Bush raconteur remembered as a larger than life character FINAL RIDE FOR BOB
THOMAS ROBERT (BOB) FORSTER
NORTHERN racing identity and bush raconteur Bob Forster always had plenty of tall tales to tell.
Whether it was tales of alcoholic horses or weather forecasts based on the number of emu chicks doing the rounds, Bob could spin a yarn that would leave you in stitches.
Born at “The Rocks” hospital in Townsville in 1928, Thomas Robert (Bob) Forster grew up near Maxwelton, a blink-and-you’llmiss-it town on the Townsville to Mount Isa rail line, just west of Richmond.
He was the second son born to Murray and Jane Forster of Gracedale Station, Maxwelton, after older brother John who was born two years earlier.
The two lads had a typical bush upbringing and learned the ropes of the family business in fine style in between home schooling, until it was time to attend boarding school.
At the age of 10 Bob was sent to All Souls in Charters Towers, and was among the students who spent the war years located at Gainsford Station when the army moved in.
Later the boys had classrooms at the racecourse and there they slept three to a stall.
In 1946 his father, a captain in the 26th battalion, died suddenly and teenage Bob was called home to oversee operations on the family properties.
“I remember one incident in
1948 when I was working Euthella with a jackaroo and two Aboriginal boys, and we used to have to ride 14 miles with pack horses to Bunda Bunda to get stores,” Bob said.
“Anyway it rained and rained and rained and the Saxby River got too wide to swim, the water in the horse yard was up to my belt buckle and we were out of tucker.
“So I saddled up and half-rodehalf-swam out to a pebbly ridge, shot an emu and we cut the drumsticks into steaks.”
Bob left Gracedale and went to work for Fred Clifford managing Tarbrax Station on the downs country below Maxwelton where his duties included walking big mobs of shorthorn steers from Seagers Creek back to Tarbrax.
The trips were also a learning experience for the young Queenslander. He was taught to track by Aboriginal elders, men he regarded as highly skilled, wellrespected bushmen.
It was on one of these return droving trips Bob – looking a tad worse for wear thanks to weeks with a mob – saw the “most beautiful girl ever’’ on the train at Maxwelton.
The girl was Anne Kennedy, a local lass home from nursing in Brisbane.
“Four years later I was taking horses to the Amateurs in Townsville and I asked her to marry me.’’
He added rather ruefully: “There was a sign there that said say it with flowers, but being a man of few words I gave her a single rose and proposed.’’
Needless to say she accepted and the young couple were married in 1954 and returned to live at Gracedale.
Their wedding made the columns of the Townsville Daily Bulletin, where the bride was said to have chosen “one of the loveliest wedding gowns in pure white embroidered nylon fashioned into a soft classic with a tucked, curvedto-fit, bodice and a very bouffant skirt”.
Bob had started race riding in the ’40s when he was 17 and during the ’50s he devoted his spare time to training and breeding thoroughbreds to the point where he even built a track at Gracedale.
He was instrumental in starting g