Coward Springs, South Australia - Thomas Coward

Thomas Coward

Thomas (‘Tom’) Coward was born 1834 in England, third son of John and Sarah, and arrived in Adelaide with his parents and siblings on the Fairlie in 1840. He joined the goldrush to Victoria in 1851, and then returned to Adelaide where he joined the South Australia Police in 1853, riding on four successive gold escorts between Adelaide and Bendigo.

He was then posted as mounted constable to Port Augusta, Kapunda, and other country police stations, being promoted to corporal. In 1858 he was stationed at Mount Serle when he accompanied the party of Peter Warburton on one of his explorations, during which they discovered and named Coward Springs. He then accompanied Richard Graves MacDonnell on his Central Australian expedition.

After being dismissed from the SA Police in 1860 for gross ill-treatment of his horse, he joined the Snowy River gold escort service in New South Wales. Coward was then sent into Queensland as detective in the manhunt for the bushranger Frank Gardiner. In 1864 he resigned his NSW post to take up the position of sub-inspector in the Queensland Native Police Corps, serving at various country postings including Burketown. In 1867 he was appointed goldfields warden at the Palmer River diggings, being involved in controversial actions regarding Chinese miners. He then resigned from policing and married at Brisbane in 1879 to Millicent Deagon.

In 1891 Coward returned with his family to Adelaide, where he became a publican, first of the Imperial Hotel, and then of the Prince Albert Hotel, where he died in 1905, aged 71. In 1893 he stood as candidate for the Northern Territory electorate in the SA House of Assembly election, but was defeated.