Richard Mumford

Richard Mumford is better known as George. He was born in Braeside, the second child to George and Ida Mumford. Soon after, his parents bought a farm at Allambee via Yarragon where they lived out their lives raising a family of eight boys and two girls.

George went to the eighth grade at Allambee Estate School #3995 and left to help his dad on the family farm before starting his first paid job milking cows for Best and Carters of Yarragon and then share farming for Charlie Howarth in Warragul.

At the age of 18, George started his truck driving career working for Gunn Brothers in Thorpdale driving a 'Reo', carting potatoes and cattle, and it was in Thorpdale that he met and married Anne Shirley Rowlings on the 19thApril 1952. They then moved to Yarragon where they raised four children, Maureen, Terry, Julie and Debbie.

George worked for Joe Heggart, carting milk to the Yarragon and Trafalgar milk factories for a wage of 10 pounds per week. His employers over the years were reluctant to see him go, however he had bigger plans and decided to buy his first truck, a green second hand Bedford van and so started Mumfords Gippsland Removals Local and Interstate' in 1954. At its peak he ran nine trucks, carting general freight from Melbourne to businesses throughout Gippsland and beyond, as well as shop fittings and furniture to Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide. In those days the coast road to Sydney was narrow and winding and was very hard work and the Hume was single lane each way, with large pot holes, no room for error.

In 1968 part of the business was sold to Downards which became known as Downards Mumfords with George running two trucks for them for a number of years before again managing his own business doing removals and general freight. George continued doing what he loved until his retirement in 1995. In his final years he loved watching the trucks pass through Yarragon from his vantage point at the kitchen table, and reminisced at how times had changed.