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had commenced for the purchase of Undoolya, but Norman Richardson, a Port Augusta station owner and land
speculator, clinched the sale with Willowie, then within the year sold to the Hayes family. The deal was too fast for
the titles office and Undoolya’s leases 1, 2, 16 and 17 were transferred direct from Willowie to Hayes and Family
in 1908. By arrangement with Richardson the Hayes family entered into occupancy in 1907 with John Hayes as
manager. Philipson Creek lease 2196 was taken up by Hayes and incorporated in Undoolya.
In 1902 Hayes had purchased the Mount Giles block on the western boundary of Owen Springs, from the
Cummings Estate. This was followed by two more purchases from Willowie, leases 1617 and 1712, on the
northern boundary of Undoolya and extending to the Arltunga Reserve. This completed the significant expansion
of the Hayes Family stations during the lifetime of William Hayes. They consisted of: Mount Burrell/Maryvale
seven leases, total 1 449 square miles (3 753 square kilometres); Owen Springs, six leases, total 1 860 square
miles (4 817 square kilometres); and Undoolya, seven leases, total 1 895 square miles (4 908 square kilometres).
The grand total was 5 204 square miles (13 478 square kilometres). All these leases are shown on the 1910 Pastoral
Map. In the 1915 Pastoral Inspection Report, the 1914 returns for stock are shown as follows for the combined
Hayes and Family stations: 11 339 cattle, 1 316 horses, 400 sheep, and 1 192 goats. The Crown Pastoral Company
[Sidney Kidman], holding an almost identical area, had 8 713 cattle and 1 475 horses on their two big stations of
Bond Springs and Crown Point.
Two years prior to the death of William Hayes in 1913 the Commonwealth Government, through the Minister
for External Territories, initiated an inquiry regarding the feasibility of establishing a horse breeding station in the
Territory. Corporal Stott, the Alice Springs police officer recently transferred from Borroloola where he bred
police horses, was asked his opinion. In a hasty reply next day by telegram he recommended the Mount Giles block
which Hayes Family was purchasing from the Cummings Estate. His reason: Consider Hayes retarding the progress
of the MacDonnell Ranges, hold considerable area partially stocked, scarcely any European labour employed...
’ On being asked for a more detailed report he made another proposal: ‘I strongly recommend Commonwealth to
retain blocks 1 and 2 [Undoolya homestead and town blocks] for horse breeding purposes, the blocks in question
are without doubt the pick of the MacDonnell Ranges for natural grasses and surface water...’ In his criticism of
the Hayes family he failed to recognise, as did the Lands Department officers of that time, that understocking,
prior to the sinking of bores, was the only safeguard for the survival of the fragile land and the industry itself in a
land of uncertain rainfall. William Hayes died long before this proposal was finally abandoned in 1919, by which
time horse-breeding was a dying industry. Though the Hayes family paid an annual lease all that time, the four
(not two) original Undoolya leases were all re-advertised. There were three applicants but the Hayes family were
given possession with new lease numbers.
William Hayes established a pastoral industry based on family initiative, hard work and wise land management.
He recognised the fragility of the land by careful husbandry of herbage through understocking, supported by dams
and wells. This was in contrast to the over-capitalised pastoral companies of the eighties who lost thousands of
Pounds and abandoned their leases to the ‘battlers’. William was the first and most successful ‘battler’. He learned
the lesson the land imposes on man and succeeded where many other battlers failed. He died in Adelaide on
17 November 1913 at the age of 86.
R Cockburn, Pastoral Pioneers of South Australia, 1925; AA & NT Archives, Darwin; Lease Registers, 1910 Pastoral Map; Hayes family
oral history and papers.
GRAEME BUCKNALL, Vol 1.HAYNES, FRANCES (FANNIE) (1869–1945), storekeeper and publican, was born at South Kensington, London,
daughter of Albert Thomas Domney and his wife Ellen, in 1869.
Fannie and her sister Emily left London on 30 September 1891 on Merkara, which was bound for Brisbane. Fannie
was then aged 22 and Emily was 20. They were listed as domestic servants and were classed as ‘free passengers’.
Their ship arrived in Brisbane on 23 November 1891 but Fannie and Emily had disembarked at Thursday Island.
Presumably they travelled from Thursday Island by boat down the Gulf of Carpentaria to Normanton and then to
Croydon, as the next record of Fannie is of her first marriage to Michael Ryan Cody, a miner, aged forty-five, at
the Primitive Methodist Church in Croydon, Queensland, on 31 December 1891. She must have moved to Charters
Towers soon after her marriage as, according to Ernestine Hill’s The Territory, ‘Fanny travelled overland in a coach
and four from Charters Towers to Wandi, NT with her first husband, Cody, said to be a brother of Buffalo Bill. They
opened a little hessian store when the goldfields were in swing.’ Michael Ryan Cody died at Wandi in December- His death certificate records him as being a storekeeper.
Nine months later, on 3 August 1898, Fannie married Thomas George Crush, a miner, at the Registry Office,
Wandi. He became a member for the Northern Territory in the South Australian Parliament. He and Fannie built
the Federation Hotel at Brock’s Creek. When Tom Crush died in August 1913, he was recorded as being a Licensed
Victualler, who resided at Brock’s Creek. Fannie’s third marriage on 1 February 1916, was to Henry (Harry)
Haynes, grazier, and took place at the Federation Hotel, Brock’s Creek, which she owned and ran until forced out
by the army in 1942.
Fannie and her sister parted during the 1890s and did not meet again until during the Second World War when
Fannie was compulsorily evacuated from the north to Adelaide following the bombing of Darwin. There she
underwent operations for cataracts on her eyes and afterward flew to Sydney to take up residence with Emily at
10 Gilgandra Road, North Bondi.