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married Amy Muriel Cribb in Brisbane. They had no children. He was an office holder in primary producers’
organisations and charities.
On the recommendation of W L Payne, Chairman of the Queensland Land Administration Board, on
23 March 1937 Fletcher was appointed by the Commonwealth government with Payne to report on land development
policy in the Northern Territory. They travelled 16 000 kilometres and examined 150 witnesses before submitting
their very comprehensive report on 10 October. Its recommendations appealed to neither pastoralists nor the
government. Even so, it revealed a generally accurate understanding of the Territory’s economic difficulties.
Because of this it was sometimes regarded as ‘the last word... upon the problem of the Northern Territory.’
In particular, it urged pastoralists in several areas to change from cattle production to wool growing, suggested two
new railway projects to encourage this, recommended that there should be continued taxation relief and a relaxation
of tariffs, forcefully criticised the Territory’s administration, particularly the lack of coordination between different
departments in Darwin and the ‘impotence’ of the Administrator, and complained of the ‘all pervasiveness’ of the
official protection policy for Aborigines. Fletcher and Payne looked at just about all matters that they believed had
an influence on Territory development. Their report is an invaluable document. The Commonwealth government,
however, accepted very few of its views, using the threat of war in the late 1930s as an excuse to postpone the
implementation of a new set of policies for the Territory.
Fletcher put an enormous effort into the report yet refused any payment. He was appointed an Officer of the
Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1941 and died in Brisbane on 13 March 1965.
P F Donovan, At the Other End of Australia, 1984; W L Payne & J W Fletcher, ‘Report of the Board of Inquiry Appointed to Inquire into the
Land and Land Industries of the Northern Territory of Australia’, in Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 4–1937; W C Skelsey, ‘Fletcher,
John William’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 8, 1981; W W Williams, ‘The Payne–Fletcher Report on the Northern Territory’,
in The Australian Quarterly, vol 10, no 1, 1938.
DAVID CARMENT, Vol 2.
FLINDERS, MATTHEW (1774–1814), naval officer and marine surveyor, was born into the safe hands of his
father, Matthew Flinders, the local doctor in Donington, Lincolnshire, England. Flinders came from a long line of
surgeons, and it was more or less expected by his father and mother, Sussannah, nee Ward, that he would fill his
father’s shoes and serve the next generation of inhabitants of the small English village. This was not to be. At the
age of 14 Flinders undertook a year’s private study before joining the Royal Navy in 1789.
At age 17 Flinders sailed for Tahiti with Captain William Bligh—his first taste of the South Pacific. During the
1790s he visited the fledgling colony of New South Wales. With him was his younger brother Samuel, who had
joined the voyage as a volunteer. Flinders spent four years in the colony, charting the waters of the east coast, before
returning to England to publish his findings. This done, he again set out for the colony in June 1801, this time in
command of the 330-tonne survey vessel Investigator. He left behind a bride of two months, Annette Chappell,
who was the stepdaughter of the Reverend William Tyler, rector of Brothertoft near Boston. Although on a journey
commissioned for only four years, he was not to see her for 10. On a voyage in which he circumnavigated Australia,
Flinders carried out valuable survey work in the waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
His commission was to survey virtually the whole of the then unknown coasts of Australia. The speed required
to complete this enormous task, together with the running-survey methods of the time and Investigator’s deep
draught, which kept her well offshore, meant that much was missed; in particular, the mouths of major rivers.
Having already missed the Brisbane River on his journey up the east coast, he missed three more on the eastern
side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, thus concluding that no inland sea was fed from the waters of the Gulf and that
the persistent hope of a navigable waterway through the centre of the continent was groundless. This conclusion
was in fact correct; but the question was not to be settled until Wickham and Stokes in the Beagle, put the matter
beyond doubt in a series of voyages from 1837 to 1843.
Flinders’ direct contribution to Northern Territory history tests in his survey of the western side of the Gulf of
Carpentaria.
The anthropological aspect of Flinders’ voyage was also of some importance. The ship’s botanist, Robert Brown,
noted there were several distinctions between the Aborigines of the Gulf, and those of the Torres Strait Islands.
Among these he noted that the ‘ocean craft’ of the former were only crude rafts, rather than the sophisticated
canoes of the islanders, indicating that these Aborigines relied less on the ocean for transport, food or trading.
In November 1802 Flinders faced a critical situation. The ship, which had been fitted for a journey of at least
four years, was found to be rotting after only sixteen months, and the ship’s carpenter estimated that she could not
last more than six months, even with constant fine weather. With the monsoon setting in, it was unlikely that the
precondition would be met. The dangers he and his crew faced if they remained on the expedition were enormous;
nevertheless, Flinders decided to remain in the Gulf until it was charted and then ‘act as the rising circumstances
shall most seem to require’.
On 14 December 1802 Flinders made his first major discovery within the Northern Territory. Upon rounding
Cape Vanderlin, (a landmark named by the Dutch), he discovered that it was in fact an island; part of a group of
islands which he named the Sir Edward Pellew Group. After charting these islands (one of which now bears the
name Vanderlin), Flinders sailed northward along the Arnhem Land coast. Despite having to travel some distance
offshore, Flinders discovered a third landmark, Maria Island, which the earlier Dutch explorers had incorrectly
charted as a cape of the mainland, the first being Bentick Island (in Queensland). While he corrected Dutch charts
of capes and islands, Flinders continued to miss the rivers. The Roper River was passed unnoticed, though there
were no islands or landmarks that would have blocked his view. It is possible, however, that Flinders wanted to
chart the coast as quickly as possible, becoming more anxious about his rotting ship as the monsoon set in.