Historical Society of the Northern Territory

05/12/2025

A short film on Jose Petrick's life can be watched on this link -

http://www.the100project.com www.facebook.com/the100project

The film clip was produced by TrickleUp Media

The 100 Project celebrates the lives and stories of 100-year-olds across Australia.

01/12/2025

The Society held its Christmas Soiree yesterday (Sunday 30 November). On behalf of the Committee, we hope that its members and followers have a lovely Christmas and New Year. Stay safe and all the best for 2026.

09/11/2025

Our 7th Oration was held at History House on Sunday 9 November. Our guest speaker was Dr Wendy Garden

Wendy obtained her doctorate from the University of Melbourne. She is Head of Audience, Education & Learning at the Museum & Art Gallery of the NT and is President of the Australian Museums & Galleries Association, NT Branch. Her research and writing interests have focused on photographic portraiture in India and Australia and the photomedia reinterpretations of nineteenth century photographs by contemporary artists.

Wendy’s talk was titled “Capturing time past and present: the McArthur River Mine in visual representation”

The expansion of the McArthur River mine cut the tail of the Rainbow Serpent in half, poisoned the surrounding waterways, the town camp water supply and caused the death of 400 cattle.

Aggrieved by the contamination of his ancestral lands, Garrwa elder Jack Green created confronting paintings that brought attention to the environmental damage caused by the mine. He enlisted Darwin based artist Therese Ritchie to create portrait photographs of people from Borroloola who were affected by the ecological threat. The exhibition Open Cut opened at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art in 2017 followed by the online exhibition Lead in My Grandmother’s Body in 2020.

This led to collaborations between Green, Ritchie, Garrwa/Yanyuwa artist Nancy McDinny, Garrwa/Gangalidda artist Stewart Hoosan and anthropologist Sean Kerins. Their exhibitions drew upon oral histories of settlement to contrast the fast violence of colonial dispossession with the slow violence of environmental poisoning.

With the permission from the artists, Wendy discussed and showed a selection of the artists’ works.

27/10/2025

The History Talks Conference held on the weekend 25 & 26 October was a very successful event that covered a great range of Territory topics. Over 100 people attended the conference with most attending from down south. Big thanks to the organisers from the Professional Historians Association.

20/10/2025

History Conference on this Saturday at the NT Library, 2nd level. The Historical Society will be holding a book stall at the conference. Lots of old stock brand new books being sold as cheap as $5.
CASH ONLY.
The public is welcome to attend. Free entry. See attached program

18/07/2025

Survey - The Society is conducting a survey to better understand what services are valued. We welcome any suggestions for improvement and how we might attract new members.
Please complete this quick survey by the end of August 2025.
It should take 5-10 minutes to complete.
All responses will be treated as confidential and anonymous.
The results of this survey will be reported in our newsletter. If you would prefer to receive results direct, please provide your name and email address.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/historical-society-survey

17/07/2025

Northern Territory History Book Awards
The Award recognises the most significant book about NT history published in the previous 12 months.
To be eligible books must be a work on NT history, written in English or one of the First Nations languages of the Northern Territory. The Awards are judged by a panel of industry experts including academics, historians and/or curators working in the field of Northern Territory history. The winner of the Award receives $1000 in prize money.

The Society had four publications entered in the Award –
Gwenda Baker’s The Peacemakers: Three Wangurri brothers
Chris Haynes’ The Bureaucrat and the Man in the Creekbed
Allan O’Neil’s Midwives, Merchants and Miners
Robyn Smith’s Licence to Kill: Massacre Men of Australia’s North

The awards were held on 16 July and the Historical Society is pleased to announce that Robyn Smith’s book, Licence to Kill was short listed. Her Award was presented by Jinson Charls, Minister for People, Sport & Culture

22/06/2025

HSNT Annual Field Trip 25-27 June 2025
NT/WA: THE 1927 KIMBERLEY OBELISK, ROSEWOOD & ARGYLE STATIONS
The purpose of this 4WD trip was to replace the missing NT plaque on the NT/WA border obelisk. In 2006, the Historical Society of the Northern Territory visited this site and noted the missing plaque. Earl James arranged and paid for a new plaque to be erected. Permission to visit the site was given by the managers of Rosewood & Argyle Stations.

