Peter Severin: true grit and heart of gold

Photo from Curtin Springs website.

Hundreds of people attended a funeral service for pastoralist and tourism pioneer Peter Severin in Alice Springs today.

Severin, who died earlier this month, lived a long, interesting and often hard life, earning both respect and great affection from a wide range of people, as his funeral demonstrated. Even before his fateful decision to take over the Curtin Springs property at the onset of one of the worst droughts in the Territory’s history, he showed grit, initiative and determination throughout his life.

Born in South Australia, Severin first came to the Territory on a visit to Tieyon Station on the NT border, and ended up working there for 12 years, eventually becoming the head stockman. The work involved long stints herding and branding cattle, camping out, living on salt meat and damper, with few visits to the station. His pay gradually increased from 10 shillings to four pounds a week by the time he had become head stockman, while his wife Dawn worked on the station for three pounds. He and Dawn had married in 1951.

As Peter described stock work in an interview for NT Archives: We loved the job, and we worked because we liked to do it.

It was a free, open life. There were no hassles. We were virtually our own bosses. We were told what had to be done, and then we just had to go out and do it. There were no telephones, no radios. You couldn’t listen to music wherever you went. We never had much, and if you haven’t had something in the first place you don’t miss it.

We would go out on a camp and the old chaps would recite poetry all night. We had no guitars or tape recorders; somebody might have a mouth organ, because you could put that in your pocket. Sometimes we would sing dirges around the camp fire, but mostly it was poetry. They’d make up poetry about the local identities: old Bill Lennon, Paddy de Connolly, for example.

Taking on the responsibility of running his own cattle station proved to involve a far more stressful lifestyle. But Severin had already demonstrated the toughness that would enable him to succeed against high odds. On Christmas Day he had been driving a truck on the outskirts of the property when it broke down. He walked many miles to the cottage of an old cameleer who lived on an outstation. The old man offered him some of his home brew, to which Peter responded: “This stuff will kill you”, plonking the bottle down on a table. Its cork flew off at speed and hit Peter in one eye, permanently blinding him. In high summer heat he walked 27 km back to the station. Flown to Alice Springs by the Flying Doctor the next day, and later transported to Adelaide, he would lose a year of work.

When Peter and Dawn bought Curtin Springs in the mid-50s it was run-down and overrun with horses, a legacy of the Indian army horse market of earlier decades. He recollected there was nothing more than a few tin sheds and a big bough shed, to which Dawn reacted: “If you think I’m going to stay here, you’re mistaken.”  But stay she did, until she died, making a home for Peter, herself and only child Ashley and helping Peter build the first tourist business in the area.

“She was utterly magnificent,” said Peter of Dawn.

They borrowed the money for 1500 cattle and set about culling the thousands of horses but could not foresee the challenges that lay ahead. Drought set in throughout Central Australia, and between 1956 and 1966, the highest rainfall they had in a twelve-month period was only three inches (75mm).

Facing financial ruin, the Severins realised it would be necessary to adapt. After tourism pioneer Len Tuit had set up the first tours to Ayers Rock in 1957, they suggested to Tuit they could supply his coaches with fuel. Dawn added the offer of serving the coach passengers morning and afternoon teas. Between 1958 and 1960 they set up a service station with a 500 gallon underground tank and a small grocery store, serving tea and snacks to tourists on their way to and from Ayers Rock.

As Severin told NT Archives: We were forced into the tourist industry by the drought and by Len Tuit. It didn’t take much forcing because we had no income and we so desperately wanted to stay there.

I was young and I wanted something of my own. This was the first opportunity I had to have something of my own. And life in this country was a complete challenge, right from the day I got into it. If you succumb … well, then I would have gone down to Adelaide like the rest of them. But every barrier that came up, somehow we had to get over, one way or another.

We had to generate our own electricity; we had to do our own mechanical repairs; we had to break our horses in; we had to partially fix up our own saddles. We had to be self-reliant . As soon as I got a place that I could call my own, I didn’t want to give it away, and we fought and fought and fought.

My wife was one of the main backstays. If it weren’t for her I don’t think we’d have been there. I was always… looking after the bores and the cattle, and she was always back at the station looking after the tourists, so it was really her who kept us going, when it all boils down.

While Dawn built up the tourism operation at Curtin Springs, its existence as a depot facilitated the expansion of the tourist industry in the area. While maintaining the struggling cattle station, Severin also laid the foundations for Rock tourism. He installed and equipped windmills and bores, and in the late 50s was commissioned by the NT Reserves Board to build the archways into the Ayers Rock Mt Olga National Park. With help from the Juett brothers, Severin also built a house for the park’s first ranger, Bill Harney, who would later prove instrumental in creating the mystique around Uluru and its Aboriginal associations. Famously, Severin and a few other men installed the climbing chain to the top of the Rock in 1963 -1964. It would last 45 years until 2019.

In the meantime the drought ended, and since then Peter, Ashley and daughter-in-law Lyndee have spent more than five decades developing both the roadhouse and the pastoral operation. This has included the installation of new accommodation, expanded tours of the area (which includes Mount Connor), and the development of a gallery and a cottage industry making paper from spinifex that has put the old station abattoir to good use.

But it was clear from the emotional tributes paid to Peter today that those material improvements were less valued than the bonds that had deepened between Peter, members of his family, the Curtin Springs community and the many friends he had made in his 93 years. No doubt there will be support for the suggestion made by Hospitality NT’s Des Crowe that the Lasseter Highway should be renamed the Severin Highway in honour of Peter and Dawn. After all, as Crowe pointed out, Lasseter was a blow-in and business failure who lasted only three years in the Centre. The Severins achieved so much more.