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proposed homestead, but the delayed agreement stated that he must move from site to site well sinking rather than
remain permanently at one place.
The family spent a year at Woolla Downs, owned by W J (Bill) and Frieda Heffernan. Next came two years
managing Anningie for James Davey of Granite Downs in South Australia. The men had been boyhood friends.
Davey encouraged Rawlins to take a grazing licence over Windajong, which bordered Anningie to the north.
Davey financed two bores on Windajong and pastured cattle there in time of drought, only to accuse Rawlins of
stealing equipment he had instructed him to use at one of those bores. Rawlins left; the grazing licence was added
to Davey’s holding, which already covered the original Mt Peake, Anningie and Mt Esther leases.
Rawlins managed Kurundi for H V Leonard from 1952 to 1954. Leonard’s brother-in-law, R M Williams,
contracted for Leonard to buy cattle from Bohemia Downs, west of Halls Creek in Western Australia. Rawlins
surveyed the stock route and found it too dry to move cattle. To avoid litigation, Leonard bought Bohemia Downs,
which Rawlins managed until late 1956.
The Rawlins family returned to the Ti Tree area and took up Numagalong, a grazing licence down the Hanson
River north of Stirling, where sheep were tried first, then a small number of cattle. The homestead well, 24 metres
deep, its sides reinforced with bush timber where necessary, was washed in and the corrugated iron homestead
flooded after heavy rains in 1962. Undeterred, Rawlins moved his building part way up the side of the nearby
sand hill, a new bore was sunk, the windmill, tank and trough shifted. Numagalong became part of Stirling after
Tom and Dorothy Rawlins retired in 1966 to a block between the present Ti Tree Well store and the police station.
Here Rawlins constructed a brick house and in 1969, at 72 years of age, dug his last well. He died at Ti Tree on
22 November 1978. Dorothy died at The Old Timers Home in Alice Springs on 20 January 1993.
In managerial positions, Tom Rawlins believed in paying a fair wage to Aboriginal workers, often being the
first ‘boss’ at certain places to do so. He was rewarded by loyalty and respect. He was greatly moved by the tears
of Aboriginal stockmen saying farewell, as he was about to leave Bohemia Downs to return to Central Australia.
Throughout his life he believed in hard work, leading his team: he could never be a ‘veranda manager’. After a
season’s stock work was finished, he led the way in fencing jobs, repairing yards, building new windmills, tanks,
troughs, and amenities. He combined positions of manager and head stockman, and ran each place economically
without being mean.
His lifelong ambition was to own ‘a little place’, a station of his own. That this consistently failed was due to
lack of finance, misfortune and various interventions of fate, rather than lack of hard work. A kind man, a dreamer
and visionary, he remained undeterred and optimistic to the end.
Family information.
ROSE (RAWLINS) COPPOCK, Vol 3.
RAYNEY, RUTH SABINA: see HEATHCOCK, RUTH SABINA
READFORD, HENRY ARTHUR (1841–1901), pastoralist and stock thief who over landed the first cattle to
Brunette Downs in 1883 and became synonymous with the folk hero ‘Starlight’, was born on 12 December 1841
at Mudgee, New South Wales. He was the youngest of the eleven children of Thomas Readford Snr and his wife,
Jemima, nee Smith, a ‘currency lass’ of Sydney Town. Thomas, a Yorkshireman, was transported to Port Jackson
in 1814 to serve a seven-year sentence for stealing four hides of leather, and by 1841 was the owner of the
‘Woolpack Inn’ and adjacent property at Cunningham’s Creek, South of Mudgee. He also owned land at Agnes
Banks, Emu Plains and Kurrajong.
Henry Readford attended the Episcopal Parish School at Windsor, New South Wales, during his youth and later
engaged in pastoral work on the family properties, one of which was Guningeldry on the Macquarie River, the site
of present-day Warren. He became an experienced stockman, drover and bushman, but unlike his father and elder
brothers showed little business acumen or sense of responsibility. The latter traits were exacerbated by the deaths
of both his parents in mid-1860. He then sold his share of inherited land and livestock at Cunningham’s Creek to
his brother and became a cattle dealer and drover. Within a few years, he had lost his money and began stealing
cattle in the north of the colony and selling them at southern markets close to the goldfields. After three serious
brushes with the law in connection with the theft of hundreds of cattle, he moved to Queensland in mid-1868 where
he stole horses for subsequent sale along the Darling River.
The apogee of Readford’s career began in late 1869 and early 1870 when, during a heavy wet season, he stole
several hundred cattle (official estimates varied between 500 and 1300) from Bowen Downs, a large property in
central Queensland extending southwest along the Thomson River. Most likely, he assembled the herd just south
of present day Longreach on leasehold land belonging to two of his mates from the Hawkesbury River. Then, with
the help of a stockman recently arrived from South Australia via the Strzelecki and Cooper’s creeks, Readford and
at least three others moved the herd south-west After a circuitous journey to avoid floodwater, Readford, using
the alias Collins, sold a white bull and a few cows to the owners of a store and shanty near Artacoona Native Well
on Strzelecki Creek in South Australia. The main herd was sold at Blanchewater, a property further southwest,
owned by the Honourable John Baker, a former premier of the colony. Then Readford and his men rode south to
Adelaide where he cashed a discounted promissory note for an undisclosed amount and sailed to Melbourne in July
- A protracted series of investigations was undertaken in the latter part of 1870 in both Queensland and South
Australia, and although Baker continued to frustrate these, the Bowen Downs management in January 1871 posted
a reward of 300 Pounds for the arrest of the culprits. Meanwhile, a nonchalant Readford, thinking that the theft had
passed unnoticed, returned to New South Wales and married a young widow, Elizabeth Jane Snell, nee Skuthorpe,