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on the necessity of conducting an aerial survey of the Northern Territory to clearly define areas for future contracts
and development.
Cotton finally withdrew from his partnership in Brunette Downs, reputedly at considerable loss, and retired,
first to Southport and then to South Brisbane, both in Queensland. However, he continued a barrage of letters to
the press on matters related to the Northern Territory. In an article in Country Life entitled ‘If I Were Dictator!’
on 28 November 1939, he outlined his vision how Australia could, and should, be. His ego was considerable.
‘The world’, he wrote, ‘would follow me if I could organise Australia for the good of the majority.’ In his Australia
everyone would enjoy a good standard of living. Wages would be set, and in any strike for higher pay the strikers
would be employed elsewhere at lower rates and the agitators punished. While he claimed the Aborigines were
useless as workers, some of those from Arnhem Land could be productive as, due to some Macassan blood, they
were of the stronger, more intelligent type. Cotton’s autobiography, With the Big Herds in Australia, published in
1931, and the 100 pages of newspaper clippings he compiled relating to the development of Australia now held in
the Northern Territory Archives provide an invaluable insight into the mind of a typical product of the nineteenth
century British Empire. To Cotton and many of his contemporaries, the more remote parts of Australia would be
improved by the touch of white civilisation.
Cotton died in Saint Martin’s Hospital, Brisbane, on 24 April 1941 and was cremated with Anglican rites.
Four children survived him.
E Gibson, ‘‘Land for Sale’’, unpublished paper, University College of the Northern Territory, 1988; The Cotton Collection, in Northern
Territory Archives Service.
EVE GIBSON, Vol 2.COWLE, BOB: see ARRARBICOWLE, CHARLES ERNEST (1863–1922), policeman, was born in Tasmania on 2 October 1863. His father
was manager of the ES & A Bank, Adelaide from 1880 to 1895. His sister married (Sir) Josiah Symon QC, a South
Australian Attorney-General and a Senator in the first Commonwealth Parliament. Although his surviving letters
indicate that he received a formal education, which would have enabled him to follow his father into banking or
industry, Cowle preferred bush life. He enjoyed the sheep lands of northwestern Victoria, and apparently worked
in the station country of the Strzelecki Track and Coopers Creek area until 1889. It was then he decided to join
the South Australian Police Force. After completing his training, he was posted to Alice Springs where, amongst
others, he made friends with Frank Gillen.
In his youth Cowle was clean-shaven but in middle age preferred to remain bearded. He was described by Gillen:
‘Looking more like a Greek bandit than a Police Officer, his belt is laden with cartridges revolver and handcuffs
and altogether he presents a formidable appearance.’ His hard drinking and swearing were acknowledged by both
himself and others to the point where one of his acquaintances described him as ‘champion cusser’. Yet there is
every indication that Cowle fully perceived that these lauded facets, in a land of hard-swearing and hard-drinking
men and very few white women, were but part of a legendary image of the outback and not necessarily the
substance.
In 1894 he acted as guide to the Horn Scientific Expedition, making a ‘flying trip’ using horses with a small
party, which included Baldwin Spencer, to Reedy Rockhole (near King’s Canyon in the Gill Range), Ayers Rock
(Uluru) and return. For 14 days they were away from the main expedition party, which continued its travel north,
yet met half an hour from the previously agreed time. It was an extraordinary feat of organisation and bushmanship
by Cowle, given that the scientists were new chums to desert travel; the timing would be difficult to match today
with modern vehicles, helicopters and radio contact! Charles Winnecke, a surveyor-explorer of great experience
who was leader of the Horn Expedition, commented: ‘Mr Cowle is deserving of the greatest commendation for the
able manner in which he has performed this journey. The party under his guidance were compelled to travel from
dawn until sundown, covering a distance of between eighty-five miles and ninety miles over continuous porcupine
sand-ridges. They were without water—a fact entailing additional anxiety—and Mr Cowle’s achievement in
arriving at the rendezvous almost to the hour agreed upon cannot be allowed to pass without special record.’
Cowle was duly rewarded by being promoted to Mounted Constable, second class, and being placed in charge
of Illamurta police station, 150 kilometres south-west of Alice Springs.
Spencer recognised Cowle’s intelligence and talents and from this initial contact there developed a lifelong
friendship. Cowle did much work in recording legends and details of Aboriginal life and this was incorporated
into Spencer and Gillen’s works. He made constructive criticism of their work, and collected faunal specimens
of Central Australia for Spencer and his colleagues. He was remarkable for his time in that he acknowledged the
strong spiritual attachment of Aborigines to their land.
Despite this sympathy for Aborigines, Cowle was first and foremost a policeman. Illamurta police station had
been established in 1890–91 by Mounted Constable Willshire in an attempt to control cattle-killing activities by
the local Matuntarra Aborigines. Cowle continued this work and was undoubtedly hard on offenders. Yet he did not
believe in shooting them wholesale, as did officers such as Willshire, Wurmbrandt, Bennett and many of the local
station owners and their employees. His job demanded, as he saw it, that Aborigines be ‘made to respect the law of
the land that has been taken from them’. To this end he was prepared to relentlessly hunt cattle killers. He tracked
them on horseback in the plains country and on foot when they took to the ranges. Even in the bitter cold of
midwinter he was prepared to travel on foot without food and to camp ‘black fellow fashion without blankets
and just a little fire on each side’. In this way he could travel faster than Aborigines ‘loaded with beef inside and