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time her son, Roy, and her grandson, Walter, visited her friend Catherine Pett, pioneer Territory school teacher, in
Sandy Creek, South Australia, where she taught after leaving the Territory in 1910.
The next few years brought tragedy to Florence. In 1915 her first-born son, 29-year-old Sidney Charles Darwin,
died unexpectedly of colitis. In 1916 her 21 year old son, William, enlisted and sailed for France, where he was
killed in April 1917. Then on 16 August 1919 her only daughter, Eveleen Drake, who had recently been widowed,
died in Brisbane, apparently in the ‘flu pandemic raging at the time.
Florence used her Don Picture Show premises to help raise funds for the war effort. Her brothers, Sidney and
Percy Weedon, and her son, Clarence, assisted her in her motion picture enterprise. Her brother, Percy, went on to
establish a successful picture theatre in Bowral, New South Wales.
On 12 September 1918, in Adelaide, Florence married Sam Stephen Dranfield Davies, a former Territory railway
engineer who worked on the extension from Pine Creek to Emungalen. Davies, who had served his apprenticeship
in the Crowe workshops, had served with the Queensland railway service for 19 years and had spent 11 years in the
employ of the Indian Government on railway construction work in that country. He had presumably met Florence
during the period he worked in the Territory with the Commonwealth railways.
Following their marriage the couple later moved to Queensland where Sam was stationed for some time at
Rockhampton. They later moved to Brisbane. Sam died on 18 June 1927, aged 62, survived by Florence who was
his second wife, a daughter, two stepsons and a grandson.
In April 1932 Florence’s mother, Mary, died in Sydney at the age of nearly 91. Florence died in Brisbane on
19 May 1960, aged 92. Although her final resting place was Brisbane, Florence Budgen’s significant contribution
to the Territory is commemorated in part by the famous ‘tree of knowledge’, which was planted outside her
Terminus Hotel after the cyclone in 1897 and is still standing in 1996.
B James, No Man’s Land, 1989, Occupation Citizen, 1995, personal research notes; Weedon family information.
BARBARA JAMES, Vol 3.BURLING, GLADYS: see LITCHFIELD, GLADYSBURNETT, BENI CARR GLYN (1889–1955), architect, was born on 16 June 1889 in Paito, Mongolia, the son
of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries. He had a private education and spent some time at the China Inland Mission
School in Chefoo, which was run on strict Scottish principles, where he received grounding in the classics. At the
age of 15 he was articled in 1904 to the architectural firm of Smedley and Denham in Shanghai, China.
Burnett completed his articles in 1908 and worked for several Shanghai architectural firms between 1908 and- A scrapbook he kept between 1910 and 1912, now housed in the Northern Territory Archives, reflects his deep
interest in Scottish military units and the sea. It also discloses that he was very involved with the Saint Andrew’s
Club in Shanghai and with the Shanghai volunteer unit of the Gordon Highlanders. There is no record that he
served in a military capacity during the First World War. He married Florence Mary Bentley in Hong Kong in 1914
and in 1915 joined the Shanghai firm of Atkinson and Dallas. He managed its Tientsin branch until 1928 when he
returned to Shanghai to start his own architectural practice. His designs included the Hong Kong and Shanghai
Bank and the stock exchange building, both in Tientsin. Influences on his style were broadened between 1923 and
1924 when he spent six months travelling in Europe, North America and Japan studying architectural techniques.
In 1930, due to political instability in China, he moved to Singapore where he worked for the architectural practice
of Swan and McLaren.
In 1934 Burnett and his wife separated and he moved to Australia. His wife and their two sons, John Bain and
Angus Glyn, went to Scotland. Burnett, who had a somewhat dry sense of humour, was fond of telling people
that he was the happiest of married men as his dear wife lived 12 000 miles away. Burnett spent his early time in
Australia working for the firm of Guy Frick and Bruce Furze in Sydney. In July 1937 he was appointed Architect
Grade One in the Works and Services Branch, Department of the Interior, and commenced work in its newly
established Darwin office.
Upon his arrival in Darwin, Burnett’s first task was to design a series of tropical houses for executive public
servants and military personnel. He produced several designs around a set of common features. The houses were
all, with the exception of the ‘K Type’ which combined upstairs sleeping with downstairs living areas, elevated,
with bedrooms grouped around or to the side of a central living area. All designs incorporated the use of asbestos
louvres together with glass casement windows to provide fully screened walls that could be adjusted to allow for
maximum air flow, internal three quarter height room partitions, and steeply pitched roofs. The radical Burnett
designs, clearly influenced by the traditional and colonial architecture of Southeast Asia, were geared to achieve
maximum ventilation and living space. They were highly praised by the Brisbane planner R A McInnis when
he visited Darwin in 1940 to draw up a town plan. McInnis felt that the Burnett designs were far more suited to
tropical housing requirements than the old space consuming ground level houses with wide verandahs. Four of
the Burnett designed houses were later preserved on Myilly Point in Darwin, including a ‘K Type’, named Burnett
House, which was the headquarters of the National Trust in the Northern Territory. That his designs were suited
to the Darwin climate is evident in the fact that many modern houses there retain the features of elevation and the
use of louvres.
Burnett also designed several large-scale buildings for the armed forces, which rapidly expanded their presence
in Darwin during the 1930s. The living quarters and the messes he designed were still in use over 50 years later at
both the Larrakeyah Army Barracks and the Royal Australian Air Force base.