Richard Alfred Tills  Richard Alfred Tills (1860–1937) was the fourth Mayor of Cairns, Australia and the twelfth Chairman when Cairns was classified as a Borough, a member of the Barron Divisional Board, and President of the Cairns Chamber of Commerce. Born in Kingston upon Hull, England, Tills was a carpenter, architect and one of the pioneers of North Queensland. Richard Alfred Tills was born on 12 June 1860 in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. He was the eldest son of Alice Harrison and Alfred Tills, originally a carpenter, but a newsagent by the time Richard was born and later a grocer. Richard had two younger brothers, twins, Charles William and John Henry—John died at the age of 3. Richard worked as a master joiner in Hull before emigrating to Australia under the Assisted Immigration program, arriving in Mackay on 2 November 1882 at the age of 22. After brief stints working as a carpenter in Mackay and Townsville, Richard became an early pioneer of North Queensland arriving in Cairns in 1883. Within six months of his arrival at Trinity Bay, Cairns, he had qualified as a contractor and worked on the construction of numerous buildings in Cairns. Several years later, he assayed mining, prospecting on the Mulgrave goldfield, south of Cairns, where he erected a water-wheel battery. After processing 600 tonnes of stone from various mines, a disillusioned Tills returned to work with timber. Tills moved to the Atherton Tableland and established a sawmill at Redlynch, eight miles from Cairns, on the Cairns-Mareeba railway line, with Charles Michael, Robert Warren and three times Mayor of Cairns, Louis Severin. By 1889, Richard Tills was the sole proprietor of the Cairns Saw Mill. In 1899, he moved the sawmill to Cairns along the Mulgrave tramway line. The five acres site was situated on Alligator Creek, a site eminently suitable, as the tramway line passed just in front of the works, and Alligator creek ran within a hundred yards of the back of the mill—having a depth of 14 ft at high tides, the creek was very useful in floating logs up and down from and to the Cairns inlet. The main shed was 150 ft x 60 ft, and the offices, timber shed, and workshop (a two storey building) was 30 x 24 ft.