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In 1916 on a visit to her parents at Ryan’s Well, Jane met with an accident, when the horses bolted with the
buggy and threw her out with her six-month-old baby Strat in her arms.
The baby was unharmed but Jane was injured, including a broken collarbone. A telegram was sent to Maryvale
via Alice Well telling of the accident. On hearing the news Edward Hayes then rode to Alice Well, a distance of
about forty kilometres to ring Ryan’s Well. He then rode back to Maryvale, changed his horse and started the long
ride north.
He rode all night, arriving in Alice Springs in the early hours of the morning. He arrived at Ryan’s Well that
evening, a distance, including the ride to Alice Well and back, of 300 kilometres, all the distance between Maryvale
and Ryan’s Well on one horse. A horse called Hector then drove the buggy back to Alice Springs the next day.
Jane Hayes became known for her interest in worthy causes. After the death in 1933 of George Henry Wilkinson,
the highly respected owner and manager of Wallace and Company’s store and agency in Alice Springs and
Oodnadatta, she became main organiser of and contributor to his memorial, which she unveiled in 1934. She also
helped generously to finance the first RSL memorial club in Alice Springs and although not a Catholic donated
substantially toward the building of the existing Catholic Church in the town.
Soon after the Second World War, Ted and Jane Hayes retired to a house they had bought in Bath Street,
Alice Springs, in 1940. Here Jane carried on the tradition of bush hospitality; the house was always a place for
family and friends.
Jane Hayes died on 17 December 1968. She is buried with her husband in the Alice Springs cemetery.
Family information.
E HAYES, Vol 1.HAYES, EDWARD (TED) (1884–1960), pastoralist and pioneer, the youngest son of William and Mary Hayes,
was born at Farina in South Australia.
William Hayes had arrived in South Australia from Wales in the early 1850s and eventually purchased several
bullock and horse teams, carting for the copper mines in the mid-north of South Australia. One of his major feats
was the conveyance of five tonnes of copper ore in one lump from Yudanamutana mine to Port Augusta.
Mary Hayes was a Miss Stratford of Goodwood. Her parents met on the voyage from England. Mary’s mother
and friend had been engaged in England to come to South Australia as dairymaids. Stratford was a member of the
crew. They married on arrival.
In 1884 the Hayes family; William, Mary, two daughters and three sons, with Ted the youngest by eight years,
left South Australia for Alice Springs with a load of fencing material and steel telephone poles. After arriving in the
Alice Springs district, they carried out contracts for fencing and dam sinking on Owen Springs and Mount Burrell
stations for Sir Thomas Elder.
In the early 1890s the Hayes family took up the lease of Deep Well and started their pastoral pursuits.
Edward Hayes and his sisters looked after the stock while the other male members of the family carried out
contract work.
Ted drove two bullocks pulling water from a depth of sixty-five metres at Deep Well for many years, to water
their stock and also travelling stock for a penny a head.
In the mid 1890s the first camel teams began to arrive. If a cow camel calved on the road, it would be taken to
Deep Well and left under Ted Hayes’s care until the owner passed that way again, when Ted would be rewarded.
During this period Mary Hayes reared a considerable number of Aboriginal children whose parents were not
able to provide for them. There was always plenty of goat’s milk, vegetables and meat available at the station.
Ted Hayes, being brought up with these native children, learned to speak the Aranda language very fluently. He
could also use sign language like a native; he could communicate with Aboriginal stockmen long before they were
in speaking distance of each other.
In about 1897 the family purchased the homestead block of Mount Burrell from W Coultard. The Coultards had
purchased it from Sir Thomas Elder the year before, Elder having sent most of his stock back to South Australia.
The Hayes family then shifted over with their stock and carried on as pastoralists there until the eldest son Jim died
in Adelaide after an operation. They then moved, establishing Maryvale, which was situated 18 kilometres east
of Mount Burrell and on the overland telegraph line. Ted Hayes then carried on as a stockman with the rest of the
family until a bad drought in 1900–02. He and his brother Bill took two mobs of cattle from Maryvale to a property
on the Diamantina, which they had purchased as a means of saving as many cattle as possible. They travelled
down the southern stock route as far as Macumba Station and then down the Macumba Creek north of Lake Eyre
and on to Kalamurina, the property they had purchased. This route was recognised as the most treacherous in the
country on account of the long dry stages between water and the danger of cattle getting bogged in salt lakes and
waterholes in their very thirsty condition. It is believed that this route was not used again for droving until 1945.
After the drought broke in the early 1900s, they had to restock Mount Burrell. Ted and Bill Hayes set off to
Banka Banka to purchase cattle. Banka Banka at that time was owned and managed by Tom Nugent, a member
of the notorious ‘ragged thirteen’. Banka Banka then had no bores; the cattle, scattered around the creeks, were
hard to find and Ted was caught by the Wet while mustering. Consequently, the whole trip took twelve months.
Bill Hayes took another mob across the Barkly Tableland, down the Georgina and eventually the Diamantina to
Kalamurna and then on to the Adelaide market. He was on his trip long enough for some of the cows to have calved
twice.
Bill Benstead, a long-term resident of the Alice Springs district who managed Undoolya for Tennant and
Love from 1877 to 1882 later visited Argentina and gave such a good account of the pastoral industry and country