Visit extends to make Daphne a local
• Daphne Howard glances over a section about Rushy Lagoon in the Ringaroooma district history As the River Flows.
By Tony Scott,
August 10, 2022
Having arrived in North-East Tasmania with a young family for a three-month caretaker role Daphne Howard is still here 58 years later and reckons it’s reasonable to consider herself a local.
Born and raised in far northern Queensland Daphne met and married husband Stan further north on the Atherton Tablelands, where he regularly visited as an adviser to tobacco growers.
“We had a strange sort of courtship, over the two years we only saw each other for about six months.”
Newly married, they settled into Texas on the New South Wales border, a tobacco growing area, before a move to Sunnybank in suburban Brisbane, where there was a research and processing base.
Around the same time Stan’s employers, the British Tobacco Company, were investing in
rural properties.
One of the farms was Rushy Lagoon, bought from the Mills family and Rex Tucker.
“Rex was going to stay on as manager, but he crashed his plane near Bridport and they thought it would take him three months to recuperate.
“His bosses thought Stan could help out for a while, so we came down for the three months, but Rex didn’t come back and we stayed.
“It was an enjoyable life, a good way to bring up children on the farm like that. We had a wonderful life.”
The children were two boys aged two and four when they arrived.
“They went to school at Gladstone and then on to Winnaleah.
“It was a good education for them.”
Daphne doesn’t hold with suggestions that a country schooling is second rate.
Both boys have gone on to successful lives one into the Federal Police and then the public service in Canberra the other in the Navy based in Western Australia before switching to civvy street still as a radar expert.
“It was such a hive of activity in those days because there were about 40 employees and there were contractors as well.
“The school bus generally had a dozen or more children on it.”
Leaving his involvement with commercial crop growing behind, husband Stan threw himself into livestock farming and developing the expanse of Rushy Lagoon.
“He loved the change, loved being outside dealing with the sheep and cattle, not so much having to do things like the budgeting and office work.”
During their 22 years on the property the sheep flock was built to 40,000 and a valuable Hereford stud established.
Stan was also elected to the Ringarooma Council and became involved with the Pioneer-Gladstone Football Club.
“He used to collect all the boys in the station wagon and head off to the football every Saturday.”
Despite the demands on her husband’s time, Daphne never felt in his shadow.
“We were a good team. We had to be, especially in the early days at Rushy.
“Once they built the visitors quarters we were always having people passing through from Sydney or the big bosses from England sometimes.
“We had a couple of Governors of Tasmania stay on occasion.”
It principally fell to Daphne to make sure the VIP guests were well catered for, including feeding them.
She’s always been a dab hand at cooking and says country hospitality was instilled in her from her upbringing in Ingham.
“Country people are just different to those from the city, aren’t they?”
The sale of Rushy Lagoon in 1986 led to the Howard’s first try at retirement.
With sons now off their hands and having had a shack for several years at Musselroe Bay, where they’d been used to escaping to for weekends and holidays, they decided to move there, almost doubling the permanent population.
“There wouldn’t have been more than about six of us.
“It was the quiet life. Good for fishing and hunting.”
Stan also took on some casual jobs with the development of dairying on the Icena property and in the grounds of the massive Musselroe House for Sydney-based businessman Richard Hill.
“We used to play cards every Thursday at each other’s places and have lunch together.”
But in 1993 they threw in their hand when Stan was asked to manage a property in the north of Flinders Island.
Five and a half years into that adventure Stan’s health forced a full retirement and they moved into Whitemark so they could still enjoy the island lifestyle, including lawn bowls, which Daphne had joined her husband in playing.
They moved back to the Tasmanian mainland in 2006, settled into Bridport and continued the bowls involvement.
Stan’s death in 2015 rocked Daphne, but she credits her club colleagues and neighbours for helping her through.
Apart from the bowls she’s not sure if she’s up to continuing, she’s developed a new consuming interest in becoming an inveterate traveller.
She’s a regular patron with the St Helens-based Franklin’s Travel Club.
“They do day trips or one or two night stays in different places around Tasmania, but one of the trips we did was down the centre from Darwin to Adelaide.
“It makes you appreciate how big Australia is.
“There were two buses on that tour and about 50 people. We all get to know each other and it’s like one big family.”
She’s been on a few trips back to Queensland, including one through the south west of the state where she started married life.
But coming back to Tasmania is always good.
“Tassie’s home now,” says the former Queensland girl.