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Engineering at the University of Western Australia. He then worked as a civil engineer in the Western Australian
Department of Public Works.
He served in the Australian Imperial Force between 1941 and 1945, rising to the rank of Major. He held a
regimental appointment with the Second Fourth Pioneer Battalion with which he went to the Northern Territory
in 1941 and was in the convoy that set out from Darwin for Timor but did not reach there. He returned to Darwin
before the Japanese bombing of 19 February 1942. He was subsequently in charge of rebuilding the wharf over
the vessel Neptuna that was sunk in the same raid. He later saw service in New Guinea and was Mentioned in
Despatches for bravery. At one stage he was an Acting Colonel.
After returning to the Department of Public Works in Perth, on 6 July 1946 he was appointed, at the age of 36,
Administrator of the Northern Territory. He served in this capacity until 1951. During that period he inaugurated
the Legislative Council and was its first President. It was a difficult time to be Administrator due to the extensive
war damage and the fact that parts of the Territory had been under military control.
There was the huge task of putting the Territory back on its feet after the war years. This included the change
from freehold to leasehold land titles and the need to obtain adequate supplies of building materials, foodstuffs
and medical necessities. The whole administrative structure was reorganised, as was the police force. Stock routes
were developed and pastoral lands were opened up. Suitable areas for agriculture were developed, new mining
development was fostered, the School of the Air was opened and education was expanded. Publicity was used to
make Australians outside the Territory aware of the region’s needs.
Driver attained a reputation for kindness when in 1946 a 12-year-old Indonesian boy, Bas Wie, arrived in
Darwin almost dead after a flight from West Timor huddled near the wheel of a DC3 airliner. With little thought
but to be well hidden, Wie took up his position when the aeroplane was on the tarmac, not realising the dangers
involved. Burned by the friction of the retracting wheels and nearly frozen in flight, he was lucky not to fall to
his death. Driver took Wie into Government House in Darwin, where he lived for five years. After schooling, Wie
joined the public service and became a draftsman.
Driver resigned as Administrator in June 1951, frustrated that he had not been able to achieve as much as he
wished in the Territory. He subsequently held senior positions in Europe with the Commonwealth Department
of Immigration. He left the public service in 1960 and settled in Melbourne, where he worked as an engineer
and for the Victorian Employers’ Federation. He also lectured and spoke to various organisations about northern
development and in 1964 took an aeroplane load of businessmen from Melbourne on a comprehensive tour of the
north and centre of Australia. He was an office bearer in various community organisations both in Melbourne and
in Buderim, Queensland, where he retired in 1970.
He died in Buderim as a result of war wounds and cancer on 18 May 1981. He is buried beneath his ‘shady
tree’ at Buderim Cemetery. He was married twice. A son and daughter from his first marriage and his second wife,
Mardi, and their daughter, survived him.
His name was commemorated in the Northern Territory when a suburb in the new ‘satellite city’ of Palmerston,
to the south of Darwin, was named after him.
Family information.
M E DRIVER, Vol 2.DRYSDALE, ALEXANDER STEWART (1889–1962), businessman, was born in Melbourne on 29 December
1889, the son of William Drysdale, a stonemason, and his wife Florence, nee Bower.
Drysdale inherited his father’s blue eyes, and straight brown hair, though as an adult he stood taller than him.
He was a well-built man, which suited his main occupation, as a carrier, very well.
Drysdale arrived in Darwin with his father at the age of four. After attending school in Cavenagh Street,
Palmerston (now a car-park), he became apprenticed to the Northern Territory Times as a printer, but resigned
shortly afterward. He then spent some time wandering the Territory, working from Arafura Station in Arnhem Land
to the Tanami goldfields, in Central Australia.
Drysdale then conducted his own carrying business with horse teams and travelled all over the Territory with
goods, even as far west as Wyndham to a station nearby owned by a Mr Cole.
After marrying Bessie Johnson, and to remain near his family, he was employed for several years as a
lighthouse-keeper at Point Charles (at the time a manual light, which had to be manned twenty-four hours a day).
Drysdale then returned to Darwin with his family and worked as a carrier in Parap. Later he worked for Vesteys
meatworks (now the site of Darwin High School) at Bullocky Point, until its closure.
Drysdale was then employed by the Commonwealth railways as a fireman and later as a driver. He resigned
from the railways in 1934, and bought a business, comprising garage, petrol station, funeral services, taxi service
and goods carrying. He also held a General Motors Chevrolet agency. This business was conducted for eight years,
until the Japanese bombing of Darwin in 1942, in which it was destroyed.
Drysdale travelled to Adelaide with his wife and daughter when they were evacuated, and remained there, as a
General Post Office employee, until 1946.
In Adelaide, Drysdale bought two used trucks and, laden with furniture and general food supplies, returned to
Darwin to start a general store, to be opened in Smith Street, where the MLC building later stood. He built a shop,
and lived with his family in the quarters behind it. In 1960 Drysdale retired at the age of seventy-one.
Drysdale was a Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge for seven years from 1942 to 1949. He was instrumental
in re-establishing the Masonic Lodge of Darwin, after it had been in recess for the war years. He was presented
with a gold badge in commemoration of his service. He was also a foundation member, and first president of the
Darwin Show Society, a member of the original Darwin Golf Club, and of the Darwin Club.