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conditions were again fulfilled. A further application for freehold was frustrated by an unreasonable valuation put
on the unimproved capital value. In 1970, the Turnours sold and moved to Queensland.
Turnour joined a Farm Management Consulting Group in the development and management of intensive cattle
production units in the high rainfall belt of southeast Queensland; crossbreeding a Brahman herd with Charolais and
Simmental blood using artificial insemination. Between 1973 and 1977 he joined a World Bank Project in South
Sulawesi, Indonesia, establishing a 20 000-hectare ranch importing the foundation herd from Northern Australia.
In 1977, he returned to Australia and pursued a personal interest in long-range weather forecasting. In 1978, he was
invited to lead an agricultural team in Northern Samar; a province in the Republic of the Philippines identified
by the Australian Ambassador as worthy of Australian Aid because of the rural poverty. In 1981–1986, he was
consultant to the Indonesian Manager of a livestock project in South East Sulawesi. The Asian Development Bank
and the Islamic Bank jointly funded this project. He established quarantine facilities and over five years undertook
the importation of 7 000 head of Brahman cross breeding heifers from northern Australia. In 1987–1989, he was
the Livestock Management Specialist assisting private enterprise producers in Indonesia with dairy importations
and feeding, husbandry and the management of smallholder dairy herds in Indonesia. In 1990, he was awarded
a Bachelor of Economics, gained by external study, from the University of Queensland. Between 1990–1993 he
was Consultant to the Indonesian Transmigration Program in Kalimantan where he travelled in three provinces
advising 70 clinics on importation, quietening and the handling of Australian Brahman cattle as draught animals.
From 1993 to 1995, on behalf of the Australian Meat & Livestock Corporation, he joined the Landbank of the
Philippines as consultant for their live cattle importations. On his arrival, they were experiencing difficulties in
adapting range cattle to village conditions. He trained staff by conducting seminars and gave hands-on training
to members of co-operatives importing breeding cattle. During this period the number of cattle imported to the
Philippines increased from 30 000 to 200 000 head, most being exported from the Northern Territory.
Turnour later managed a family agriculture and livestock consultancy in Brisbane.
Family records.
JOAN TURNOUR, Vol 2.
TUXWORTH, HILDA ELSIE (BIDDY) nee PHEGAN (1908–1994), governess, nursing sister, community
worker and historian, was born at Point Clare, New South Wales, on 25 June 1908, the daughter of Herbert Henry
Phegan, estate agent, and his wife Elizabeth Ellen, nee Walsh. Educated at the Bondi Domestic Science Public
School in Sydney, she worked as a governess and then trained as a nursing sister at the Wollongong General
Hospital. She married Lindsay John Tuxworth, miner, in 1935 and they had three sons. From 1940 to 1941,
she and her husband lived at a gold mine in the Territory of New Guinea, from which they were forced to flee when
the war with Japan started. They returned to Wollongong.
The Tuxworths moved to Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory in 1951. Lindsay worked as an engineer
with the Eldorado Mining Company. The family lived at the Eldorado Mine until 1958. Lindsay later transferred to
Peko Mines before he retired in 1965. Hilda was a nursing sister for Peko Mines and worked for the Red Cross and
St John’s Ambulance. Active in the community, she was on various occasions a member and/or office bearer in
the Tennant Creek District association, the Tennant Creek School Board, the Old Timers’ Home and the Country
Women’s Association. She taught ballet and painted the local wildflowers in oils and watercolours. In 1969,
Her Majesty the Queen appointed her a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services as a
nursing sister and community work. Very proud of the award, she frequently included ‘MBE’ in her signature.
Her principal contribution to Tennant Creek was as an historian. She started her work on local history on 6
January 1965, when she visited Jack Noble in the Tennant Creek Hospital and took notes as he spoke to her about
the beginnings of the Tennant Creek gold rush. She later interviewed many other old residents and collected historic
written materials and photographs. Marjorie Fullwood, a close friend, typed all her notes and correspondence
and catalogued what has become an invaluable research collection. Their work resulted in Hilda Tuxworth’s
short booklet on Tennant Creek history that was later expanded to become Tennant Creek: Yesterday and Today,
published in 1978 and later reprinted. Research materials she and Fullwood gathered were deposited in the Fryer
Library at the University of Queensland and the ‘Tuxworth-Fullwood Archives’ at the headquarters of the Tennant
Creek Branch of the National Trust were also established. She researched the story of Helen Springs Station in
Central Australia, which the Historical Society of the Northern Territory in association with the Faculty of Arts
of the Northern Territory University, published as a book launched at Tennant Creek in 1992. Her oral history
interviews were ultimately lodged in the Northern Territory Archives and she contributed articles to the Northern
Territory Dictionary of Biography.
Hilda Tuxworth was a founder of the National Trust in Tennant Creek. She helped form an historical society
in March 1968. This remained functional until April 1974 when it transferred its assets to the National Trust and
became a branch of what from 1976 was the National Trust of Australia (Northern Territory). For many years,
she served as Branch Chairman and Vice-Chairman and was a member of the Trust’s Council between 1976 and
- In 1980, she was made an Honorary Life Member of the Trust, an award she greatly treasured. In 1978, she
was instrumental in saving the former outpatients’ department of the Tennant Creek Hospital from demolition.
The building became from 1980 the National Trust headquarters in Tennant Creek, containing an excellent museum
and the Tuxworth–Fullwood Archives. It was later officially known as Fullwood–Tuxworth House.
After her husband’s death in February 1981, she moved from the house they occupied to a small but very
pleasant home unit. The last few years of her life were mainly spent in a nursing home at Tennant Creek and were
marred by serious health problems. Her family were a great source of comfort and support. She was particularly