Blackall Tambo Who's Who
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Distinguished and Famous people from Blackall Tambo
The Blackall–Tambo region's notable connections include a shearer whose name entered everyday language and a decorated soldier born on a local station. Their histories reflect different kinds of skill and public recognition.
✂ Jack Howe
Jack Howe settled in Blackall after working as a shearer and, in October 1892, shore 321 sheep with hand blades in a day at Alice Downs. The feat made him widely famous, but his local life also included union activity, hotel ownership and political organising. He bought Blackall's Universal Hotel in 1900 and later owned pastoral properties nearby. The work shirt bearing his name has proved almost as durable a reminder as the record itself.
The book gives a sense of the pace behind the famous number: 321 sheep were shorn in seven hours and forty minutes using hand blades. Howe received two gold medals for his shearing achievements. His later business life included the Barcoo Hotel from 1902, extending the local story beyond one extraordinary day in a shed.
🏅 Edgar Towner
Edgar Towner was born at Glencoe near Blackall in 1890 and worked as a grazier before enlisting in 1915. During the First World War he received both the Military Cross and the Victoria Cross, the latter for his actions at Mont St Quentin in September 1918. After the war he returned to pastoral work in central-western Queensland. His region connection begins with his station birthplace, while the events behind his best-known decorations took place on the Western Front.
🤝 George Pont
George Pont attended Blackall State School and St Joseph’s Catholic primary school, then obtained his first union ticket while working a school-holiday job at the town’s wool-scouring works. Truck driving, wool pressing and mining followed before he became an Australian Workers’ Union official. Later, as an industrial commissioner, he made a significant 1967 award ending discriminatory pay and conditions for Aboriginal station hands in Queensland. The Blackall connection is rooted in education and early work. His biography places his birth at nearby Bloomfield station while noting that the birth certificate records Blackall.
