Deposit N232 - Tom Tansey Collection

Timothy (Tom) Tansey was born in Mt Gambier, South Australia on 20 October 1861. At age 11 he was sent to work as an assistant to a teamster working bullock teams from Edenhope in Western Victoria to Portland carting wool, salt, grain and hides. He then worked as a roustabout in a team shearing in West Victoria, and which led him to being employed as a carpenter’s mate by Worrock Station proprietor George Robinson. He worked as a seasonal shearer and also at Worrock where he met his wife Louisa Chester who was a school teacher and ladies maid to Mrs Robinson. In 1898 Tansey and his brother Hubert started their farm on a selection of land at Chetwynd on Glenelg River. Tansey and Louisa Chester married in 1900 and had three children, Ellen, John and Hubert. By 1916, after his brother Hubert’s death in 1913 and years of drought, Tansey lost all his stock and savings. In 1919 he worked as a labourer in Melbourne and took on shearing work. By 1926 Tansey was shearing fulltime. In 1930 he changed to blade shearing as he worked on a round of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania shearing stud stock. He retired in 1936 aged 75. Tansey died on 4 June 1941.