Bill Tapp

Bill Tapp
Born	Charles William Tapp 2 June 1929 Sydney
Occupation	Pastoralist
Spouse(s)	June Clements (nee Forscutt)
Children	10
Parent(s)	Earnest Charles Tapp and Sarah Ann

Charles William Tapp best known as Bill Tapp (2 June 1929 – 22 May 1992) was a pioneer and cattleman from Killarney Station in the Northern Territory of Australia.

Tapp was born in Sydney on 2 June 1929 and grew up in Vaucluse. His father was Earnest Charles Tapp, a radio technician in the Australian Navy and his mother was Sarah Ann (Sadie), a managing director of Rosenthal Australia – a German-owned department store in George Street, Sydney. He was an only child.

Tapp lived in a house with a tennis court and a maid during the 1930s and later became a full time boarder at the Scots College in Bellevue Hill. A champion sportsman and scholar, he represented his school in many sports, swimming, cricket, football, rowing, diving and played tennis at a state level. It is said that he played with, and against, Australian tennis champions Lew Hoad and Frank Sedgman.

He was known to be agonisingly shy and had a pronounced stutter.

While at Scots College, Tapp read the Ion Idriess book ‘Cattle King’ about the Sir Sidney Kidman who owned large cattle stations in the Northern Territory. The book had a lasting effect on him and he decided that as soon as he finished school he would become a cattleman. His mother Sadie secured a job as a jackeroo-bookkeeper on Elsey Station near the tiny township of Mataranka 400 kilometres south of Darwin, made famous by the book We of the Never Never.

Tapp settled into station life learning everything he could. He left Elsey Station a few years later to manage Rosewood Station on the Northern Territory-Western Australian border. Two years later he established a droving business in the early 1950s, moving cattle from Alice Springs through Tennant Creek and Elliott along the Murranji Track.

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