Tommy Dower and the Perth newspapers

Among the pioneer graves in the East Perth cemetery is a well-kept headstone commemorating Tommy Dower, who died on 2 July 1895 at the age of fifty.According to his epitaph: 'He was possessed of more than ordinary intelligence and ability'.He is almost certainly the only person of Aboriginal origin interred among Perth's colonial elite.It is usually thought that he owes this distinction to being the survivor of the three notable Aborigines-all of them called Tommy -who accompanied the Forrest brothers on their expeditions in the 1870s.Tommy Windich, a Koker1 from the Kellerberrin district taken when young to the Forrests' district of Bunbury, went on the 1870 and 1874 transcontinental expeditions, and was buried at Esperance when he died in 1876 in his mid thirties.Tommy Pierre, bom about 1836 in the Bunbury district, was on the 1874 expedition and accompanied Alexander Forrest in his 1879 journey across the Kimberleys: he suffered severe illness during its later stages and died at Albany on the way home.2 3 Tommy Dower was the other Aboriginal in Alexander Forrest's eight-man party in 1879; he also accompanied John Forrest in 1881 on the survey of the country between Beverley and Albany which led to the construction of the Great Southern railway.-*He survived, and his later history throws up some interesting questions on race relations in the Perth of the 1880s and 1890s.It has been conjectured that Dower's family origins were among the Murray River people who fought and lost the battle of Pinjarra in October 1834.4Dower was bom a few years later, some time between 1835 and 1845.I know nothing of his life until he went on Alexander Forrest's expedition in 1879, but by that time he was a good shot, a useful horseman, and a mature and impressive personality.It would be interesting to speculate how far Forrest's unmolested crossing of the Kimberleys was due to advice from Pierre and Dower about avoiding campsites where the party would be unwelcome to the local Aborigines, and in otherwise exercising their diplomatic skills

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