THE family of a man who was known across the Territory for his ability to find water met to celebrate his life 10 years after his death.
Bill Foster, who was born at the Seven Mile creek in 1906, was a fencer and stockman who always knew the best spot to sink a well, providing vital sources of water for the cattle industry.
He worked at many stations throughout the Barkly including McLaren Creek, Greenwood, Kurundi, Hatches Creek and Kurinelli sinking wells, building stockyards, fencing as well as cattle work.
He also led a team of Aboriginal men in digging a mine shaft at Hatches Creek.
Bill married Betsy and together they raised seven children - Stella, Dick, Ivy, Peggy, Eileen, Josie and Mavis.
The children travelled with Bill and Betsy, setting up home at the various stations at which he worked and providing refuge for them from stolen generation authorities.
Knowing that an education was the key to a better future for his children, Bill turned to his boss at McLaren Creek Station, Fred Harris, for help.
Harris became guarantor for Bill and four of the girls were sent to St Mary’s boarding school in Alice Springs while the older children moved to Tennant Creek and Alice Springs to find work.
During the 60s, Bill and his family moved into Tennant Creek where he worked with a diamond drilling gang, at the Government Battery and later with Con Perry out at the Seven Mile station.
Betsy died in 1968.
In the 70s Bill moved back to McLaren Creek where he married his second wife, Gemima. They stayed there until the station was sold.
In the 1980s Bill moved out to Kurraya under the homelands movement.
Even though he had to build his own shelter and cart water 43 kilometres from Tennant Creek he was happy to be on his own land and along with Gemima he established a small enterprise selling goats to local Greek and Italian families.
Bill continued to ride horses and muster cattle until he was 80 years old and was also in fine form in 1991 to accept land title when the Warumungu land claim was granted.
Bill died at the Pulka Pulkka Kari Nursing home in September 1999.
Foster family members from throughout the Territory and beyond gathered in Tennant Creek on 10 October, Bill’s birthday.
If he’d been there to join in the celebrations he would have been 103.