Obituaries Australia

By the passing of Mr. Edwin Evers in his 90th year, Molong has lost one of the most remarkable of its pioneers. His long and useful life linked together the earliest stage of our pastoral life with that great industry, as it is today. He, and his father before him, shepherded sheep. He often slept in that strange shelter, 'the Shepherd's Watch-Box,' a device of which many may to-day have never even heard. The hardship, the loneliness, the monotony of the shepherd 's life he knew full well.

Ted Evers was associated with his father (and two others) in the erection of the wire paddock fence. Tradition affirms that this was the first of its kind to be erected on the western side of the Blue Mountains. Of that fence, which sounded the knell of the old shepherding order, only one post remains standing. From his home, which stood close by, but on the opposite side of the creek, little Ted used to take lunch to his father as he worked at the fence. A large rock and a bed of flag iris still mark the site of this early dwelling. The centre of his life was Gamboola; he loved this place which he served so loyally and so long. He never visited Sydney, but went to Bathurst to attend the funeral of his old employer, Hon. John Smith. Leading a pack-horse, he travelled much of the west, following the shearing from shed to shed. He was a noted blade shearer. When Hon. Jago Smith became trustee of the Gamboola Estate Ted Evers became the manager, and on him rested the responsibility of moving nineteen thousand sheep to relief country at Coolabah in the 1902 drought. In the rush and bustle of getting them away he counted the sheep into the trucks as they left, and was greatly concerned because he made them 13 short of his count from their respective paddocks. A week later 13 Gamboola wethers, which had escaped from the yard the night before trucking, was discovered by Mr. Burns at The Reeds.

Ted Evers was of fine presence and dignified bearing; and no razor had ever touched his beautiful beard. His long life was of great usefulness and conscientious service; the embodiment of a chapter of the real Australian early history which has now closed. That life has made his country richer, its ending has left many fond hearts poorer.