Northern Territory characters I have known.
He lived in a beach camp at Tree Point off Koolpinyah Station. The location is shown on the map.
Koolpinya was a cattle station owned by the Herbert brothers, who were sons of Judge Herbert.You can read about Evan and Oscar in the Tom Cole books “Hell West and Crooked” and also “Riding the Wildman Plains”.
On a personal note, my family were regular visitors and I met Evan one day when my Dad crashed his Landrover right into a bull buffalo on the road coming in. The Herberts were quite helpful.
Tony Franklin told me that, in Judge Herbert’s time, he went out to Koolpinyah Homestead with his family for a black tie dinner. He was, as I recall, pretty impressed.
Joe had a fairly rough camp but he didn’t live alone. With him, were three girls Lydia, Wimpey, and Alice. I now believe that Lydia was really “Liddie”.
I did have photographs of the three girls. Lost it as you do.
They were keen on grog and flour, as I recall. Terrific people and they looked after Joe.
Joe was the tough old school. Charming as they come.
Here we see Joe as a younger man walking with his mum. I believe the photo was taken in Sydney. He was a fine figure of a man, wasn’t he?
We all get older, and Joe was not the exception to the rule.
As for crocs?
Nothing in this story about crocs. Sorry to mislead you but there is plenty of stuff about crocodiles.
This is about a man!
Dynamite?
Yeah, well the story is that Joe blew that hand off when using dynamite for fishing. Kind of “light the fuse with a cigar and throw away the cigar” sort of thing. Who really knows?
It seems that when Joe arrived at the hospital (drove himself in) they were a bit busy. The matron knew Joe and said, “Take a seat Joe. We will be with you in a minute.”
Joe took a seat, sat there quietly, with his hand blown off. He was a man.
But Joe was also a fisherman of reknown.
He was a professional and when he only had one hand he could still pull fish in quicker than most people who had two hands.