14 August 1866 Edmund Bowman

Edmund Bowman, one of the pioneer settlers in the mid-north of South Australia, died on 14 August 1866. Edmund and three of his brothers, John, Thomas and William, came to South Australia from Tasmania after spending some nine years there. Edmund paved the way for the others by visiting the colony but met with disaster when the ship he was on, the Parsea, was wrecked on Troubridge Shoal and he lost everything he owned. He had to return to Tasmania, but was back a year later and sent for the whole family to come. At first they ran their sheep north of Islington and built a house at Enfield. In 1844 or ’45 the brothers took up country near Burra, but thinking it a little bare, moved to the head of the Wakefield River. They had runs in Werocate and Crystal Brook and did much of the work associated with their flocks themselves.

Edmund later bough Martindale, near Clare, from the Brownes who had built a house in English manor style. On 14 August 1866 Edmund was tragically drowned when he fell from a rough bridge into a creek, presumably knocking his head on something which rendered him unconscious. He was only 48 and left a family of six.

Rodney Cockburn, Pastoral Pioneers of South Australia, Volume 1, Lynton Publications, 1974, pp. 20-1.