Charles Huxtable

Who was Charles Huxtable?

Charles Reginald Ralston Huxtable MC & Bar was an Australian doctor who served in both World Wars and wrote about his experiences in the book From the Somme to Singapore: a Medical Officer in Two World Wars.

Huxtable was commissioned a Temporary Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps in April 1915. He won the Military Cross in June 1917 and a bar in November 1917 whilst serving as a medical officer with the Lancashire Fusiliers during World War I. He resigned his commission as a Captain in April 1918. During World War II he was captured in Singapore by the Japanese and imprisoned in Changi Prison.

Dr Charles Huxtable, then serving with the Royal Flying Doctor Service at Broken Hill, initiated the establishment of the Bush Children’s Education Foundation in 1965.

He was shocked by the number of children who were not enrolled in any school and whose only contact with other children was through visits to a township. At that time there was no government provision for these children other than access to correspondence lessons.

Dr Huxtable, along with the Chief Justice of New South Wales, Sir Leslie Herron, the Honourable Ian Sinclair and Ian Hardy, prepared a Trust Deed for the Foundation, which was approved by the NSW Attorney General.