>> Go Back - page - >> List of Entriess
His bush experiences left him blind. He lost the sight of one eye when he was attacked by ‘myall’ Aborigines and
he later lost the sight of the other when a horse fell on him and kicked him in the face.
In 1916, he drove a large mob the 2 400 kilometres to southern Queensland via the Murranji track. They were
herded at the 12-mile, out from Wyndham. While in Queensland he married Kathleen Hayes who came from
Beaudesert that is not far from Logan River. She was eight years his junior, a ‘tall, slim person with a lovely serene
expression and she always spoke very softly’. It is thought that Weaber had known Kathleen from when she was
a young child. There were three children of the marriage: Owen, born in 1918, Kathleen, born 1922 and Kevan in- All were born at Beaudesert. Kate (as she was called) Weaber always coped with her isolated environment
but she missed her family, and legend has it that she made a trip home every four years to have a baby as her sister
was a midwife. Kate Weaber’s eldest brother, Tom Hayes, was in the Kimberleys before she went there. He spent
many years droving and was with Tom Kilfoyle and Jerry Durack when they overlanded cattle from Queensland
to set up Rosewood station.
After Ningbing was sold Weaber and his family in two vehicles set off for Brisbane. They stayed for a week
with the Martins at Victoria River Downs and then headed in the direction of Tennant Creek. They had heard
there was gold in the area so decided to have a look and they camped near the Wheal Doria on what is now
the aerodrome. According to Kevan, it was his brother Owen who found the gold. He went out with his blind
father, and the one-eyed Jack Noble to survey the area east of the town. Owen looked for likely bits of rock
and the adults made their assessment. Four leases could be claimed it seems so they pegged out the Rising Sun,
Kimberley Kids, Weabers Find and Noble’s Nob. Contrary to popular myth, Noble did not own that mine but
assisted the family in pegging out the leases. ‘It was my Mother’s insistence only that Noble’s Nob was pegged
out’, said Kevan. He continued, ‘Mother had a little bit of a poet in her and she was the one that always named
everything—Rising Sun because it was the easterly one, Weaber’s Find after my father, Kimberley Kids after the
three of us children. She was looking around for a name for the fourth one. It is a nobbly sort of a hill and it rhymed
with Noble—so.’
The Weabers’ first home in Tennant Creek was on the southern side of the Noble’s Nob hill. It was a bough shed
and Jack Noble lived with them. The first dance floor in Tennant Creek was an antbed floor near the Noble’s Nob
hill. The family then moved to the Rising Sun mine and by 1938 had built what was then the best house in Tennant
Creek on lot 169, now the site of the Peko Park. When the family moved into the town, Kathleen became a leading
light in its affairs. The first Country Women’s Association (CWA) meeting was held at her home and she was very
involved with the Catholic Church, though William Weaber was not of the same faith. According to Kevan, his
mother paid for the church to be transported from Pine Creek and she also helped to pay for the re-erection.
The Weabers only worked the Rising Sun mine but the yields were considerable. In March 1937 Weaber applied
for assistance under the Encouragement of Mining Ordinance 1913 using the equipment he owned as collateral,
among which was a complete five head stamp battery. He sought the assistance so that he could erect a crushing
plant. He was to repay 10 shillings per ton for every ton of ore crushed. He was loaned the sum of 2 100 Pounds.
Only 100 Pounds was still outstanding three years later and the debt was paid in full by 15 October 1941. A shaft
was sunk eventually to about 450 metres and then the side of the hill cut off and the mine was worked as an open
cut, all with hand drills and dynamite.
As William was blind, he relied on his children to take his hand to walk him round the mining area. Among the
employees was an Aborigine called ‘Monday’, who always deemed it an honour to be allowed to lead Weaber by
the hand. His best friend was James Maloney. They had been friends at Wyndham and the Maloneys followed the
Weabers to Tennant Creek. Maloney helped Weaber with legal matters though his brother, James Edward Weaber,
looked after his family’s business affairs.
Tragedy struck the family in 1937 when Katherine was killed in an air crash at Yeppoon in Queensland and
Owen was killed over Norway on 31 October 1940 while serving with the Royal Air Force. William Weaber died
on 5 October 1940 at the age of 63, leaving an estate of over 8 000 Pounds. At the time of his death, he was in
formal partnership with his son, Owen, and Cosmo Gregg in the four leases he first pegged out. He also had an
interest in at least four other mines, including Westward Ho and the North Star. Among his assets was the Pioneer
Picture Show, long an institution in Tennant Creek. Weaber seems to have been one of the few men with capital in
the early days of Tennant Creek and with a growing family, some means of entertaining them was important, as it
was to the rest of the town.
Kathleen left the town after her husband’s death and the government acquired the house. She hoped to work
the leases again at the end of the Second World War but unable to buy the house back, and in poor health, she
decided that the mining leases should be sold. Kathleen and her son Kevan moved firstly to Brisbane and then to
Sydney where she died in May 1969 at the age of 84. Kevan recalled that though they lived in physical comfort he
doubted that his mother ever regained her ‘mental comfort’. In January 1996, the new town hall at Tennant Creek
was dedicated to Owen Weaber.
Australian Archives, Northern Territory, CRS A659 1940/1/1681, F742 41/147M; F Martin, Three Families Outback in Australia’s Tropical
North, 1985; Northern Territory Archives Service, E103 Box 5, 6/1941, F302 (Timber Creek Police Journals), NTRS 226 TS 351/2; H J Wilson
‘The Heritage of Tennant Creek’, Report to the National Trust of Australia (Northern Territory), 1995; Northern Territory News, 27 January
HELEN J WILSON, Vol 3.
WEBB, THOMAS THEODOR (1885–1948), missionary, linguist, anthropologist and explorer, was born at
Lyndoch in South Australia on 11 April 1885, the son of Alfred Walter Webb a farmer and orchardist. His mother
was Martha Ann, nee Baker. He was the third child in a family of five. When Webb was only a few weeks old, the