VALE: Selwyn Robert Heit
14.03.1933 — 04.03.2025
THE late Sel Heit was a man who put his heart into everything he was involved in – his family, his community, his friends and his working life.
There was also a touch of the larrikin in his nature. It was a side of him that kept his audience captive when he started telling the stories of his adventures … or misadventures.
Selwyn (Sel) Heit was born on March 14, 1933. He was the second son of Calvert dairy farmers, Jim and Lena Heit. Their family would eventually grow to include Sel’s elder brother, Cecil (CJ), his younger brother, Breffni (Bing) and a half sister, Patti.
When Sel was a baby, he would sleep in a butter box at the dairy while his parents milked the cows. As the three boys grew older, their parents would leg rope them to a post at the dairy so they couldn’t run away while the milking was underway. Sel would recall that his mother had quite a job to untangle the ropes when they finished milking.
Until Sel was eight-years-old, the family lived on Hidden Vale station outside Grandchester. At that time, it was a 4,050ha (10,000 acre) cattle property where his parents were share farming, operating the dairy and piggery and also growing crops using horse drawn implements
He began his schooling at Hidden Vale State School. He only attended for a short time before the school was closed due to the army using the Mt Mort area to train with the large artillery and it was deemed unsafe for the children to be on the road.
His mother home schooled the children until 1942, when the family moved to a small farm they had purchased at Amberley. The Heit siblings attended West Ipswich State School and then, Amberley State School when it re-opened after World War II
Sel suffered a bout of rheumatic fever when he was 12-years-old, which slowed the energetic youngster for quite a while; as did a severe bout of chicken pox when in his late 20s, which almost killed him.
After leaving school, Sel continued to live and work on the family farm at Amberley.
When he was 18, he was among the first compulsory intake of National Service recruits, chosen by ballot, in 1951.
While in their late teens and early twenties, both CJ and Sel started racing motorbikes on the home property.
This became known as ‘Heit’s Park Raceway’ and was run by the Ipswich Motorcycle Club.
Sel would tell the stories of the misadventures on his motorbikes such as running into a train at West Ipswich at the level crossing and riding up the steps of the Ipswich Town Hall and being cautioned by a policeman, who told him to go home and not to come to town for a week. He obeyed and would tell his children many years later that he was too scared to do otherwise.
Sel met Hazel Beckwith at a dance and in 1953, she became Mrs Selwyn Heit.
Together they raised three children; Carol, Wayne and Lynda.
It was during this time that he built their first home by transforming an old army hut into a comfortable family residence at Amberley. That home remains today and is located on Heit Street at Willowbank. The park on the corner is also named after the Heit family.
(His family recall how Sel “loved to build things”. The home at Amberley, a log cabin home on Marburg Road and the renovation of the old farm house on The Bluff.)
Sel’s first off-farm job was at Hancock’s Sawmill in Ipswich, when he was 14.
Later, he drove buses for Blackstone Busways, worked in the coal mines, studied to become a motor mechanic and worked for the Main Roads Department operating machinery and a tip truck before purchasing his own semi-trailer.
He won a contract with Ford Motor Company to carry Ford Motor parts and panels from Broadmeadows and Geelong in Victoria to Brisbane and return.
After five years in the transport business, he purchased the lease of the Royal George Hotel in Rosewood and was mine host there from 1968 until 1981.
During this time, Sel and Hazel dissolved their marriage, but remained good friends.
Some years later, in 1972, he married Eirys, who had been working in the local telephone exchange. It was a loving partnership that would endure for more than 50 years. And his family came to include his stepson, Sean and another son, Joel.
In 1981, he formed the Oakland Transport business with his older brother CJ and Rob Higgins, CJ’s son-in-law.
But when Alan Bond bought the Fourex Brewery and used all his own delivery trucks to deliver the beer to the hotels and clubs in the Ipswich area, the company lost all its contracts, almost overnight.
Sel’s solution was to purchase the Rosewood Newsagency in partnership with his wife Eirys, and Hazel and her partner, John Piccini. They operated the newsagency for 17 years until 2004, when Sel retired.
Family memories are of the years they spent holidays camping with Hazel’s siblings and their families at Miami and Tallebudgera and camping and water skiing at Lake Moogerah.
Later in life, Sel and Eirys enjoyed travelling and going on cruises – an especially memorable one was a family trip to Canada in 2011
But it was during his time at the Royal George Hotel (known colloquially as Heity’s Pub) that he started taking an interest in the local community.
He supported the Rosewood Tennis Pennants players, the local rugby league football club, polocrosse club, pony club and many others.
He served one term as a councillor at Moreton Shire Council in the mid 1970’s and was Patron of Rosewood Golf Club for 10 years, a founding member of the Rosewood Apex Club and was Charter President of the Lions Club of Rosewood.
Sel and Eirys’ names were added to the Town and Country Honour Board in 2007 in recognition of their community service.
He was a very good wall quoit and darts player winning numerous awards. He liked a game of golf and in latter years, looked forward to Thursday mornings at the Grandchester Hotel where a group of elderly gentlemen would get together to have a few beers, a game of pool and a lot of laughs.
Sel underwent numerous operations over the years, fought off an aggressive bladder cancer, prostate cancer and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. He was hospitalised on several occasions in the last few years with life threatening disorders.
But as his granddaughter remarked in his eulogy … “it is marvelous how the love of two people can make all this sound trivial”.
Left to mourn Sel are his wife, Eirys, two sons, two daughters, a stepson, 14 grandchildren, 23 great grandchildren and one great great grandchild.
• Next Week: 50 years a Lion
