Queensland and Australia lost a great character on March 31.
Bill Stevenson was raised on a property on the Barcoo River down past the township of Isisford.
When the family left there, they spent 12 months in Longreach before settling on a block called Rocklea in the Barcaldine district.
Bill went to The Southport School as a boarder and was part of Delpratt House.
On leaving school, he had stints in Melbourne and Brisbane in the retail sector before heading home to Rocklea.
During that period, he had a variety of roles, from driving gravel trucks for this father Keith Stevenson to jackarooing on various stations in central Queensland.
At one stage in the mid 1980s he was part owner of the Landsborough Lodge motel in Barcaldine.
Bill once again headed for the big smoke of Brisbane where he started a lawn mowing run and selling real estate for LJ Hooker in Paddington.
While in Brisbane he met and married Louise Watson-Brown.
The couple have two children, Sam and Sophie, and the whole family has always maintained its strong connections to the Barcaldine and Longreach communities.
Bill and Lou forged a very successful business partnership, at one stage owning more than 20 Blockbuster Video stores after first owning a Video Flicks store in Wynnum.
When that industry was being changed by the introduction of streaming services, they had the business acumen to move into other areas, in their case, Telstra retail stores, a very successful move.
Bill was an amateur artist, and there are several Bill Stevenson paintings hanging on the walls of Queenslanders.
Born on April 25, 1950, he died just before his 70th birthday.
Bill Stevenson was a great Queenslander, and was a proud member of the Queensland Club. We are poorer for his passing.