Noel Huggett was born in Tamworth, New South Wales, in 1921 and grew up in Goulburn. At the age of twenty-one he joined the Second AIF at Sydney and ended up in the fighting at Bougainville in 1944. After the surrender of Japan he joined the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF), arriving in Japan on 14 February 1946. In Japan he worked in medical, the Labour Unit and BCOF leave centres. It was at one of the latter, the Yanagiya Inn, that he met his future wife, Reiko (Ruth). Noel was discharged from the Australian Military Force in December 1950 in Japan. Noel and Ruth married in Japan and had their first child, Cathleen (Kathy), in Tokyo.
Noel and his family returned to Australia in 1952 where they had two more children, Paul and Helen. For much of his postwar life he worked on his own land in the Goulburn area. Noel and Ruth sold the farm and moved to Airlie Beach, Queensland, in 1972. Later in 1990, Noel acquired and developed an orchard at Seaforth with Paul, producing mangos and pawpaws. Ruth sadly passed away in 1986.
Today Noel has retired (at 89), lives in Batemans Bay in New South Wales with Kathy, Paul lives in Darwin in the Northern Territory and Helen lives in Strathpine in Queensland. Noel has six grandchildren — Dane, Kurt and Summer (Kathy) and Sai,Tasha and Kane (Helen) — and four great-grandchildren Dylan (Sai), Charlotte and Elyssa (Kurt) and Bridie (Summer).
