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Made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1967, he died in Sydney on 11 March 1971.
C Munro, Wild Man of Letters, 1984; P Pierce (ed), The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia, 1987; W H Wilde, J Hooton & B Andrews,
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 1985.
DAVID CARMENT, Vol 2.COLE, THOMAS EDWARD (TOM) (1906– ), labourer, stockman, buffalo hunter, crocodile shooter, coffee
grower and author, was born in London in 1906, the eldest son of Ernest Cole, florist and orchardist and Adelaide
Arundel. Cole had a disrupted education due to his father’s unreliable commercial fortunes and left school at 14
despite showing signs of early aptitude, especially in reading and writing. There was friction between Cole and his
father and after a period of employment in the family concern, he did general labouring work in the South Downs.
After the First World War he was influenced by the advertisements promoting immigration schemes to the British
dominions and decided to go to Australia because of the warm climate.
Cole’s ambition, like that of most of the fellow immigrants he met aboard Ormuz in 1923 en route to Australia
was to make his fortune in the ‘land of opportunity’ and return to Britain a wealthy man. However, the harsh
outdoor life he enjoyed while working in the various jobs organised for him by the Commonwealth government
proved seductive and it was to be 25 years before he went back on a visit to Britain. Australia had become his
home.
His first employment was in the Blackall Ranges in Queensland where he began to acquire the skills of a general
rouseabout/stockman that were to become his stock in trade. From there he found work in the Lake Nash district
of the Northern Territory and then went droving down the Birdsville Track, delivering bullocks to Victoria during
drought conditions. From a position on one of Sidney Kidman’s stations near Birdsville he went to Brunette
Downs in the Territory, this time as cook, all the while gradually accumulating the necessary skills and equipment
to qualify him as a first rate stockman.
In 1928, now known as ‘the other Tom Cole’ to distinguish him from the ‘Wyndham’ Tom Coles, father and
son, Cole was appointed Head Stockman at Wave Hill Station. He began to get a reputation for horse breaking
and found work for a period at Banka Banka Station in this capacity. Before long, in 1930, he was employed
as a breaker on the Vesteys’ properties across the Top End and invested his wages in building up his own plant.
Throughout this Depression period he was fortunate never to be out of work and enjoyed the egalitarianism of the
simple outback life in the company of other unencumbered battlers. It was here he began what was to become the
lifelong habit of keeping a diary. The daily record keeping was essential to his trade: head stockmen needed to have
a firm check on the date so that a proper schedule could be maintained for delivering stock on time. Cole made a
virtue of necessity and his detailed diaries today provide a useful historical record of everyday doings of Top End
bush workers.
In 1932 Cole sampled the excitement of buffalo hunting in the company of Harry Hardy. He sold horses to
established shooters like the Gaden brothers and when another shooter, George Hunter, went on holiday, Cole took
over the running of his camp. He stayed on as a buffalo hunter until the Second World War broke out in 1939, in the
process acquiring Kapalga, a lease on land near the Wildman River and buying two properties near Pine Creek,
Goodparla in 1937 and later Esmeralda which he and his partner stocked with cattle. The properties were sold
by 1943. In the later 1930s Cole had acted as a coast watcher from his lease on the Wildman, reporting on the
movements of Japanese pearling luggers. Rejected on health grounds, he was unable to join the Australian Imperial
Force during the war.
After the war Tom visited Britain. After returning to Sydney, which had become his home, he wrote occasional
articles for the Sydney Morning Herald under the pseudonym Barb Dwyer. Inspired by the high prices reptile
skin goods were fetching, he next started a highly profitable business importing crocodile hides from a friend in
Darwin for manufacture into bags and shoes. In 1948 Cole married Kathleen Callen and they subsequently had
two daughters. Soon, though, the source of Australian crocodile skins started to dry up. Crocodile numbers had
seriously declined under the impact of over enthusiastic shooting. On the strength of advice from Ion Idriess,
Cole went to Papua New Guinea in 1950, where he subsequently organised commercial crocodile hunting on a
large scale and later became a coffee planter.
Returning with his family to Sydney in the late 1970s, Cole devoted himself to writing. As well as contributing
articles to books and magazines associated with rural life, he authored three books. The first, Spears and Smoke
Signals (1986) is an entertaining compilation of personal reminiscences spiced with historical fact and local lore
from the Top End, and illustrated by Eric Jolliffe, one of Cole’s many friends. Hell West and Crooked (1988) was
commissioned by the Northern Territory Council of the Australian Bicentennial Authority. Based on diaries and
letters to his mother, it deals with his career as a stockman and buffalo shooter in the Northern Territory and is
a more substantial work of social history, providing insights into the daily life of outback workers, in particular
stockmen and buffalo hunters, in the first half of this century. Flavoured throughout by the characteristically
Australian brand of laconic humour Cole had made his own, it proved very popular and sold over 40 000 copies.
His third book The Last Paradise (1990) deals with his time in New Guinea. As well as giving first hand glimpses
of frontier life, Cole’s books make a useful contribution to Australian social history.
T Cole, Spears and Smoke Signals, 1986, Hell West and Crooked, 1988, The Last Paradise, 1990; F de Groen, ‘Tom Cole’s Hell West and
Crooked’, in Notes and Furphies, April 1988; D Hancock, ‘The Last Hunt’, in The Weekend Australian, 28–29 October 1989; M Hayes, ‘Tom’s
Territory’, in Australasian Post, 18 June 1987; D Jopson, ‘Tom’s True Tales of a Buffalo’, in Bicentenary ‘88, June 1987; J Ward, ‘Teak Tough
Tom’, in People, 1 November 1988.
FRANCES DE GROEN, Vol 2.