THOMAS CARTER

Thomas Carter

In 1889 Carter acquired a 135,000-acre (54,633 ha) pastoral lease centred on Point Cloates; he was the first to hold a lease in the area. His characteristic energy and tenacity were needed to cope with sheep losses incurred by poison plants, dingoes and recurring drought in a largely waterless area.

His real reward was the magnificent birds which he sought, often dangerously, in the yawning canyons and towering cliffs of Cape Range. An unsuccessful operation on his left eye had rendered it practically useless but he was an excellent shot. Living off the land on his expeditions he was forced sometimes to eat valuable specimens through sheer hunger. His Crusoe-like existence was emphasized by his house built from wreckage of two ships lost near by.

Carter’s charts of entrances through the dangerous reefs are still in use. An assistant was speared but Carter remained on good terms with the Talaindji tribe, recording their bird names in ‘Birds Occurring in the Region of the North-West Cape’, published in the Emu on 1 July 1903. He identified 180 birds and secured specimens of 170, two entirely new – Rufous-crowned Emu-wren and the Spinifex-bird which bears his name, Eremiornis carteri.

Carter sold out and returned to England in 1903. On 8 September at Twickenham, Middlesex, he married Annie Ward whom he had known all his life and whose rejection of his proposal when she was 17 had prompted his departure to Australia. Returning to Western Australia the following year they settled on a southern sheep property at Broomehill. ‘Birds of the Broome Hill District’ appeared in the Emu in 1923-24.

While in England in 1909, Carter was warned by doctors to relax his strenuous life-style. After a near-tragic fire at Broomehill, heart trouble was apparent by 1913. Urged by his wife, Carter disposed of his property. With their three children they returned to England in 1914, settling at Sutton, Surrey. Two years later he was back in Western Australia visiting Dirk Hartog Island where mouse plagues invaded his blankets while he slept. He rediscovered there the Black-and-white Wren and the Western Grass-wren, collected only by the French naturalists J. R. C. Quoy and J. P. Gaimard nearly a century earlier on the Freycinet expedition. He paid three more visits to Western Australia, the last in 1928.

Carter died on 29 January 1931 and was buried at his birthplace. Remarkable in quality and quantity, his Australian contributions occupy two pages in Hubert Whittell‘s Literature of Australian Birds. Four species and fourteen sub-species bear his name. Birds collected by him are in the American Museum of Natural History, being part of the famous ‘Tring’ collection and that of his friend Gregory M. Mathews, to which he gave many specimens. Others are in the Western Australian Museum and a collection of eggs is in the British Museum (Natural History). He was a member of the British Ornithologists’ Union and a foundation member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists’ Union.

Citation details:

From the Australian Dictionary of Biography
Freda Vines Carmody, ‘Carter, Thomas (1863–1931)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/carter-thomas-5526/text9411, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 1 September 2021.
This article was published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 7, (Melbourne University Press), 1979.
View the front pages for Volume 7

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Obituary (2)
THOMAS CARTER (1863-1931).

By Gregory M Mathews
The Emu – 1 April 1931

On January 29 of this year, 1931, died one of the greatest of the Australian ornithological pioneers, Thomas Carter, aged 67. Carter came of Yorkshire stock, which stood to him in his pioneer days. He was able to show a great interest in natural history in spite of the adverse conditions which obtained at his sheep station, Point Cloates, in Mid-Western Australia. Bearing this in mind the quality as well as the quantity of Carter’s work stands out prominently in Australian bird study.

Carter was born at Masham, in Yorkshire, on April 6, 1863. His father was James Carter of an old family there, and it was from him that Carter inherited his love of natural history. He kept a daily diary all his life from the age of eleven years. Educated at Sedbergh, he joined his father in business for a few years, during which time he made several ornithological trips, one with the Rev. H. H. Slater to Iceland. At this time he met Bowdler-Sharpe, Eagle Clarke, Seebohm, etc.

On November 1, 1886, he left England for Australia. where after trying his hand at different callings he finally settled down at Point Cloates as a pastoralist, exactly three years later. The next thirteen years were spent in developing the country and systematically collecting and recording the bird life of this hitherto unexplored locality. Continue reading

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Rediscovery of the palm Livistona alfredii
on the North West Cape Peninsula

W.E Humphreys, R.D. Brooks and B. Vine
West Australian Museum

In 1899 Thomas Carter was shown some palm trees by aboriginal people (Vines 1968) on the North West Cape Peninsula of Western Australia; “In one place [behind the range] a few clumps of cabbage-tree palms occur, which is somewhat remarkable” (Carter 1902).

However, due to the lack of specimens the authenticity of the record has not been accepted despite the otherwise impeccable natural history observations, especially of birds, made by Carter in that area (Carter 1903 a,b,c,d). Examination of the correspondence between Thomas Carter (from Point Cloates) and B. Woodward, Curator of the Western Australian Museum (W A M), in the archives of the Museum shows that Thomas Carter collected specimens and sent them to the Museum. In a letter to Woodward (Carter 30.1.1899) he states: “I found a patch of remarkable Palm Trees last June about 40 ft high. Do not know species but take it to be the Cabbage Tree. Would it be any use sending a leaf or two?, (about 5 ft in length)”. (This letter also refers to a rabbit caught on Point Cloates that year).

Woodward replied (20.3.1899) that “It would be great to have leaves of the Cabbage Tree”. On 7 December 1899, amongst a receipt for four bird specimens, Woodward acknowledges receipt of”A bundle of palm tree leaves”.

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WORKS

From Wikipedia

Tom Carter’s arrival in Western Australia reopened ornithological study of the regions birds, following a period of few collections and little research. While working in his first job as a Jackaroo, Carter used his spare time to make observations and collect bird skins and eggs in the Gascoyne district. He later studied the North West Cape and Broomehill regions.^[2] He also made an expedition to Dirk Hartog Island in 1916, where he made the first observations of the Black-and-white Wren and the Western Grass-wren since their first collection one hundred years before. Carter made a collection of around five hundred bird skins from Western Australia, which he delivered to England in 1903 and was eventually included in the Tring Collection and at the American Museum of Natural History.^[3]

Carter made a significant contribution to the ornithological literature on Australian birds, his notes and papers from Western Australia appearing in The Zoologist and The Emu. In his article, ‘Birds Occurring in the Region of the North-West Cape’, (Emu, 1903.), Carter gives the names of birds in the Talaindji language.^[1]

Carter published ‘Birds of the Broome Hill District’, where he had lived for a decade, in the Emu in 1923–24.^[1]

Wikipedia contributors. (2020, July 17). Thomas Carter (ornithologist). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:45, September 1, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Carter_(ornithologist)&oldid=968208360

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