rare and historically rich memorabilia. “I started collecting memorabilia 35 years ago, that’s when I first got hooked,” he said. A fantasy of the past grown during his youth, in the late 1950s, Mr Ablett and his friends would chase each other, sticks in hand, playing cowboys and Indians. “I played cowboys and Indians when I was a young kid I remember running around the backyard with a stick, but I was always talked in to being the Indian and I got shot all the time,” he said. “I had this fantasy about the past and the escapades of what it would have been like to lose Indigenous races around the world and what happened to first peoples.” Curating three-decades worth of artefacts into a private museum, Mr Ablett uses his eight exhibits to not only shine a light on his own family history but also to “mentor and educate”. “The memorabilia I have is to commemorate the sacrifices made, not to glorify, I do not glorify wars, there’s no winners in wars,” he said. “It’s a different world now, but I can still come across (to young people) by taking them through the museum and showing them the sacrifices made for those young people to be doing what they are doing today,” he said. “I’m 70 and that’s what keeps me young, surrounding myself with younger people, I thrive on that because the fact of my upbringing and what happened when I was a young fella wasn’t the best, it was very hard days.” At the age of 16 — in the midst of the Vietnam War — Mr Ablett left his home in New Zealand, where his family had resided since 1912, in pursuit of a new life in Australia. “I could see my mates on drugs and passing away, on heroin back then, and I could see my mates dying in front of me and I knew I had more to offer to the world than going to funerals,” he said. “I arrived in Sydney, a surfboard under my arm, with a mate in Bondi and $20 or something and off I went.” Mr Ablett returned to New Zealand only every second year, his mind set on receiving his carpentry apprenticeship certification, all the while fearing his birth date could be chosen in a ballot that sent young Anzacs on their way to Vietnam. “I’d go back every second year and finish my apprenticeship, because I wanted to have that bit of paper ... my son is the fifth generation, I was the fourth generation Ablett in the building game as a carpenter,” he said. “I was travelling around Australia when my papers came by telegram saying my ballot had come up in New Zealand and I had to go back, so I flew over there.” “Vietnam was on TV every night, we saw a young girl running down a highway on fire — just been napalmed — a young Vietnamese girl,” he said. However after years on the rugby field Mr Ablett’s back is what stopped him from being sent to the war torn country he had seen so vividly on TV. “In New Zealand, you’re born with a rugby ball in your hand, if you haven’t got that when you pop out they put you back in, it’s such a religion there,” he said. “I felt guilty if I didn’t go back, and at least go in the army and do my national service, everyone had to do national service, if your ballot came up ... I did my medicals but that’s when they found out I had a bad back, and this back’s been plaguing me my whole life.” In 1989 Mr Ablett moved from Scarborough — where he had met his wife and worked for himself as a contractor — to a house he had built by hand in Leschenault Parklands. 20 years later, in 2009, the Australind Featured Wood Gallery & Museum was officially opened to the public and displays Mr Ablett’s wood working skills, something he said he will do “until the day I drop”. “I want to make heirlooms for the future and those heirlooms for the future come from the hard times of my past,” he said. “I’ve still got so much more to offer, not only through my craft, but through my mentoring role and my volunteering role.” From taking his HBL colts team on tours through his museum and showing them the reality of horrors gone by, to proudly showing Anzac veterans parts of his collection, Mr Ablett hopes he has “made up for the losses in his past”. “I’m a success story, and it’s not big noting, because I had the drive and I lost so many good, good young friends.” “I’m quite proud of what I have achieved, but I am not proud of my past, but what I have achieved is because I’m not proud of my past.”