GOOD LUCK TO THOSE COMPETING IN TOM QUILTY THIS WEEKEND. FOR THOSE INTERESTED HERE IS THE STORY BEHIND THE EVENT QUILTY THE MAN To thousands of Endurance riders, the 160km Tom Quilty Gold Cup is revered as the one ride to dream of winning or even just completing. Many may wonder who is Tom Quilty, who gave the dollars to create the cup and gave it his name? Tom Quilty lived all his life above the Tropic of Capricorn. His first home was Oakland Park an old telegraph station near Croydon, about one hundred miles south of Normanton in the Gulf Country of Western Queensland. Later his father formed Euroka Springs Station on the Flinders River, where Tom with his two brothers and three sisters grew up. In 1925 Tom left Euroka, and in partnership with his brother Paddy and father, bought Bradshaw on the Victoria River in the Northern Territory. This was said to be the largest tract of country ever held in Australia. They ran these properties together as Quilty and Sons, until Paddy’s death in 1939. In 1939 the partnership acquired Coolibah, a 500 square mile run in the Northern Territory, where Tom and his second wife Olive lived. In 1948 Tom bought Springvale in the Kimberleys and moved his family (wife Olive, and three sons by his first marriage, Rod, Basil and Mick) to live there. Basil recalls that before the new house was built they lived in a tin shed and walked a quarter of a mile to have a bath in the river. Springvale, at this time, had 8,000 head of cattle, 400 horses and comprised 320,800 acres of country, mostly rough with some good valleys and flats. Iron, lime and low grade copper could be found all over the run and the country had much the same look as the Mt. Isa region, with the same type of grass. Springvale has natural waters, the Panton, and Willogie and Bamboo Creeks, the Ord River and Foal Creek depends on permanent waterholes along these during winter as well as some bores. Tom spent the rest of his working life at Springvale and his some became established on stations of their own in the Kimberley. Rod, the eldest, held Lansdowne, 777,772 acres: Basil was at Bedford Downs, 906,456 acres; Mick ran Ruby Plains about 1,000,000 acres and brother in law Pat Underwood managed Inverway, 1,436,000 acres. Like Tom, all Quilty men are tough and competent ‘do-it-yourself’ types. All are sound cattlemen who owned and managed their own country. In his day the very mention of Tom Quilty’s name around the campfires, bought a hushed silence. He was the master. In his younger days there were few who could stay with him, mustering the wild cattle out of the ranges. He was a hard man to keep up with when he was working the camps and used to go all day and sometimes all night. He was tough too. Once, when chasing a bullock down the side of a river, his horse fell on the rocks and rolled over him, crushing his chest. He lay all night, got on another horse and began the next day’s work. Tom was always in the saddle and the tales of his ability as a horseman are many. They were everyday occurrences to him. He used to ride one hundred miles from Euroka to Cloncurry just to send a telegram! For years while out in the camp, his staple diet was corned beef, damper and golden syrup. His cure-all has always been Epsom salts, claiming that it prevented Barcoo rot if you took it every day. Even at eighty years of age he was a ruggedly built man, with a straight back and a powerful barrel chest. He had a strong square head and a poker face hiding an irrepressible wit. An old knee injury was the only reason for keeping him out of the stock camp gathering up the clean-skins, but he could still ride all day. Tom Quilty took great pride in his cattle, originally Red Polls crossed with Shorthorns, but in later years he introduced Brahman blood. Horses were his special pride and joy and he owned some good ones. One of his favorites was Bemi, which he used for cutting out the bullocks on the open camp. Good thoroughbred sires were used over the station mares. Every year a team of their station bred horses would compete at the Hall’s Creek race meeting to try to win the Hall’s Creek Cup and they succeeded on three occasions. This amazing man also wrote poetry and in 1958, published a book of verse “The Drover’s Cook and other Verses”. He generously donated all the proceeds from its sale to the Inland Mission and the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The Drover’s Cook has been made popular by the singing legend Slim Dusty. His poetry ranges over many subjects: characters he had known, the life in the cattle camps, his love of the bush in all its aspects and his personal views on life, love and society. It is not all ‘great’ poetry but much of it has real merit and is an interesting insight into the heart of the man. Tom Quitly was a generous man. He gave $1,000 to his friend R.M. Williams to sponsor the fledgling sport of Endurance riding. He thought it was a good thing for modern riders to have the chance to prove themselves and their horses over a distance of 100 miles, as his generation of cattle men had done in their everyday working lives. As one of his close relatives said “He was a great man who has done great things, generous to a fault, a good friend and forgiving enemy”. One of his favorite sayings was “live long and die happy” and he used to sign his letters to special friends, “Cheerio old stallion, mine’s a rum”. In 1973 Thomas John Quilty was awarded the O.B.E. for his long service to the cattle industry. He and his family had always owned and worked their way own land taking up country and improving it with fencing, yards, bores for water and homesteads. Tom Quilty became a legend in his own lifetime, born April 1st but certainly no fool. His last year was spent in retirement on a farm at Capel, Western Australia with Olive, where it was closer to medical attention at Perth. It must have broken his heart to leave his horses and cattle at Springvale and the Kimberley where he had spent so many happy, busy years. He died on the 23rd November 1979, aged ninety-three.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 09:40:23 +0000
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