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out’, and eventually capture the culprits. However, not all of his patrols were to do with Aboriginal cattle-killers.
There were enough horse thieves in the wider outback community to keep him busy. His most famous patrol was
undertaken in the summer heat of March 1902, when he rode 900 kilometres in search of two young men who had
gone missing from Eringa Station near Oodnadatta in northern South Australia. He and his trackers, travelling in
waterless country unknown to them, found that the horses and one of the youths had perished; the other youth was
also presumed dead.
Cowle had been engaged to be married for many years but in 1900, the lady broke the engagement and
Cowle became more and more a loner. Gillen, Spencer and Byrne at Charlotte Waters, remained good friends,
but few other people seemed to suit him. This made life difficult for other constables posted to Illamurta. In 1901
Byrne, another intelligent but solitary man, agreed with Cowle that there were ‘not many of us with the real love for
the Bush’. Despite all its hardships they liked the life and, as Cowle wrote to Spencer, ‘It would be a regular heart
wrench to suddenly sever connection with it.’ Two years later Cowle felt the ‘heart wrench’. He developed severe
arthritis, went to Adelaide for treatment and never again returned to his beloved Illamurta bush life. He retired, on
medical advice, from the police force in 1903 and, bedridden with rheumatics and arthritis, died on 19 March 1922.
It was a sad ending for the bushman-policeman who, in June 1903, had written of Illamurta, ‘I willingly would
give all I possess to be back there again’, even if only to ‘peg out, amongst kindred spirits’.
The crumbling ruins at Illamurta Springs, in part built by Cowle and later protected by the Conservation
Commission of the Northern Territory, are a bush memorial to this policeman. He is otherwise remembered by a
street name in Alice Springs.
F J Gillen, Gillen’s Diary, 1968; D J Mulvaney & J H Calaby, So Much That Is New, 1985; B Spencer & F J Gillen, Across Australia,
vol 1, 1912; C Winnecke, Journal, Etc., of the Horn Scientific Exploring Expedition to Central Australia, 1894, vol 2, 1898; The Register,
24 March 1902; C E Cowle, Letters to Baldwin Spencer, copies held in AIAS; M C Hartwig, ‘The Progress of White Settlement in the Alice
Springs District and its Effects upon the Aboriginal Inhabitants, 1860–1894’, unpublished PhD Thesis, Adelaide University, 1965.
R G KIMBER, Vol 1.
COX, CYRIL JOHN ANGUS (1913–1973) and COX, ANNIE ESTHER SARAH (ANNE) nee FOGARTY
(1917– ), storekeepers. Cyril Cox was born on 22 June 1913 in Pine Creek, Northern Territory, the third child of
Colin Neil Cox and his wife Hannah, nee Trenam. Colin was born in Devonport, Tasmania, in 1886 and his wife
in Cooktown, Queensland, in the same year. He was a carpenter who came to the Territory with his parents and
family of three brothers and a sister and their first years were spent on various minefields. Colin and Hannah were
married at the home of his father, Frederick Isaac Cox, at Yam Creek in 1908. Their nine children were all born in
the Top End of the Territory between 1908 and 1930.
Annie Fogarty, always called Anne, was born on 9 September 1917 in Cloncurry, Queensland, the eldest child
of Clifford Hunter (Ted) Fogarty and his wife Martha Sarah Elizabeth, nee Paterson.
Anne accompanied her parents and her brother David when they left Cloncurry for the Northern Territory
in May 1921, travelling in the family buggy. Following the government bores, they arrived at ‘The Katherine’
just before Christmas. Anne’s younger sister Margaret was born in Darwin and her brother Edward was born
on Delamere Station. Anne’s father was a station manager and brumby runner amongst other things and so her
childhood was spent living in the bush on cattle stations and in camps, but the family always seemed to return to
Katherine.
At various times Anne received her schooling by correspondence and when the family lived in Katherine, if
the school was operational, all four Fogarty children attended. Accordingly, Anne had a limited education until
her mother sent her to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Convent in Darwin as a boarder during the years of 1930 and
- Although Anne received a good education from the nuns during the two years she boarded, she was very
lonely and missed her family very much.
Cyril received his education at the Pine Creek School, where he attended until he left when he was in the
seventh grade, and aged 12 years.
Cyril’s first job was working for Jessie Schunke in her store at Pine Creek, where she taught him book keeping.
When the store was sold in around 1931 the new owners were unable to keep Cyril on in full time employment,
so late in that year he moved to Katherine, where he commenced work for R R (Charlie) Rundle in his store,
situated in the main street.
The Cox and Fogarty families were old friends and so Anne and Cyril had known each other since they were
very small. By the mid 1930s the Fogarty family was in Katherine where, in December 1935 Ted Fogarty drowned
in the Katherine River near Springvale.
Cyril and Anne were engaged at that time, but decided to wait for some time after her father’s death before they
married. Charlie Rundle went to Sydney for medical treatment and died there. The accountant, Norm Watkins,
had died in October 1934 and so Cyril was appointed Manager by E V V Brown, who was the Executor of the
Rundle Estate. For a time he lived in a small room at the back of the store, as that was considered the Manager’s
quarters.
Father William Henschke married Anne and Cyril according to the rites of the Catholic Church on
5 November 1936 in Katherine. Although Anne came from a family of practising Catholics, Cyril was not religious
and he never interfered with her religious beliefs. Their first home was a railway house on the northern bank of
the Katherine River.
Personal counter service was given in the store, which had a gallon licence, and part of the work involved the
bottling and labelling of methylated spirits, the packaging and weighing of flour into brown paper packets, and