William Rendall Cave (17 June 1842 – 6 July 1916) was a grain merchant and shipowner in the early days of South Australia.[1]
He was a son of Charles Cave (died 1851) of Stoke-sub-Hamdon, South Somerset, and Susannah (1800 – 19 December 1862) who came to Adelaide in 1848 or 1849 and settled at Gumeracha. William found employment with John McKinlay at his cattle station at Lake Victoria, New South Wales. Next the Chambers brothers gave him a job at their northernmost cattle property, Beltana Station, and he remained there for several years, becoming an expert bushman.[2]
He broke in most of the horses used by John McDouall Stuart's 1861 expedition across the continent to Port Darwin. He and John Chambers shod all their horses, and Cave made duplicate sets of horseshoes, possibly at Chambers' Bobmoonie Station where the explorers made their final base before pushing into the unknown.[2] Despite his peripheral association with the Stuart expedition, he was prominent in the many jubilees held between 1883 and 1914.
Early on he went to Port Adelaide and took up stevedoring work for William Younghusband, loading the Solway with the first full cargo of wheat from South Australia for London (perhaps in May 1862[3]), and the Thomas Brown for Acraman, Main, Lindsay, & Co. But after six months on the wharfs he secured a position as overseer of "Thursk", a cattle station near Overland Corner belonging to John White, where he was associated with Sir Jenkin Coles.[2]