Alan Dale Telfer

Born: 27 Oct 1890 (Tantanoola, SA) | Died: 18 Sep 1937 (Wilga Tank, Girilambone, NSW) | Mother: Martha Henstridge (~1854–1921) | Father: John Telfer (1840–1913) | Occupation: Railway ganger (permanent-way employee) | Buried: Unknown (Girilambone district)

Family

Life Summary

Alan Dale Telfer was born on 27 October 1890 in Tantanoola, South Australia, the 13th child of John Telfer (1840–1913) and his second wife Martha Clara Henstridge.

He never married. During the Depression years of the late 1920s and 1930s, Alan left South Australia's Limestone Coast and travelled into inland New South Wales, where he found work on the railways as a permanent-way employee (ganger) — a track-maintenance labourer — based around the remote Wilga Tank railway siding, west of Nyngan.

Death — Resolved (2026)

Alan's fate was a long-standing mystery in the Telfer family tree. Contemporary newspapers and the NSW intestate records now confirm exactly what happened.

On Saturday 18 September 1937, a motor car overturned near Wilga Tank railway siding, ~30 miles west of Nyngan, on the edge of the Girilambone district in central-western NSW. The Wellington Times (20 Sep 1937) reported that the accident killed "Alan Dale Telfer, middle aged, a railway per-way employee of Wilga Tank" — he was killed instantly when the car overturned. Two of the car's four occupants were badly injured and taken to Nyngan Hospital; one of them, railway fettler Thomas Richards (21), later died of his injuries. A coroner's inquest followed.

The death was confirmed by the NSW Government Gazette intestate notice, which recorded —

"Alan Dale Telfer, late of Wilga Tank, Girilambone, … ganger, who died 18th September, 1937, intestate."

Because he left no will — and no widow or children — his estate was administered by the NSW Public Trustee. That is strong evidence he was unmarried and alone in his final years.

The newspaper account that ties him unmistakably to the Tantanoola family appeared in the South Eastern Times (Millicent, SA) on 1 October 1937:

"The death occurred at Girilambone, New South Wales, on the 18th inst., of Allan Dale Telfer, son of the late John and Martha Telfer, of Tantanoola. The deceased, who was 46½ years of age, was killed instantly in a motor car accident."

That notice, placed in the Tantanoola home-district paper, confirms this Alan Dale Telfer was indeed the son of John and Martha Telfer of Tantanoola — the man this profile describes.

His burial place is not recorded but was almost certainly in the Girilambone or Nyngan district of central-western New South Wales.

Timeline

Family Stories

Alan Dale was born at Tantanoola in 1890, the 13th child of John Telfer and Martha Henstridge. He never married and had no children. In the Depression he left the settled farming life of the Limestone Coast for the rough, itinerant world of railway track-work in inland New South Wales, ending up as a ganger at the lonely Wilga Tank siding west of Nyngan. He was killed there, aged about 46, when the car he was travelling in overturned on Saturday 18 September 1937.

A note on family records: From the Borders to the Bush gives Alan's death as "1955," but no 1955 death for a Tantanoola-born Allan Dale Telfer appears in any record. Every primary source — the NSW accident reports, the NSW intestate gazette, and the Tantanoola home-district newspaper — places his death in September 1937. Any "wife and son" attributed to him belong to a different Allan Dale Telfer, an older railwayman who had lived at Wattamondara (near Cowra) in NSW; the two namesakes were fused together in some online trees. Alan Dale Telfer of Tantanoola died in 1937, unmarried and without children.

Sources