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A Grant, information to author; A Grant, Camel Train and Aeroplane: The Story of Skipper Partridge, 1981, Palmerston to Darwin: 75 Years
Service on the Frontier, 1990; ‘Culture Shock’, Journal of Northern Territory History, 2, 1991, ‘War in the North’, Journal of Northern
Territory History, 5 1994; Who’s Who in Australia, 1974.
DAVID CARMENT, Vol 3.
GRAY, FREDERICK HAROLD (FRED) (1899– ), Air Force serviceman, farmer, bodyguard, pearler,
retailer, trepanger, settlement superintendent and kennels manager, was born at Kidderminster, England, on
28 December 1899. He was the third son of Frederick Gray and his wife Emily Mary Gertrude, nee Guest.
His father was the Chief Constable at Kidderminster.
Gray was educated at Kidderminster Grammar School but was not an outstanding scholar. After a short period
of service in the Royal Air Force, he was apprenticed to a Cannock farmer. After several years he saw no future in
farming in England, so decided to try his luck in Australia.
Gray set out for Australia on 5 January 1924. He had several jobs in Western Australia, enabling him to buy
a small block of land at Dowak, just south of Norseman. When his crop failed he was forced to take a position as
bodyguard to T B Ellies, the Sinhalese pearler from Broome. This led to Gray becoming a pearler in Broome from
1928 until 1930. The Depression forced him to leave pearling in 1931, so he went to Darwin to help Ellies’s son
commence a jeweller’s shop there. After a year he decided to commence trepanging on the Arnhem Land coast.
He was trepanging at Caledon Bay when the provoked Aborigines killed five Japanese on 17 September 1932.
Gray buried their bodies and returned to Darwin where he reported the incident to the police. He then continued
trepanging until early 1934 when his boat was wrecked at Caledon Bay.
In the meantime Aborigines on Woodah Island had killed Constable A S McColl, one of the police sent to
apprehend the killers of the Japanese, and two beachcombers, F Traynor and W Fagan. Many white people in the
Northern Territory feared a general uprising and demanded police action in the form of a punitive expedition to the
Aborigines of eastern Arnhem Land.
About this time the Commonwealth Government accepted the offer of the Anglican Church Missionary Society
(CMS) to send Warren and Dyer, two experienced missionaries, and D H Fowler on a ‘peace expedition’ to try
to persuade the Aborigines involved in the killings to go to Darwin to prevent the impending massacre. The CMS
Peace Expedition contacted the killers and persuaded them to be taken to Darwin.
Warren of the Peace Expedition was also able to bring Gray to Groote Eylandt where be bought Oituli. Gray and
Dyer then took the Aboriginal killers to Darwin. Gray gave evidence at the trial of the Japanese killings but was
unable to prevent the three Aborigines from receiving sentences of 20 years’ hard labour.
After this Gray continued trepanging on the eastern coast of Arnhem Land down to Groote Eylandt. He often
visited the CMS mission at the Emerald River and became very friendly with the missionaries there.
When the Department of Civil Aviation started a flying boat base at Groote Eylandt in 1938 the CMS asked Gray
to camp at Umbakumba opposite the proposed base to protect the interests of the Aborigines there. Gray agreed
and soon set up a small settlement there. He provided Aboriginal labour, food and artefacts for workers at the
base. At the conclusion of the construction phase, Taylor, the CMS Superintendent at the mission, told Gray that
he could now leave and that the Aborigines at Umbakumba could return to the mission. Gray refused, saying that
the Aborigines would not leave Umbakumba, and that he would not leave until the CMS provided a missionary.
The CMS did not do so, so Gray remained superintendent in an honorary capacity.
Gray continued to provide food and artefacts for the base while it was used by Qantas and later by the Royal
Australian Air Force during the Second World War. He established very good relationships with the personnel
there, especially with Frederick Rose, the meteorologist, who made a specialised study of the Groote Eylandt
Aborigines and their social organisation. At the same time he developed the Umbakumba Settlement, building a
school, dormitories and other ancillary buildings, including a staff house. Over 200 Aborigines had now settled
there.
On 26 November 1946 he married Marjorie Southwick. He had known her in England over 20 years earlier,
and had to wait until the war had finished before she could come out to Australia. She was a trained schoolteacher
and was a tremendous help to Gray in his work at Umbakumba. They hosted and greatly assisted the American
and Australian Expedition to Arnhem Land, which used Umbakumba as its base from early April until mid July
- The National Geographic Magazine, a sponsor of the expedition, featured the Umbakumba settlement and
the work of the Grays there at that time.
The 1950s saw the implementation of the new official policy of assimilation. Missions and settlements now
became focal points of the medical, educational, social and training programs for Aborigines in order that they
might be absorbed into the wider white Australian society. The outworking of this policy eventually meant the
end of the Grays’ work at Umbakumba. Gray found great difficulty in recruiting and holding the much larger
staff required for the implementation of assimilation policies. Also he was neither mission nor government, which
caused great difficulties for the Welfare Branch of the Northern Territory Administration.
Despite these difficulties, Gray continued to superintend the settlement. He strongly opposed the Aboriginal
practice of Groote Eylandt whereby a few old men had cornered all the young girls. This led to endless feuding,
fighting and killing. He was also able to get child endowment payments for the children at the settlement, which
enabled him to provide daily meals for them and the old people. He was also very keen on the dormitory system.
Edward Herbert, a part Aborigine, was of very great help to him in the work.
The axe fell in 1956 and Gray had to leave Umbakumba. During the protracted negotiations with the Welfare
Branch which followed, he moved over to the air base, refusing to leave until 1958 when the government provided