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The couple next moved to Timber Creek, where they served for many years before Tas retired in 1955.
They moved to Avalon in New South Wales because Tas had been given medical advice to leave the tropics.
Following his death in 1966, Eileen returned to Darwin, where she was still living in 1992 when she celebrated
her 90th birthday with a huge party attended by her family and many friends. Among the guests were the children,
grandchildren and great grandchildren of her sisters Myrtle Fawcett and Lillian Lovegrove, some being fifth
generation descendants of the pioneering Tuckwell family, of whom Eileen had always been exceptionally proud.
She had travelled widely both within Australia and overseas, and had friends throughout the world, but was always
anxious to return to the Northern Territory, the only place she called ‘home’.
Following her return to the Territory, Eileen was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for
her services to nursing and the Territory community.
B James, No Man’s Land, 1989; Northern Territory Women’s Register, 1991; Star, Darwin, articles c 1980; Northern Territory Archives
Service, transcripts of interviews with R Jamieson and B James; personal interview notes and records.
BARBARA JAMES, Vol 2.FITZER, TASMAN CHARLES VIVIAN (TAS) (1896–1966), policeman, was born in Melbourne, Victoria, on
4 July 1896, the son of William Henry Fitzer and his wife Mary Catherine, nee Diamond, who were married in New
Zealand in November 1884 and moved to Albert Park, Melbourne. His father, who was born in London, travelled
as an importer, but was listed as an accountant in Victoria. Fitzer was educated at Christchurch in New Zealand.
Fitzer first came north to Thursday Island, Queensland, to work for the Army in 1918 and 1919. He met
many Territorians going through on the Burns Philp ships, travelling to the eastern states. He joined the Northern
Territory Police Force as a Mounted Constable in 1925 and was posted fairly early to outback police stations.
Posted to Timber Creek in the Victoria River District in 1927, he was one of a handful of officers who kept law
and order in some of the Territory’s loneliest regions. All outback police posts like Timber Creek were one-man
stations. From them lone policemen with Aboriginal trackers on horseback patrolled large areas in search of cattle
duffers, white desperadoes and Aboriginal outlaws. In later years two men stations were the rule, which meant that
there was normally a policeman at a station while the other was out on patrol.
Flo Martin, daughter of Alf Martin, the long time Manager of Victoria River Downs Station, remembered
Fitzer at Timber Creek as ‘a tall athletic man and he was one of the most popular in the Force. He was a friend to
bagman, stockman, drover, station folk and all. He had a humane understanding of the problems of the natives.’
Only the toughest men were recruited into the Territory Police Force and they usually considered themselves
seasoned troopers after they had served a term at the isolated Timber Creek Police Station. The country in that
region was known as ‘bad blackfellow country’, especially north of the Bradshaw Run and across the Fitzmaurice
River. Even up to the 1930s the police at Timber Creek were having trouble with the Aborigines. Nemarluk
and his warriors from the Fitzmaurice area were wanted for the murders of three Japanese, a Malay, whites and
Aborigines and for cattle spearing on nearby pastoral runs.
Fitzer married Lawrie Jean Osborne in Darwin in 1931 and took a first long leave to New Zealand at this
stage. Serving at various stations, including Katherine and Emungalan, during the 1930s, he stayed in the Territory
during the Second World War in the Army’s North Australia Observer Unit. His role was to train and instruct
unit members in the elements of bush craft and living off the land. He was the ‘Bush Tucker Man’ of the 1940s,
teaching groups of young soldiers how to find bush tucker and cook such things as goannas and crocodile eggs.
Fitzer married his second wife, Eileen Gribbon, nee Styles, at Tipperary Station in April 1945. After the war
they served at Brocks Creek, Daly River and Timber Creek again before Fitzer retired in 1955. In 1952 Fitzer
accepted an invitation from his friend Charles Chauvel, the famous filmmaker, to play the role of the Northern
Territory mounted policeman in the film Jedda. Concerned with the lives of two Aborigines in the Territory, it was
shot on various locations in the Top End and Central Australia and is now regarded as a cinema classic.
In retirement, the couple settled at Avalon in New South Wales, following medical advice given to Fitzer to
leave the tropics. He died in August 1966. His efforts were later recognised when he was commemorated as an
‘unsung hero’ in the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame at Longreach in Queensland. Fitzer Drive in Darwin also
perpetuated his memory.
S Downer, Patrol Indefinite, 1963; Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 13 October 1931; Northern Territory News, 23 August 1966; Birth
certificate, Melbourne; Timber Creek Police Journals, in Northern Territory Archives Service; information from Australian Stockman’s Hall
of Fame, 1990.
V T O’BRIEN, Vol 2.‘FLASH POLL’: see MEMORIMBOFLETCHER, JOHN WILLIAM (1884–1965), meatworks manager, pastoralist and politician, was born
on 25 January 1884, son of John Walker Fletcher, school master and later a magistrate, and his wife Ann, nee
Clark. He was educated at Sydney Grammar School and after employment with G S Yuill and Company in 1910
purchased an interest in a meat preserving works near Hughenden in Queensland. On 25 October 1910 he married
Evelyn Barbara de Winton in Brisbane. They had a son and four daughters.
Fletcher subsequently managed a meatworks in Gladstone and acquired several Queensland pastoral properties.
He was prominent in the community life of Gladstone and represented the Port Curtis electorate in the Queensland
parliament as a Nationalist between 1920 and 1923. Following the death of his first wife, on 4 April 1934 he