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side of the 20-foot (6. 5 m) high obelisk on Anzac Hill, Alice Springs—a monument that Harry had designed and
dedicated as a memorial to the men who had enlisted in the First World War.
Griffiths’ publications include, Reflections from an Inland Diary (c.1964); Centralia’s Gateways, and
An Australian Adventure, 1975. All are out of print.
H Griffiths, An Australian Adventure, 1975; Rev F Mackay, tribute at funeral, 12 February 1987; Methodist Inland Link, September 1941, June
1945, December 1947, May 1969, November 1975; E R Sexton, Griff, 1969; Personal records and Minutes of the Methodist Conference (South
Australia) held by the Uniting Church, Melbourne.
JUDITH AMEY, Vol 3.GRIFFITHS, WALTER (GRIF) (1867–1900), miner, businessman and Member of Parliament, was born at
North Terrace, Kent Town, Adelaide on 4 July 1867, son of Frederick Kempster Griffiths, an ironmonger and his
wife Helen, nee Giles. He was a grandson of Charles Giles who was a brother of Ernest Giles the well-known
explorer. He was educated at St Aloysius College, Sevenhills, and at St Peter’s College, Adelaide.
When he was 16 years of age he went to the Northern Territory to join his uncle, Walter Kempster Griffiths,
in mining and storekeeping ventures on the goldfields. Griffiths senior had been the purser for the Palmerston
Gold Mining Company when the Cosmo deposit near Pine Creek was first pegged out. During the gold rush to the
Kimberley the young Griffiths spent some time in that area, being among the first on the field. Subsequently he
became a partner with the entrepreneurial V L Solomon in mining and importing ventures and they were associated
in the 1880s with the running of the Northern Territory Times and Gazette after the death of Joseph Skelton in
1884.
Griffiths travelled widely in the Territory and ‘took a keen and practical interest in the development of the
mining industry’, working leases in almost every district. He also had interests in New South Wales (without
doubt at Broken Hill) and Western Australia and visited Japan and China. Twice he crossed the continent, on the
last occasion as a press report noted, ‘for the purpose of making the acquaintance of the electors and personally
studying the requirements of the country’.
In May 1893 at the age of 26 (for several years he was the youngest in the House) he was elected, the junior of
two members, to represent the Territory in the South Australian parliament. The other member was his erstwhile
partner, V L Solomon, the Leader of the Opposition. Griffiths made his mark quickly and was Opposition Whip for
several sessions. In November 1893 he had tried to introduce a bill for the establishment of a Land Titles Office in
Darwin but was told by the government that it was ‘undesirable’, an administrative nightmare so far as Territorians
were concerned not rectified until after the Second World War. During 1894 he fought unsuccessfully against the
bill designed to give South Australian women the vote. In the same year he raised in parliament the need for a
medical practitioner to serve rural residents in the Territory.
Griffiths was one of the principal movers of the separation movement when Federation was being planned
and he represented the Separation League in London early in 1900. Only when it became apparent that Western
Australia would become one of the original states did he ‘relinquish his efforts’. During that time in London he
corresponded with the War Office regarding the advisability of fortifying Port Darwin and raised the prospects of
the Territory for horse breeding purposes.
Walter Griffiths died on 4 September 1900 at the age of 33, having been stricken by typhoid fever. He was
serving for a third term and had been returned at the previous election with a ‘handsome majority’ though he was
censured by the local press for failing to go ‘up country as promised’ when he visited the Territory.
When the news reached Parliament, which was then sitting, it adjourned as a mark of respect. Solomon, then a
close and valued friend who noted the loss of a ‘brilliant and promising member of the House, and one who could
ill be spared’, led the tributes. As another parliamentarian put it, Walter Griffiths was ‘the most popular member of
either branch of the Legislature... always so courteous and a real good fellow at heart—ever ready to put his hand
in his pocket to help a good cause, and always in any fun that was going on’. The chairman of the Country Party
quaintly commented, ‘It is very hard to realize that we have been robbed of so promising a member. The Great
Archer must indeed have been shooting at random when his shafts struck out death friend’.
Members of the Palmerston (Darwin) District Council, on behalf of the townspeople sent their ‘deepest
sympathy’ to his relatives ‘to assure them that his memory will be ever green in the minds of all old Territorians’.
The local press in an editorial described him as a ‘strikingly useful legislator’ and continued ‘this settlement
has lost the services of a clever, shrewd and painstaking representative—whatever may have been his faults or
weaknesses—always fairly and squarely did his best to carry out the duties he had undertaken to perform in his
capacity as one of the members for the Northern Territory’. All the local flags were flown at half-mast.
Griffiths never married. He was a Freemason and a member of the Lodge of Friendship in Adelaide and is
buried in the North Road cemetery in Adelaide.
Adelaide Observer, 8 September 1900; Biographical Register of the South Australian Parliament 1857–1957; B James, Occupation Citizen,
1995; HC May diary, 1872–1873; Northern Territory Times, 17 April 1896, 7 September 1900; South Australian Parliamentary Debates,
5 September 1900.
HELEN J WILSON and BARBARA JAMES, Vol 3.GRIMSTER, WILLIAM FREDERICK (BILL) (1913– ), clerk, bush worker, Air Force serviceman, forester
and Aboriginal settlement superintendent, and GRIMSTER, INA VERA, nee McCOY (1917– ), community
worker. Bill was born in Bristol, England, on 16 July 1913. His parents were William James Grimster, a hotelkeeper,
and Gwendoline Kate Brigly. Bill showed early promise as a student, but his schooling came to an end following