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These stations cost Browne a sum variously reported as being between 80 000 and 250 000 Pounds to establish,
but there was to be little or no return on the investment. Browne was typical of the pioneers who had rushed into
the grasslands of the Top End and had spent lavishly in the expectation that markets on the expanding goldfields
and in Asia would take all the cattle that could be produced on the pastures of the seemingly wet and fertile north.
Furthermore, the pioneers reasoned that revenue from cattle would be but a fraction of the eventual return from
wool once the cattle had knocked down the tall grasses and thereby made the pastures suitable for sheep.
The dreams of men like Browne became nightmares as it became starkly clear that the gold fields would
always be small and that Asian demand for beef was even smaller. Redwater afflicted cattle herds and brought
down embargoes against stock movement. In any case the only markets, in the south, were thousands of kilometres
away, at the other end of hazardous stock routes. Grass seeds worked into the flesh of the sheep and dingoes and
Aborigines feasted on the few merinos that managed to survive.
The inevitable crash was due to the impetuosity of Browne and his colleagues, but it must be said that the losses
which they endured would have been less disastrous had Giles and other men of practical experience been more
cautious in their assessment and praise of the Top End’s capacities.
By 1887 Browne had abandoned his Territory empire. Newcastle Waters was sold for a pittance, but there
was no interest in either Delamere or Springvale. Browne’s failure was symptomatic of the costly collapse of the
first wave of pastoral expansion into the Top End. Giles simply remained in possession of Springvale, although
no formal transfer to him was ever registered. He ran the property on a small scale, letting paddocks for spelling
and selling mutton to passers by. Like many of those who battled on after the large-scale investors had retreated,
Giles made do with the stock and improvements that his predecessor had left behind. He, and men like him, gained
a modest return from the land only because they did not have to service a big initial capital investment.
In 1894 Alfred Giles with his wife Mary and children Felix (born 1886), Leslie (1888), Harold (1890) and May
(1893) moved to Bonrook, near Pine Creek. During the two miserable Territory decades, which bracketed the turn
of the century, the Giles family at Bonrook eked out a meagre living from a butchering business, a mail run, and
spasmodic mining ventures. Alfred Giles was too old to take advantage of briefly improved conditions after 1911
and by that time his children had gone their own ways.
Like many pioneers who had been defeated by the Territory, Giles settled down to a resigned acceptance of his
situation. At Bonrook he wrote much and acted as general guide and consultant on all Northern Territory matters.
He accompanied several official and parliamentary parties on Territory fact-finding tours, and infected them with
the same incautious enthusiasm for the Territory that had lured Browne and others to their ruin. He sought election
to the South Australian Parliament on two occasions, but his prescriptions for northern development impressed his
fellow Territorians much less than they did visitors and southern newspapers.
In his writings Giles tended to project himself into the centre of all important events, and although this was
often justified it was not always so. However, the value of his written legacy cannot be over-estimated. His journals,
letters and articles published in newspapers probably reveal more of the lives, times and opinions of the Territory’s
white pioneers than do any other source.
In 1924 Giles retired to Adelaide, leaving behind in the Territory a record of determined but unsuccessful
endeavour. Alfred Giles died in 1931 and his wife survived him until 1940.
Of the couple’s children, Felix left the Territory to become a professional soldier, rising to the rank of
Colonel before gaining important positions in the South Australian government service. Leslie became one of
the Territory’s longest serving and most effective public servants, reaching the position of government secretary
and frequently acting as Administrator. Harold joined the Northern Territory Mounted Police, then supervised
the Kahlin Compound before managing Elsey Station for almost forty years. May married a Vesteys manager,
Sir Alexander Cockburn-Campbell, but died during childbirth while still a young woman.
Alfred Giles was probably the most outstanding example of a species not yet extinct in the Northern Territory.
He exemplified the enthusiast who never loses faith despite the Territory’s failure to live up to what is seen as its
promise. To Giles there was always an excuse for failure. He was ever ready to argue that future success would
result from just a little more money, or luck, or determination, or more or less government intervention. What set
Giles apart and gave him special authority and influence was the duration and tenacity of his personal pioneering
effort. The lesson to be drawn from his career is that blind faith in the bounty of the Territory environment is no
substitute for the disciplined appraisal of its geographic realities.
A Giles, Exploring in the Seventies and the Construction of the Overland Telegraph Line, 1926; P Forrest, Springvale’s Story and the Early
Years at The Katherine, 1985; A Giles, ‘The First Pastoral Settlement in the Northern Territory’, SAA; A Giles et al, Springvale Station diary for
the years 1879–1894 (incomplete), SAA; A Giles, diary 8 July 1870 to 16 July 1871—the Overland Telegraph Exploring Expedition, SAA.
PETER FORREST, Vol 1.
GILES, ERNEST (1835–1897), explorer, was born on 20 July 1835 at Bristol, England, son of William Giles,
merchant, and his wife Jane Elizabeth, nee Powell. He was educated at Christ’s Hospital, the famous school
in London known as the ‘Blue Coats’ because of the uniform its pupils wore. William Giles with his wife,
younger son and five daughters decided in 1848 to immigrate to the colony of South Australia, and Ernest, having
completed his education, followed his parents to Adelaide in 1850. In 1852 he moved to Victoria, tried his luck
at the gold fields without success and became a clerk in the post office in Melbourne. This apparently did not
suit his restless nature for in 1861 he was in western New South Wales working as a jackeroo on various stations
on the Darling River. From his job as a stockman Giles moved on to another; that of investigating new areas of
land to assess their suitability for pasture. In 1861 he met a party under Alfred Hewitt that was going out to look