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Mary had a reputation for being one of the most informed and politically aware women in the outback and she read
the newspapers and magazines to which they subscribed from cover to cover whenever she could. She corresponded
with numerous friends and relatives and kept a keen ear on the famous ‘bush telegraph’. She encouraged political
debate in the household and she and John were admired for their close and equal partnership. When Northern
Territory and South Australian women became the first Australian women to win the vote in December 1894
she and her daughters, Mary Jane Gertrude and Kathleen (Kate), enrolled to vote at Warnardo, the polling booth
established in the Lake Nash region. They were among the first 82 women to vote in the Territory.
Eventually, financial difficulties that followed drought and flood forced the family to return to New South
Wales about 1902 or 1903 and they bought Tocobil near Hillston in New South Wales. John died there on
25 February 1923 and Mary followed on 18 December 1924 aged 85. She had been visiting her daughter, Mary Jane,
but her body was returned to Hillston where she was buried with her husband of nearly 60 years. She was held in
high esteem by all who knew her and particularly by members of her own family. Her grandson, Michael, wrote:
‘She was one of the women who make the nation—the silent heroines of our race. Fearless, self denying, facing
the relentless dangers of the unexplored wilds, these women of the west not only did and dared, but kept a cheerful
optimism through it all... They dared to live where few would go... Patient endurance and hopefulness marked
their characters, knowing no dangers, fearless self sacrificing, magnificent exemplars of their sex, the women who
rear the invincibles of our race’
Of the two adult daughters who had shared the remote life with her, Mary Jane married David Flannery, then a
60-year-old widower, in Orange, New South Wales, in 1905 when she was a 36-year-old governess. She died in
June 1946, childless. Kate married Andrew Lynch, a drover, in January 1902. There were four children of the
marriage, two daughters only survived to adulthood. Kate Lynch died on 2 July 1959.
Costello family papers; M Costello, The Life of John Costello, 1930; M Durack, Kings in Grass Castles, 1967; B James, Occupation Citizen,
1995.
BARBARA JAMES, Vol 3.
COTTON, ALFRED JOHN (1861–1941), seaman, bush worker, storekeeper, pastoralist and publicist, was
born on 21 June 1861 in Saint Hellier, Jersey, the Channel Islands, son of Charles Nelson Cotton and his wife
Sarah Mary, nee Frost. He was educated privately at Brighton, England, and at the age of 14 was apprenticed to the
merchant marine. By 1879 he was a third mate, working mainly between London and East Asia.
He settled in Australia in 1882 and spent some time working as a jackeroo and storekeeper in New South Wales.
He took up droving and by 1890 had several men employed moving mobs of cattle between north Queensland
and New South Wales. He married Annie Isabel Jane Bode in Bowen, Queensland, on 11 December 1893 and in
1895 took over part of the Bode family property, Bromby Park. Unable to buy the property outright, he turned to
exporting hides and tallow, exporting horses to South Africa and China, and to property speculation. His property
ventures, and his horse stud in Grandchester, Queensland, were highly successful and in 1912 he retired to
Mintoburn in Tasmania.
The following year saw the beginning of Cotton’s long involvement with the Northern Territory. In 1913,
in partnership with J C and F J White, he acquired the lease of Brunette Downs Station on the Barkly Tableland
in the Territory and became involved in the debate on land tenure and development in the north of Australia.
Thwarted by the federal government in his plans to divide Brunette Downs into 25 kilometre blocks, which could
be sold at considerable profit, Cotton turned from cattle to sheep in an effort to make the property pay. The venture
failed, but Cotton to the end of his life refused to accept that sheep were unsuited to the Territory climate.
Cotton had very definite ideas on how the pastoral industry in Australia should be organised, ideas which he
outlined in voluminous correspondence with the press. In 1933, the problems of the northern cattle industry, the
closure of the Vesteys’ meat works in Darwin and the failure of the Commonwealth to provide the long awaited
north to south transcontinental railway, led Cotton to propose that the entire north of Australia be handed over for
private development to a chartered company. His proposal, including a map of the area involved, appeared under
the heading ‘A New Province’ in the Brisbane Courier on 9 May 1933. He pointed out that this had been suggested
as long ago as 1915. In 1916 the then Administrator of the Northern Territory, Dr J A Gilruth, had approached the
Commonwealth regarding the possible sale of the north of Australia to a British chartered company for the sum of
5 000 000 Pounds.
Initial response to the scheme was positive. In 1933 the world was suffering the worst effects of the Great
Depression. Many people saw the Cotton scheme as a positive step in bringing much needed capital to Australia.
There was also the fear that the vast empty spaces of northern Australia would prove a temptation to the alien
races to the north to occupy. Cotton’s proposal to populate the north with white European settlers was seen as far
preferable to a possible coloured invasion. However, once the initial euphoria had died down, it became clear that
there were certain problems standing in the way of the proposed new province. One was that practically all of the
land in the Northern Territory was already in the hands of vested interests, such as Bovrils and Vesteys. Another
was that the concept of a separate Australian province under the control of a private company would not accord
with the Australian constitution. The Australian Workers’ Union was bitterly opposed to the proposal of ‘giving’
away Australian land to ‘foreigners’, and feared the importation of cheap coloured labour.
The heated debate on how to develop the Northern Territory continued, both in Australia and Britain, throughout
1933 and 1934. Several alternatives to the Cotton scheme were proposed, including a suggestion from the Anglican
Dean of Canterbury, Dr Hewlett Johnson, that the British should make a great gesture by ‘presenting Japan’ with
the empty north of Australia. The Northern Territory Survey Bill, read and approved in July 1934, dismissed all of
the plans, including that of Cotton, which had been put forward in the previous 18 months. The Bill concentrated