Obituaries Australia

Thomas Richard Bowman, by Bond & Co., c1890

State Library of South Australia, B 11300

By the death of Thomas Richard Bowman, which occurred at his residence in Adelaide on 17th February, South Australia lost one of its most prominent pioneer pastoralists. Mr. Bowman lived till he was seventy-five years of age, but he seems to have crowded into that space of time a record of work and varied experience which would have been a wonderful achievement for a centenarian. The Bowman family have had an exceptional influence upon the pastoral industry of South Australia, having been among the most enterprising of that splendid type of men and women who did the early colonising work of that State. They left Liverpool in 1830 in an old craft, intending to settle in Western Australia, but after six or seven months' wandering over the face of oceans, never quite certain where they were, the ship brought up at Tasmania. After a few years in Tasmania, where the late T. R. Bowman was born in 1835, the eldest son, the late Edmund Bowman, father of Messrs. Edmund, Charles, and Herbert Bowman, well-known sheepmen of South Australia today, and of Mrs. Alick J. Murray, of Mt. Crawford, was sent to South Australia, and was followed by the rest of the family in 1839. The deceased pastoralist was associated with his brothers in several pastoral properties, the names of which, such as Crystal Brook and Werocata, were household words in the early days, but his name has chiefly been associated in recent times with Campbell House Estate, Lake Albert. In addition to the breeding of high-class sheep and cattle, the late Mr. Bowman carried on experiments in ostrich farming. Mr. Bowman's own account of his life's work, in conjunction with that of his brothers, Edmund, John, and William, graphically describes the trials and dangers of the pioneers, and shows how greatly indebted are Australians of the present day to the men who risked so much and worked so hard. Mr. Bowman left a widow and two daughters, Mrs. C. T. Bray and Mrs. H. C. Cave.