Harry Tilmouth was a well-known figure in Central Australia in the early part of the twentieth century. He worked the Hermannsburg mail service and was also an excellent stockman. He was known for his unusual physical appearance, which earned him the nickname of 'Bony Bream'. Ernestine Hill, who met Harry duirng her travels to Horseshoe Bend during the 1930s, described him this way: ‘Lean as a lath, and therefore known from Maree to Alice Springs as ‘Bony Bream’, Mr Harry Tilmouth is one of the senior members of a big pioneering family, and he has run the Hermannsburg mail ever since it started. With every true bushman I have met in the length and breadth of Australia, he was the soul of chivalry and courtesy to a woman. It was his forethought and kindness, and the merry tales he told, ambling along behind me in the string, that transformed an arduous, an almost impossible journey, into one of the pleasantest excursions of life.’ (Hill, 302-03) A less effusive, yet still complimentary recollection of Tilmouth, can be found in Gertrude Turner's memories of Central Australian life. Turner met Tilmouth in December 1922 during a trek through Central Australia when she travelled with him from Oodnadatta to the Centre in the mail buggy. Harry was about 53 years old when they met. Turner remembers him fondly when she writes ‘Harry was so nice’ (Turner in Brown,14)

REFERENCES: Ernestine Hill, The Great Australian Loneliness, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1940 Gertrude Turner’s story is included in Shirley Brown’ Chatting With Centralians: A Recorded History of Thirty Centralians, Historical Society of the Northern Territory, Casuarina, 1998