Australian Post – 23 Aug 1993 – sent by Cath Smith
Tommy Lowe at the gates of Mt Remarkable
What do you want for breakfast? Asked one of the last true Aussie pioneers. There’s some roo if you like, the dog has had some of it, but there’s nothing wrong with the other half. The speaker, with a twinkle in his blue eyes is Tommy Lowe, the 89 year old who still runs Mount Remarkable, a sheep station 250 kilometres northeast of Kalgoorlie. As a boy of 15, Tommy began fighting drought, flood, fire, heat, dust and wildlife hell bent on killing him to build Mount Remarkable from virgin bush. There were no boundaries then, let alone fencing. Kangaroo was very much on the menu so was goanna and any other birdlife he could get his hands on.
Now he has created history, chalking up 75 continuous years as a station leaseholder, and he has no intention of retiring, even though his eyesight is fading fast. Tommy’s family migrated from Victoria about the turn of the century and settled in the goldfields town of Linden, which has long since turned to dust. His father applied for the 55,000 hectare Mount Remarkable lease for his two sons and it was granted in January 1918. Within three years, Tommy’s father was dead from silicosis. While Tommy’s mom was burying her husband in Perth, his older brother Steven came down with appendicitis. Young Tommy had to hitch up a horse and cart to get his ill brother to the closest medical aid in the gold mining town of Leonora.
It was terrible he recalls. It took two days. There were no roads, only Cob & Co coach tracks. When we arrived, the doctors assured me he would be alright and that I should return home. But when I got home, the news was waiting for me, Steven had died. He then had to develop the property. He pulled sandalwood, drove cattle and sheep, broke in bush brumbies, did some butchering, all while still working flat out on Mount Remarkable.
