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racing club, in partnership with Tom Smith and in 1906 was appointed a Justice of the Peace there. At Christmas
that year Elizabeth and Will gave a Christmas party for residents of Brocks Creek. Another brother-in-law was
Tom Kilfoyle, married to Will’s sister, Katie, and the two men often operated in partnership. Meat for the miners
came from their properties.
By 1910 when Elizabeth and two of her children went south for a holiday the paper referred to her as ‘widely
known and much esteemed’, as the Byrne name is ‘synonymous with Brocks Creek’. During the First World
War Elizabeth and her mother, Mrs Spry, (who was visiting) raised money for the Red Cross and waited to
receive letters from her sons who were serving in France. In June 1917 she received news that her son, Private
Montague Charles Byrne, aged 22, had been killed on the Western Front. The newspaper indicated that Monty was
a good artist and some of his drawings hung in the office of E T Batchelor, when he was External Affairs Minister
in charge of the Northern Territory. The news of Monty’s death coincided with Will and Elizabeth moving to
Tipperary, their new station. There is a glowing tribute to the family in the same paper, announcing they were
taking up Tipperary and saying they battled ‘on their own’.
In 1920 a ‘social’ was given for William and Elizabeth ‘in that good old Irish fashion’. William was having
problems with his arm and at one stage it was thought that he might lose it. In November 1922 in the first election
where Territorians voted after it had been taken over the Commonwealth he stood against Harold Nelson who won,
describing himself as a self made man who with wife and family and business had demonstrated the practicability of
the White Australia policy. William died on 5 November 1941 and is buried in the Gardens Cemetery in Darwin.
Ernestine Hill described Elizabeth as ‘dainty as a cameo, white haired and blind’ and said she came from
Wyndham in a schooner and set up a station with only ‘a bridle, a rifle and 1 Pound’. She died at Tipperary on
3 March 1949 survived by three sons, her husband and four sons having predeceased her. She is buried in the
Gardens Cemetery in Darwin.
B James, Occupation Citizen, 1995.
BARBARA JAMES, Vol 3.