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.
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.
While at Scots College, Tapp read the Ion Idriess book 'Cattle King' about Sir Sidney Kidman who owned large cattle stations in the Northern Territory.
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.
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.
The courtship was short and sweet and June soon found herself out at Killarney Station living under a bough shed, a structure made from four tree posts with fencing wire slung across the top and branches thrown over to make shade.
A plaque on his grave reads: Killarney stands as a monument to his vision and contribution to the Northern Territory horse and cattle industry.