Helen’s father Russell George Lutton, Rusty to his friends, started Lutton Motors, a little corner garage and petrol service station in Rockhampton, Central Queensland when he returned from war in 1946. His son-in-law, Phil Lamb closed the business in January, 2007 when the little service station that served three generations of a family well became another victim of technology and big corporations.
At first things looked good for Rusty. Lutton Motors serviced locals from Wandal and bushies from Alton Downs and beyond. Later came the business from the airport on the other side of the army barracks. He and Heffie and their three children lived around the corner from Lutton Motors. But in 1960 Heffie passed away, leaving Rusty to raise the children as well as run the shop. Even before this early loss he drank a lot and soon the youngest child, Helen, was frequently asked to 'mind the shop' while her father went to ‘get a haircut’. Rusty sometimes didn’t surface for three days after going on a bender. Helen was forced to run the business instead of attending school. Customers would tell her about seeing Rusty about town as she pumped petrol into their cars from the two bowsers on the footpath on Wandal Road. This kept up until the ‘70s when a few heart-attacks and a new life brought Rusty to his senses.
Meanwhile Helen and Phil married and moved into the house around the corner from the shop while Rusty moved out onto the converted veranda. The day Helen went into hospital to have her third child, Rusty was going in to surgery at another hospital down south for another bypass. He heard the news before going in and swore to himself to give up the grog if only he would come through the surgery. He did come through and he kept to his word until cancer took him in 1989.
Meanwhile, Phil bought Lutton Motors from Rusty and worked for ten hours a day, seven days a week, fixing cars and pumping petrol. Largely self-educated, Phil would take home twelve books a fortnight from the Council Library and read them down at the shop. He may be the only mechanic in Australia who read Epictetus between fixing engines, while smoking long cigars. When he’d read all the books in the South Rocky Library, he went over and read all the books in the North