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Territory Characters
Paddy Cahill
Paddy Cahill, buffalo shooter
Spillett Collection
Northern Territory Library
PH 238/707
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Paddy Cahill
Nat Buchanan one of North Australia's most famous drovers, made many contributions to the Territory, but one of the greatest must have been the fact that he brought people here who were to become notable pioneers. Of all those people Paddy Cahill must have been one of the most significant to the Territory.
Cahill was born in south east Queensland in about 1863. In 1883 he came to the Territory with Buchanan, driving some of the cattle which were to stock the foundation stations of the Top End. Cahill managed Delamere station before beginning the buffalo shooting career which made him a household name. He noted from 1885 reports by the explorer Captain Carrington that the country along the Alligator Rivers was swarming with buffalo, wild descendants of the animals which, from 1828, had been brought to the British military outposts in the north.
Cahill wasn't our first buffalo shooter, but he adapted Queensland “scrub dashing” techniques so that the buffalo were chased and shot from horseback. In this way numerous animals could be shot during one chase - as against the single animal which was the invariable result of the old method of shooting from the ground.
Cahill set up a base at Oenpelli, and later successfully ran cattle and farmed there. He had excellent relations with local Aborigines, and under him Oenpelli was regarded as a model of what might be achieved in the Territory. Cahill’s success was undoubtedly due to his superior understanding of the Territory’s land and its native people. His knowledge of Aborigines was recognised when he acted as guide and informant for anthropologists such as Baldwin Spencer.
Cahill died in 1923, during a southern trip to see the Melbourne Cup. |
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Territory Characters
Annie Duwun
Don Cubillo and family
J M Ruddick Collection
Northern Territory Library
PH 336/52
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Annie Duwun
Annie Duwun is the maternal ancestor of the Cubillo family, which today is perhaps Darwin’s most numerous and best known family.
Annie was a Larrakia woman, her traditional country lying around Delissaville, across the harbour from Darwin. Sometime in the 1870s she began living with George McKeddie, a Scottish born businessman who had arrived in Darwin in 1874. The couple lived in a house located near the intersection on Mitchell and Peel Streets, and the large banyan tree which now grows in the Transit Centre grounds was planted by them.
Annie and George had two children, Lilly and Jack. Lilly married Antonio Cubillo, who arrived in Darwin from the Philippines in 1894, to work as a pearl diver. Lilly and Antonio Cubillo had eleven children and today there are more than 400 of their descendants in Darwin. Along the way, the Cubillos have inter-married with Aboriginal, Japanese, Filipino, and Chinese families. Today they regard themselves as being Aboriginal.
The family quickly became, and remains, outstanding in sport, but there have been many other achievements. For example, in the 1930s there were two bands in Darwin - both dominated by the Cubillos. Musical traditions from the Philippines were a particular feature of these “Rondalla” bands - which were guitar orchestras in the Philippines tradition. The Cubillos were the model for the Ponto Brothers band of Herbert's Capricornia.
In 1992 a play “Keep Him My Heart” premiered in Darwin - the play was based on the love story of Lilly and Antonio, and it was written by their descendant Gary Lee. There are current proposals to film the play. |
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Territory Characters
Christina Gordon
Christina Gordon 1940
Roderick Collection
Northern Territory Library
PH 110/90
Gordon's Don Hotel
Jenkins Collection
Northern Territory Library
PH 94/93
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Christina Gordon
Christina Wallace was born in 1863, probably in England. She spent her childhood in Queensland, and in 1887 she married Duncan Gordon, of Gordonvale, near Cairns. For the rest of Christina’s life she was to be the dominant figure in a family business partnership, which included Duncan’s brother Jack (died 1928), and her sons after Duncan’s death in 1929.
In the late 1890s the Gordons crossed overland to the Western Australian goldfields; they won a contract to build a section of the WA dingo fence; then in about 1909 they went to the new goldfield at Tanami - where Christina was the only white woman. It is reputed that the Gordons did well at Tanami. Christina was often later referred to as "Mrs Tanami Gordon."
By about 1918 the Gordons had moved to Darwin, where Christina for a time ran a cafe in Cavenagh Street. Then she took on the Adelaide River railway refreshment rooms before going to Pine Creek to run the Playford Hotel as a lessee from the government, which then owned all Top End hotels.
Later, Christina took over the Victoria Hotel in Darwin. She turned the Vic into a first class hotel, and developed its aviation connection - she was the first passenger on a commercial aviation service south from Darwin. She ran the hotel on very strict lines. Formality prevailed - coats had to be worn in the dining room.
In 1928 Christina joined the syndicate which built the Star cinema, opened in 1929. In 1930 she bought the cinema outright and brought Tom Harris (senior) to Darwin to run it.
Soon after, the Gordon family bought the Don Hotel (at the corner of Bennett and Cavenagh Streets, Darwin), which had been built by Harold Snell. There had been a cinema on the site since 1912, called “The Don” by first proprietor George Wedd. The new hotel adopted the old name.
In 1938 Christina leased out the family’s hotel interests and she retired to a residence in Daly Street, Darwin. She was awarded the MBE for her business achievements and charitable works. She was evacuated during the war, but she was one of the first civilians to return to Darwin, again managing the Vic Hotel for a time. She sold the Vic, but stayed on in Darwin for a time before retiring to Brisbane, where she died in 1952. |
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Territory Characters
Len Kentish
Third from right is the Reverend Kentish, outside the RAAF "Bush Chapel", Darwin Steenholdt Collection
Northern Territory Library PH 151/1
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Len Kentish
Methodist missionary Len Kentish came to Darwin in 1935. At first his work was among the white parishioners of the town, but before long Kentish was spending most of his time among town Aborigines and the people of Kahlin, and then Bagot compounds.
