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  By Mick Roberts
YOUNG William Walker would have been looked on as a curiosity by his school mates at Bulli in the 1880s. Although William was just like any other adolescent boy growing-up in the mining community, he belonged to a Salvationist family – a new religious order that had arrived in town just prior to the infamous Bulli Mine Disaster of He was just 10 years old when an explosion killed 81 men and boys in the colliery, reviving sad thoughts of when his own father tragically died in a mining accident in William arrived in William’s only surviving child, 82-year-old Keith Walker joined with 230 descendents of William at the Keith, also a Salvationist and retired coal miner, is well known in the district for his work in the ‘hotel ministry’ when he frequented the region’s pubs and clubs with his familiar wooden collection box and War Cry newspapers. His children have become third generation Salvationists, carrying on the strong influence the  William and Selena Walker with 14 of their 15 children. Keith is pictured as a baby with his mother.
A Salvation Army crusade arrived in the Illawarra in 1885, marching the streets in uniformed brass bands and giving lectures in the region's halls. They were looked on as a curiosity, and like all things new and different were shunned by conservative religious communities. The Army annexed Bulli in June 1887 renting the Black Diamond Hotel's assembly rooms, four blocks north of today's old Denmark Hotel on the Prince's Highway.  William Walker (centre front) with his boys, including Keith (centre back).
One of these musicians was William Walker, who later met his future bride Selena Reeks at a Salvo’s meeting in the 1890s. They were married in 1901; Selena aged 21 and William 24, in a Salvation Army ceremony at his step-father’s residence in Russell Street Woonona. Like his step-father, and his biological father, William became a coal miner. The history of the His half brother, Bartholomew Metcalfe, also a miner, offered to do his shift and was killed by a rock fall. William and Selena moved into a cottage “on the mountain at Bulli”, where they began a large family of 15 children. Asked how difficult raising 15 children was Selina once said “no trouble at all when the older ones bring up the younger ones”. Her grandchild, 85-year-old Gweneth Hosking recalled William and Selina’s six-room Bulli home. “The walls were lined with newspaper and there was no electricity so they used kerosene lamps and lanterns… There was a very large kitchen at the back where everyone used to congregate, especially when the whole family got together on special occasions… The homestead also consisted of several outside rooms. To the left of the homestead there was a room where the boys used to sleep and another room to the right, which was a huge washhouse.” The family later moved into a house (pictured below) on Williams’ Estate, in the shadow of a grand old fig tree, near the present intersection of Hillcrest and Mountain Avenues at Woonona in the 1920s. 
Gweneth Hosking recalled the new home was much more luxurious than the old homestead. “You could see right out to sea from the veranda and they had electricity, a bathroom plus a phone. It was lovely to see them comfortable but I missed the old homestead…” William and Selina’s boys, like their father, became musicians in the Woonona Salvation Army Band, playing the streets of local mining townships and spreading the word of God. At least six boys became coal miners and two girls, and one boy, Salvation Army officers, as did several of the grandchildren and great grandchildren. In his retirement William became a Sunday school teacher at Bellambi and continued as a devout member of their congregation until his death in 1962 aged 86. Selena died in 1964 aged 84.
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