Itinerary
18 June – meet at Timber Creek
Most of us met at the pub for dinner

19 June – left at 8am and headed west along the Victoria Highway. On the way, visited Auvergne Station with the purpose to see Sam Croker’s grave. Samuel Burns Croker (20 June 1852 – 20 September 1892) was a stockman and drover in Queensland and the Northern Territory. He was known as "Greenhide Sam Croker", because of his skill in working with greenhide, the untanned hide of an animal. He often worked alongside Nat Buchanan and, together, they 'pioneered' the Murranji Track in 1886. A participant in several massacres, he was killed by Aboriginal stockman Charlie Flannigan on Auvergne Station. Also buried on Auvergne Station are rough rider Archibald Skuthorp (14 February 1886- 30 June 1918) & Auvergne manager, George Nudely Fogarty (10 June 1895-5 December 1972)
Arrived at the Duncan/Victoria Highway at lunchtime. Meet up with Jared & Ian Archibald and Kununurra Historical Society President, Andrew Barker at Matilda Waterhole. Further down the Duncan we stopped for a lunch break
After lunch it was time to tackle the very rough track to the obelisk which is on south side of the Hicks Creek fenceline. The track is extremely overgrown and it put some deep scratches in the 4WDs. The track is not for the faint-hearted, bouncing over many blacksoil basalt boulders in places. We had one blow out, one flat and a broken aerial on the track. Even though it was only 7kms in, it took us a good hour one way
The easy part was mounting the plaque on the obelisk and Derek Pugh and Ian Anderson made light work of it.
It was almost 5pm and we needed to set up camp on the Behn River, about 37 km / 40-50 minutes south on the Duncan Road.

20 June – next morning we all went our separate ways – some went back to Darwin and others to Wolf Creek Crater

Big Thanks to Derek Pugh for organising the trip and Andrew Barker for his reccie run to the site.

Participants
Derek, Roy & Harry Pugh, Andrew Barker, Bev Phelts, Allan Mitchell, Ian Anderson, Jared Archibald & Ian Archibald, John Krumbeck, Jim Leach

Mechanical problems and flat tyres – Allan Mitchell had a blow out, John Krumbeck got a flat tyre & Jim Leach broke his arial

Photographs
All the photographs, unless otherwise indicated, were provided by Bev Phelts

16/06/2025

Vale Dr Lyn Reid - 19 September 1940-7 June 2025

The HSNT Committee is saddened to hear of Lyn’s untimely death. She was on a Western Australia adventure with husband Brian when she became ill. Lyn had been on our committee for many years and was our dearly loved treasurer. Lyn was an accomplished medical doctor and a very generous community volunteer. She loved the outdoors and had a zest for life. Lyn is survived by her loving husband Brian
She will be sorely missed by us all.

A gathering to honor and celebrate Lyn will be held on Monday 14 July. The funeral is at 3.00pm at Darwin Funeral Services, Amy Johnson Avenue

01/06/2025

On 12 May, International Nurses Day was celebrated with a book launch published by the Historical Society. Life in Radio Land authored by Janie Mason is on sale for $20.
Photos courtesy Libby Siebert

19/04/2025

Anyone know what this is called?

28/03/2025

Historical Society's AGM was held on Sunday 23 March.
It was pleasing to see a good turnout. Matt James who had been our President since 2017 is retiring on the Gold Coast. We are sorry to see him go but glad that he will stay on the Committee.

Our new committee members are –

President – Derek Pugh
Vice President - Bev Phelts
Honorary Secretary – Libby Siebert
Honorary Treasurer – Lyn Reid
Council Members - Brian Reid, Clayton Fredericksen, Matthew James, Jane Munday, Vida Goodvach & Peter Siebert