Kentish was sent to Goulburn Island as Superintendent in 1938, then in 1940 he explored Croker Island for a site for a Methodist home for part Aboriginal children. The home was to be established for children who were brought to the island in late 1941, under the government’s new policy of entrusting to missions those part-Aboriginal children who had been removed from their parents.
During the war emergency from early 1942 many missionaries and the children on Croker Island were evacuated, but Kentish stayed on to supervise the continuing Methodist missions in Arnhem Land.
In January 1943 he was a passenger and pilot aboard the naval patrol and cargo vessel, HMAS Patricia Cam. The vessel was typical of the "Royal Darwin Navy". Built in Brisbane in 1940 for the Sydney fishing firm Cam & Sons, she was requisitioned by the navy in 1942 and sent to Darwin as a store carrier. The Patricia Cam and its crew of 17 men were taking supplies and materials to isolated coastwatching posts, airfields, and mission stations along the Arnhem Land coast between Bathurst Island and Groote Eylandt.
At this time Japanese reconnaissance floatplanes, based at Dobo in the Aru Islands, had been harassing shipping between Darwin and Thursday Island. Not long previously, two ships had been sunk or badly damaged with heavy casualties. The floatplanes’ tactic had been to cut engines as the Allied ships were neared, then to dive out of the sun onto the ships. Without radar, the ships' crews usually did not see the attackers until it was too late.
The Patricia Cam's last voyage was uneventful enough as far as Goulburn Island, where Kentish and the Aborigine Paddy were picked up. Kentish was bound for the most remote Methodist Mission station, Yirrkala, near the present mining town of Nhulunbuy. The Patricia Cam's crew were delighted to have the men aboard as they had unerring local navigational skills.
The Patricia Cam sailed on for Milingimbi and Elcho Island, where four young Aboriginal men desiring a lift back to their home at Yirrkala were picked up. The ship sailed from Elcho Island at midnight on 21st. January 1943. By dawn the Patricia Cam was well on the way to its next port, Cape Wessel.
Suddenly the ship was rocked by a tremendous explosion. Within moments it was sinking, and the "abandon ship" order was given. One crew member and one of the Yirrkala men had been killed on the ship. The survivors took to the water with nothing or just their Mae West vests, as there had been no time to launch life rafts. At first they thought thePatricia Cam had been torpedoed, and only when a Japanese floatplane flew over them in the water did the survivors realise that the plane had dropped a bomb down the ships’ hatch, and that this had blown out the Patricia Cam's bottom.
Several times the Japanese plane strafed the survivors in the water and once it dropped a bomb among them. This action killed or mortally wounded another four men. The floatplane then appeared to fly off. However, it banked and returned and alighted on the sea, just outside the circle of wreckage and survivors. Kentish was swimming nearest the plane. He was covered with a revolver and ordered to swim over. Then he was hauled into the plane, which took off and flew away.
Gradually the others improvised rafts from the wreckage, and late the next night most of them washed ashore on a small island, where two more men died. The floatplane attack had so far cost eight lives, but the fate of Leonard Kentish was unknown.
Only after the war did it emerge that Kentish was taken to Dobo, and on 5th. February 1943 he was beheaded, apparently in revenge for Allied air raids. Five years later three Japanese were tried in war crimes tribunals and convicted of the killing of Kentish. One, Sagejima Mangan, was hanged, and the other two served long prison sentences. |
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Territory Characters
Vincent Lingiari
Lease Handover - 1975
NT Government Photographer
Northern Territory Library PH 91/13
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Vincent Lingiari
"We want to live on our land, our way", said Vincent Lingiari in 1966. That was probably the first clear expression by an Aborigine of a claim for rights to traditional land.
Vincent was speaking after he had led Aboriginal stockmen and their families in a walk off from Wave Hill station. The walk off began as a protest against delays in granting better pay and industrial conditions for Aboriginal station workers. Under Vincent’s leadership it quickly also became a protest against discriminatory social conditions, and a demand for land where Aborigines could live free of dependence on white pastoralists. For a time the Wave Hill people camped in the bed of the Victoria River, then they moved to Wattie Creek, now called Daguragu.
Vesteys, who owned Wave Hill, were willing to give some of their cattle country back to the Gurindji, but the government of the day feared a precedent. The Gurindji were trespassers in their own land, and publicity of their plight gave focus to the Aboriginal cause in modern Australia.
Finally, the Aborigines got land rights and the Gurindji got title to Daguragu. Much of the credit must go to Vincent Lingiari, who led his people with dignity and great effect until his death at Daguragu in 1988, when he was aged about 80 years. |
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Territory Characters
Granny Lum Loy
Mrs Lum Loy
Advertiser Collection
Northern Territory Library
PH 44/58
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Granny Lum Loy
Lu Moo, better known as Granny Lum Loy, came to the Northern Territory in 1894 when she was only 11. She was the adopted child of a family prominent in business in Darwin's Cavenagh Street Chinatown. She was one of a tiny minority of Chinese females within Chinatown, then comprising about 50 shops, with hundreds of residences huddled behind.
When she was 18 she married Lum Loy, a mining engineer. The couple moved to the mining centres Wandi and Brock's Creek. Her husband died in 1918 and Lu Moo moved to Darwin where she started a market garden on land near the Darwin Bowling Club. Later she had a market garden and fowl run in Stuart Park.
Every day she would walk from Stuart Park to town to sell her produce and pray at the Joss House. She always wore traditional black trousers and broad brimmed hat, carrying her vegetables and eggs in baskets slung from a yoke over her shoulders.
Granny Lum Loy was evacuated from Darwin during World War Two, but returned and recommenced market gardening in Stuart Park. She died in 1980. Her funeral was one of the biggest and longest in Darwin's history.
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