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duties at a time of shortages of qualified staff. When Dorothy returned to Bonrook Station in 1951 she and her
husband were involved in a number of business ventures centred on the Pine Creek area until 1960 when Noel’s ill
health forced them to sell Bonrook. They moved into Pine Creek and until 1967 Dorothy worked as a community
nurse, on a very low allowance, providing a service throughout the district. In 1966 Dorothy was made a Member
of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her nursing services to the community.
Dorothy Hall died in Darwin in October 1989.
Australian Inland Mission Correspondence, National Library of Australia, MS 5574, Box 108; Northern Territory Archives Service, NTRS 226
TS interview with D Hall; personal conversations and correspondence with author; L A Riddett, Kine, Kin and Country, 1990.
LYN A RIDDETT, Vol 3.HALL, VICTOR CHARLES (VIC) (1894–1972) soldier, worker in various occupations, policeman, artist and
author, was born in London, England, on 10 March 1894, the son of Richard Charles Hall and his wife Lauretta,
nee Davis. He was an art student when he joined the British Army in 1914. He saw service in France until the
end of the war, by which time he had been wounded on five occasions and awarded the Military Medal (MM).
He arrived in Western Australia in 1920 and worked at various jobs, as diverse as jackeroo and pearling lugger
hand, before joining the Northern Territory Police on 5 November 1924.
Hall was to learn early in his career what policing in the remote areas was to mean. In 1925 he was sent to the
Methodist mission at Milingimbi to apprehend an Aborigine who had allegedly murdered his wife. Accompanied
by James Robertson, a young lay missionary, and two of the mission Aborigines, they headed for the mainland
and dropped anchor deep in some mangroves. The Aborigines led them deeper and deeper into swampy ground
and suddenly disappeared. According to Maisie McKenzie, only Hall’s ‘bushmanship’ saved them as they retraced
their steps guided only by a star Hall had noted as they plunged along. Only later did they discover that their guides
were kinsmen of the Aborigines they were seeking.
Hall was one of a party sent to Caledon Bay in 1932 to seek out the murderers of the Japanese trepangers. After the
spearing of Constable McColl the party spent some months ‘guarding’ the Anglican mission on Groote Eylandt, to
the chagrin of the staff, whose members did not believe they needed any such protection.
During the 1930s he saw service in several other ‘remote’ stations, including Tennant Creek when it was still
only a telegraph repeater station before the gold rush. He also spent a number of years at Maranboy when that area
was the centre of extensive tin mining and was also at Pine Creek.
He was stationed in Darwin and among the injured when Darwin was first bombed on 19 February 1942.
There was much dissatisfaction among the members of the force who remained in Darwin after the bombing as
they felt their superiors had abandoned them and this may have led to his resignation in 1943. Thereafter Hall
served with the Army in the Territory until 1945.
After the war he settled in Katherine and when his sight failed in 1954, as a result of the injury he received
in the bombing of Darwin, he moved to Adelaide, his blindness cutting short a promising career as an artist.
Several of his paintings, owned by the Northern Territory Museum of Arts and Sciences, now hang in the Northern
Territory Police Headquarters at Berrimah as does his last painting, ‘Police Patrol’, which was bought in 1961 by
the police for 324 Pounds, two Shillings and nine Pence. This was reproduced on the cover of the police journal
Citation in June 1966.
In the meantime Hall had turned to writing and published several books, which drew on his experience in
the Northern Territory. His first work, Bad Medicine, was published in 1947 and is largely autobiographical.
Dreamtime Justice, published in 1962, is an account of the story of the spearing of Constable McColl and the
Japanese trepangers at Caledon Bay. In both books he reveals the affection with which he and his contemporaries,
stationed in remote areas, regarded their Aboriginal aides. Policemen, perhaps more than any other Europeans
in the remoter areas, were acutely aware of the debt of gratitude they owed to the men of the ‘Black Watch’ and
indeed the dedication in Dreamtime Justice is couched in such terms. He was also a contributor to the first issue
of Citation in 1964.
Hall was well respected by his colleagues and their families. Nancy Mannion, widow of the well-known
policeman Jim Mannion commented on his unfailing politeness and good manners.
Hall married twice. His first wife died and on 30 November 1966 he married his widowed housekeeper, Dorothy
Annie Headland Benveniste, nee Kelly. She died on 18 November 1971 and Hall followed only a few months later
on 11 February 1972. He had no children.
H Clarke, The Long Arm, 1974; V C Hall, Bad Medicine, 1947, ‘Murder Outback’, in Australian Journal, 11 February 1958, Dreamtime
Justice, 1962; M McKenzie, Mission to Arnhem Land, 1976; Advertiser, 18 July 1958; Northern Standard, 10 July 1934; South Australian
Births, Deaths and Marriages Records; N Mannion, personal communication.
GLENYS SIMPSON and HELEN J WILSON, Vol 2.HAMILTON, HAROLD (c1905–1968), seaman, was born about 1905 at Anthony’s Lagoon, near Borroloola in
the Northern Territory. He had a European father and an Aboriginal mother. Following Government regulations,
he was brought to the Church Mission Society (CMS) Roper River Mission when a young lad, where he was cared
for and educated. As a young man he was taught by the Reverend H E Warren and E C H Lousada to handle the
mission lugger Holly. When he was 24 years old he was placed in charge of Holly. He was by now living at the
CMS Emerald River Mission on Groote Eylandt. He made frequent journeys to and from Thursday Island and the
CMS Roper River Mission across the dangerous waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria, displaying outstanding skill in