Australian Post – 23 Aug 1993 – sent by Cath Smith
Tommy Lowe at the gates of Mt Remarkable
What do you want for breakfast? Asked one of the last true Aussie pioneers. There’s some roo if you like, the dog has had some of it, but there’s nothing wrong with the other half. The speaker, with a twinkle in his blue eyes is Tommy Lowe, the 89 year old who still runs Mount Remarkable, a sheep station 250 kilometres northeast of Kalgoorlie. As a boy of 15, Tommy began fighting drought, flood, fire, heat, dust and wildlife hell bent on killing him to build Mount Remarkable from virgin bush. There were no boundaries then, let alone fencing. Kangaroo was very much on the menu so was goanna and any other birdlife he could get his hands on.
Now he has created history, chalking up 75 continuous years as a station leaseholder, and he has no intention of retiring, even though his eyesight is fading fast. Tommy’s family migrated from Victoria about the turn of the century and settled in the goldfields town of Linden, which has long since turned to dust. His father applied for the 55,000 hectare Mount Remarkable lease for his two sons and it was granted in January 1918. Within three years, Tommy’s father was dead from silicosis. While Tommy’s mom was burying her husband in Perth, his older brother Steven came down with appendicitis. Young Tommy had to hitch up a horse and cart to get his ill brother to the closest medical aid in the gold mining town of Leonora.
It was terrible he recalls. It took two days. There were no roads, only Cob & Co coach tracks. When we arrived, the doctors assured me he would be alright and that I should return home. But when I got home, the news was waiting for me, Steven had died. He then had to develop the property. He pulled sandalwood, drove cattle and sheep, broke in bush brumbies, did some butchering, all while still working flat out on Mount Remarkable.
Over the years he cut 3000 mulga logs and carted them to build a crossing on a lake on the station. He also cut poles for 30 kilometres of telephone line, all done the hard way with an axe. In the 1930’s Mount Remarkable carried 10,000 sheep and 250 cattle as well as horses. Tommy developed a big reputation in racing, ploughing his winning’s back into Mount Remarkable. Like everyone who gets involved in the racing game, he had some good wins and some bad losses. He had one win in the Adena Cup with his horse called ‘Little Jim.’ It was worth a massive £60, a fortune in those days. However, the temptation was too much, and between races he’d taken Little Jim behind one of the mine dumps and covered him with wet dirt, so he was unrecognisable and raced him again, which was against the rules.
I named it double win and collected again, said Tommy. Another time he had a big wager on his horse ‘Leonora’ at ten to one, but was knocked against the furlong post by the horse that just came first. The accident badly injured Tommy’s knee and he was in hospital for two weeks. But the pain was wiped away when he won the race on a protest. A result worth almost eight years of wages on the going rate of £2.10 shillings a week. Tommy reckons he put in 25 years of backbreaking work into the station before getting any return, and there were plenty of experiences that nearly ended it all.
Once when working down a well he was bitten by a deadly snake. Reaching behind, he cut the bite open with his knife, climbed groggily from the well and scrambled to his horse and headed for home. Tommy didn’t know how badly he’d cut himself. By the time he got to the homestead, his clothes were saturated with blood and his boots were full of it. His wife had to keep him up that night, walking around the house, pouring in black coffee to keep him awake. A mate wasn’t so lucky on a mustering run. He was bitten in his swag and died a few hours later.
Twice Tommy has almost been struck by lightning. Once a bolt stuck a stirrup, knocking his horse over. I finished up 50 metres away and I don’t know how, he says. Another time, he was killing a sheep when lightning hit his knife. He’s been lucky not to be killed by the flying hoofs of a wild bush stallion, he only broke three ribs. One day he drank poisoned water at a water hole but ended up with only an upset stomach. There were savage eagles and dingoes which attacked the stock, Tommy once shot 20 dingoes in a single night. There have been floods, fire, drought, blowfly strike, but through it all, Tommy has kept battling on and will keep battling on. He reckons that if he was forced to leave Mount Remarkable, he wouldn’t last a couple of months.
If I die here, I die happy, he said.
Moya Sharp
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