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Broadcasting Commission’s weekly sporting program, his knowledge of horse racing assisted many a punter to
pick the winner.
After his discharge from the Army, Jim completed his matriculation at Warrnambool High School. In 1947 he
enrolled in an Arts degree at Melbourne University, but could not afford the boarding fees. Instead, he undertook a
two-year course at Melbourne Teachers’ College. In 1950 he was posted to the small Victorian school of Nypo in the
Mallee. There he met his future wife, Mary June Byrne, whose family owned a wheat property in the district. Keen
to marry, but with no possibility of obtaining married accommodation, the idea of teaching Aboriginal children
in the Northern Territory, where housing was provided, became an attractive option. Concern for the ‘underdog’,
as Jim described it, was not new to the Gallacher family, and was also a factor in his decision. His father had
worked hard for a better deal for Aboriginal people from the Framlingham Aboriginal Reserve near Warrnambool.
A two-month induction course into Aboriginal culture at the University of Sydney was Jim’s only preparation for
teaching in the outback.
Located 90 kilometres west of Hermannsburg in the shadow of the Krichauff Ranges, Areyonga’s great beauty
has been captured in the paintings of Albert Namatjira. Of more immediate concern when the Gallachers arrived
there was the crude house, which was to be their first home. Initially it had no refrigerator, bathroom or washing
facilities; nor was the promised new government school visible—it was still on the ‘drawing board’. Areyonga was
an outpost of the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission and school was conducted in the Mission’s small corrugated iron
‘church’. The new school was not completed until the day the Gallachers departed for Alice Springs in December
1953, by which time Areyonga had a school population of 80 children, and the Northern Territory had acquired a
teacher with a self-avowed dedication to the task of bringing education to as many Aboriginals as possible.
Jim considered community involvement integral to the advancement of Aboriginal youth and throughout his
career he fostered their participation in social, cultural and sporting activities. After his appointment as Head
Teacher in 1953, he initiated the first Centralian Native Schools Sports held at the Bungalow—the original
Alice Springs Telegraph Station and then ration depot and reserve on the outskirts of Alice Springs—and encouraged
the involvement of the Bungalow children in the Alice Springs Youth Club. He sustained the same attitude to
community involvement in his personal life. Jim said he ‘acted as a citizen of Alice Springs and watched the
town grow’. He was a committee member of the Memorial Club, and instrumental in its move from Anzac Hill to
its present site. A talented all-round sportsman, he played football, cricket, basketball and tennis. He was, by all
accounts, a snooker player of consummate skill and, in later years, an enthusiastic bowler who, at the time of
his death, was Secretary of the Northern Territory Bowls Association. He was also a long-standing member and
past-President of Darwin Rotary Club.
Politics was important to Jim. He came from a Labor family and in Alice Springs joined the local branch of the
Australian Labor Party (ALP). Always a visionary, a paper he wrote on how he believed politics in the Northern
Territory should operate was presented at the 1954 ALP Convention. He stood as Labor candidate for the seat
of Port Darwin in the 1974 Legislative Assembly elections, which proved so disastrous for Labor when all its
candidates were defeated at the polls. Only between 1972 and 1975, when the Whitlam Government was in power
federally, did Jim work under a Labor government. It was a measure of his professionalism as a public servant, and
indicative of the regard with which he was held, that throughout his career he could work so constructively under
conservative governments.
Changes in social policy and the administration of Aboriginal education were influential in Jim’s rapid move
from teacher to administrator. In 1956, when Aboriginal education was transferred from the COE to the Northern
Territory Administration (NTA), he was appointed District Education Officer with the Welfare Branch, a position
he held until 1959. Darwin became the Gallachers’ permanent home in 1962. As Inspector of Schools until 1965 he
gained an intimate knowledge of educational problems confronting Aboriginal communities. In 1966 he became
Assistant Director and then Director of Aboriginal Education and, with the merger of Aboriginal education
and community schools under the Northern Territory Department of Education in 1973, Assistant Director of
Education (Special Services). Jim’s meticulous attention to planning and programming contributed decisively to
an impressive expansion in Aboriginal Education: from 16 schools with 1 600 students in 1956 to 70 schools with
6 500 students in 1973.
With Harry Giese its first Director, the Welfare Branch had been established to implement the Federal
Government’s new Aboriginal policy of assimilation, assented to in the 1953 Welfare Ordinance but not
made operable until 1957. Under the former restrictive policy of protectionism, Aboriginal people had been
subjected to a curfew, and ‘part-Aboriginal’ people to carrying ‘dog tickets’—cards which they were required to
produce to demonstrate their eligibility for the same rights as white people, especially the right to enter hotels.
Under assimilation policy, Aborigines were to be encouraged to live as members of a single Australian community,
with the same rights, privileges and responsibilities as other Australians but with special measures implemented
to enable ‘transition... favourable to their social economic and political advancement’. In 1962 Aborigines were
given voluntary franchise and, with the removal of all restrictions on Aborigines specifically as a race of people in
the 1964 Social Welfare Ordinance, integration replaced assimilation.
Despite the criticism it later received, Jim considered the policy of assimilation to be a tremendous breakthrough
for Aboriginal people at the time. The Welfare Branch (later Division) was staffed by a close-knit team committed
to advancing the position of Aboriginal people through the implementation of government policy. Jim, Martin
Ford and Creed Lovegrove belonged to this influential group whose enthusiasm for their work often extended
into leisure hours. They frequented the Darwin Club and Creed Lovegrove recalls them ‘talking shop’ late into
the night—having more arguments about work at the Club than they did at work! Jim initiated many innovative
programmes. He unofficially established pre-schools in the 1950s, long before the government recognized the