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In 1992 they celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary with their sons and family and were thrilled to
receive congratulatory letters from the Queen, the Governor General, the Administrator, Chief Minister and other
dignitaries of the Northern Territory. It was fitting that two Territory-born pioneers should be honoured on such
an occasion. Territory women like Myrtle who have dedicated their lives to their families and endured the harsh
living conditions of the tropics, always compromising when necessary in any emergency situations. They are the
unsung heroes of the Territory and deserve the recognition. In 1995, having recently celebrated their 81st and
90th birthdays, Myrtle and Charlie looked back on a lifetime of achievement with satisfaction in contributing
to the Northern Territory and in raising their family of four sons. They then had 13 grandchildren and 12 great
grandchildren. Charlie died on 24 January 1996.
Family information; Northern Territory News, 26 January 1996.
GLENICE YEE, Vol 3.
HUNTER, WILLIAM DAVID (NUGGET) (1900–1971), bush worker, was born in Bundaberg, Queensland, in
May 1900. It seems likely that, instead of his mother’s milk, he imbibed the famous Bundaberg rum. Whatever
the case, no greater reprobate, scoundrel, waster, urger and layabout ever reached Central Australia. His name
‘Nugget’, he stated, was the result of being ‘a bit of a larrikin’. No truer words have ever been spoken.
When, precisely, he arrived in Alice Springs is unknown. He claimed, in his usual exaggeration, that the only
building in the Alice at the time was the Stuart Arms Hotel. What is likely is that, on arrival in the 1920s, the Stuart
Arms was the only building he frequented! One of the earliest events that occurred in his time in the Centre was
the Coniston Station massacre, in which over 100 Aborigines were shot (the official number was 31) in retaliation
for the murder of a white man, an old dogger named Fred Brooks. Hunter’s account was that ‘three hundred, four
hundred’ were shot. He knew the official figure: ‘Thirty. Three hundred. Taught ‘em a good lesson. Good for
‘em!’ Hunter invariably spoke hard-edged like this, whether he was talking about himself, Aborigines or any other
members of the community.
When The Granites goldfield briefly boomed in 1932, Hunter was there, 450 kilometres north west of
Alice Springs, battling along with hardened old time prospectors and the ‘new chums’. After a time he decided that
an easier life was warranted, so when a wagon started for Halls Creek—and, more particularly from his viewpoint,
the Halls Creek pub—with a seriously ill prospector, he hitched a ride. When the prospector died he promptly
jumped from the wagon and walked the rest of the way to Halls Creek. He made it plain that he preferred to carry
his swag than ride with a corpse.
The years of the Great Depression, officially 1929 to 1933 but virtually to the end of the 1930s in Central
Australia, meant that Hunter had to find work somewhere. He took to tribute mining on the wolfram fields in the
Mount Doreen–Mount Hardy area, 300 crow fly kilometres north west of the Alice. His idea of tributing was to live
with an Aboriginal woman and let her and her family do most of the work. Although not alone in this, in the mid
1930s he was the only man officially caught ‘gin hunting’, as the expression of the era had it. Thirty six years later
he still expressed gruff anger at the sentence, and the same exaggerated rough edge in his further comments: ‘They
gave me six months and fined me 50 quid! Bloody lubra. Yes, they gave me six months and 50 quid for civilisin’
her. Well, in a manner of speaking. All them squatters done it, didn’t they! And me? They gave me six months and
50 quid! Shoulda killed her, but she cleared out. Yes, shoot ‘em! That’s the best way. No more trouble then.’
Appalling as these statements were, they were an exaggeration of his views, as were all the comments he made.
For the rest of his life, in fact, he did his best to have an Aboriginal woman as a companion, and basically as chief
worker in any of the bush work he ever accidentally fell into.
In his later life he simply lived the life of a bludger, in every sense of the word, on the outskirts of
Alice Springs.
By the mid 1960s he felt like doing even less work, so he got himself accepted into the Old Timers’ Home,
immediately south of the Alice. Pension day saw him sitting outside this ‘Bushmen’s Rest’, as he termed it, in a
little shelter with an appropriate sign, ‘Give an Old-Timer a Lift’. Any lift in any vehicle had only one destination
for Hunter—the Stuart Arms Hotel. Afterwards he would suffer a partial recovery on a nearby convenient step,
swearing heartily to anyone who engaged him in conversation.
Naturally enough, upon his return to the Old Timers’ Home, if he did not get tangled up in the fence—which
he would curse and blame for his predicament—he would get ‘tangled up’ with the more sober residents. Never
was it Hunter’s fault. ‘The Old Timers’ Home’, he stated, ‘they’re a mob of bloody lunatics. Should all be down
in Melbourne or Sydney in a mental asylum. Bloody in-breds!’ And the next pension day would see him the same
again in Alice Springs. There he would be, jumper front stained with beer, teeth worn away to nothing so that his
face wrinkled like an old apple with polished cheeks, sitting on some steps. ‘Nugget Hunter’s the name’, he cried,
‘come from Bundaberg in the old days. Where they make the Bundy rum. Too right they do! Cure that cough
for you, young fella! This bloody place, look at it! There was nothin’ here when I came, nothin’. ‘Cept the old
Stuart Arms. Now you get killed if you go out there, into the street. Shoot ‘em! Good for ‘em!’
Despite all his vulgarity, outrageousness, gruffness and exaggeratedly honest racism in the last years of his life,
or perhaps because of all these things, there was something appealing about the old scoundrel. He probably took
perverse pleasure in dying the day before Christmas in 1971, thereby upsetting the ‘bloody lunatics’ at the Old
Timers’ Home. His former Aboriginal wife survived him by 20 years. There were no descendants.
R G Kimber, Man from Arltunga, 1986; sighted official patrol reports of the 1930s in which Hunter’s arrest is referred to; R G Kimber, records
of interview with Hunter, July 1970; discussions with other old timers who knew Hunter.
R G KIMBER, Vol 2.