The South Burnett has lost a creative mind, whose acerbic wit and love for his country have produced countless cartoons gracing newspapers, fliers and albums across the region.
Kumbia and Kingaroy resident Anthony Cecil ‘Tony’ Turton has passed away on Tuesday, 4 March, aged 95.
He was born in England on 1 February 1930, and brought to the home of his mother Evelyn and father Cecil, the African nation of Zambia, when he was just four-months-old.
He spent the majority of his early life in the neighbouring country of Zimbabwe, at a time when the nations were called Northern and Southern Rhodesia, respectively.
From a young age, Mr Turton had an interest in moving to Australia, eventually making the journey from Zimbabwe in 1961 with his wife Sheilah and children Anne and Michael in tow.
After an 11-year stint in the Somerset region and Western Australia, the Turton family eventually came to call the South Burnett town of Kumbia home.
Mr Turton was an avid artist from a young age, using his gift as a cartoonist to entertain children, but quickly found the wider public enjoyed them, too.
He worked in Kumbia as a farm machinery builder, once served as Kingaroy’s postmaster, was a Justice of the Peace and volunteered as a tutor at Kumbia Primary School.
He enjoyed film and photography and was a talented boxer and rower in his youth – but he is likely most remembered for his countless cartoons.
Throughout his 50 years of creating art in the Burnett, Mr Turton’s cartoons featured in free publications like Kumbia Party Line, the Bunya Mountains newsletter, the monthly Murgon Moments booklet and the regular fliers published by the Orana aged care facility, where he and his wife lived in his later years.
His art has also graced Kumbia’s town entry signs, a koala and a king parrot bearing the town’s name, for over 40 years.
Mr Turton’s cartoons featured in the South Burnett Times for a time from 2016, as well as the Burnett Today newspaper from 2020 up until his 92nd birthday in 2022, when he put down his pen and sketch pad for good.
His art featured Australia’s many unique animals and landscapes as well as ‘battlers’ standing tall in the face of hardship.
Through his cartoons, Mr Turton also shone a spotlight on modern life’s sillier moments, debating at length the impact of the internet on matters like shopping, dating and gathering information.
Above all, the Burnett cartoonist suffused his work with a deep love for what he called a ‘lucky country’, once saying his decision to move to Queensland was “the second best thing [he] ever did” – surpassed only by marrying his wife.
He celebrated his 95th birthday in the Kingaroy Hospital on 1 February, his family and friends at his bedside.
Mr Turton’s family expressed their thanks to the hospital’s staff, whom they said took great care in looking after him.
His family plans to hold a celebration of his life at the Kumbia Hall in late April or early May, with anyone wishing to pay their respects to the late Burnett artist invited to attend.
