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first substantive chairmanship (and Chief Executive Officer) of the Northern Territory Conservation Commission,
he withdrew his candidacy. In recognition of his experience and interest in the area, he was made a Trustee of the
World Wildlife Fund in 1981.
Letts served the Conservation Commission with distinction until 1983, when he resigned to contest the
Assembly seat of Araluen (in Alice Springs—then the location of the Commission) as an independent. His decision
to stand against the CLP incumbent (and a government minister) reflected his view that the CLP government
was taking an unnecessarily confrontationist attitude towards the Commonwealth and towards Aborigines in the
Territory. In particular, he was affronted by the strident opposition to the transfer of the Ayers Rock (Uluru) park
area to Aboriginal ownership. While he came second in the poll (with one fifth of the vote), Letts was devastated
by his relatively poor support.
Subsequently, Letts left the Territory to pursue his family newspaper business in Victoria. Nonetheless, he
continued to visit the Territory periodically for consultancy and personal reasons. At various times, he wrote
historical and political material for the local media.
Sometimes called ‘The Father of Self-Government’ for the part he played in the constitutional development
process, Letts made a worthy contribution to the political and economic development of the Territory. But he was
a man of his times; his experience as a public servant in the pre-self-government era, and especially his conviction
that any new system should accommodate a better and closer relationship between politicians and officials, was not
well attuned to the new political realities in the Territory after the mid-1970s. His consensual consultative style, his
aversion to conflictual behaviour and his lack of political decisiveness were, at the time, not acknowledged as the
most vital and successful leadership attributes.
A Heatley, ‘And Then There Were Two’, North Australia Research Bulletin, No 3, 1978; A Heatley, Almost Australians, 1990; D Jaensch &
D Wade-Marshall, Point of Order!, 1994; Who’s Who in Australia, 1988.
ALISTAIR HEATLEY, Vol 3.LEWIS, JOHN (1842–1923), businessman, pastoralist and politician, was born in Brighton, South Australia,
on 12 February 1844, son of James Lewis, a member of the party which surveyed the city of Adelaide and who
accompanied Sturt on his 1844 expedition, and Eliza Margaret Hutton, nee Bristow, whom he married in 1841.
John Lewis was educated until the age of twelve at Mrs Hillier’s, Grundy’s and Nesbit’s private schools in Adelaide.
He did not like school.
Lewis then worked on farms, at blacksmithing, droving cattle and sheep, and as a station overseer until- In that year, he leased an interest in land on the Cobourg Peninsula with a view to establishing a station.
On 17 January 1872, he set out for the Northern Territory with his brother James and a number of horses. At the
new telegraph station at Barrow Creek, he secured a contract to operate a pony express over the 450 kilometres
between the two ends of the unfinished Overland Telegraph Line from Tennant Creek to Daly Waters. Soon after,
he heard the news of gold discoveries in the Territory and wired Adelaide to ship a dray and stores to Port Darwin.
He remained long enough to be present at the final joining of the telegraph wires and then hurried north, reaching
the goldfields on 26 September 1872, and Port Darwin soon after. F Driffield telegraphed Lewis from Adelaide
requesting him to organise a prospecting party. This he did, collected his dray and three tonnes of stores and with
forty packhorses left for the goldfields. He charged 60 Pounds a tonne for two tonnes of the stores, the other tonne
being for his own party.
Over the next few years, Lewis became something of a Territory legend. He erected a jetty at Southport and
founded the Eleanor mine at Pine Creek where he erected the first battery to crush in the Territory. He became the
legal manager of sixteen mining companies, operated steam launches between Port Darwin and Southport, had a
large bulk supply store at Southport as a supply base for stores on the goldfields and operated several horse teams
hauling stores inland. He bought a share in the original Union Reefs mine with Adam Johns and others, resulting
in a large profit. He was also a shrewd speculator in flour and other necessities. At one time, he bought up all the
flour in Port Darwin and Southport when no further ships were expected for months. He made a lot of money
speculating in Territory mining shares. Before the Gold Escort was established, Lewis often rode all night with
gold on the track from Pine Creek to Port Darwin.
In 1874, at the request of Government Resident Scott, Lewis organised a search party for explorers Permain
and Borrodale who had vanished in the Alligator Rivers region. This involved going overland by horse from Union
Reefs to Port Essington. Following this expedition Lewis established a buffalo station on Cobourg Peninsula but
apart from the initial setting up, does not seem to have spent much time there. He left the Territory in 1876, leaving
Paul Foelsche, a close friend, as his agent for the station, who paid bills and furnished reports.
Back in Adelaide Lewis joined the firm of Liston, Shakes and Company, stock and station agents, and then
made good profits on shares in Broken Hill mines. In 1876 he married Martha Brooks and in later years he was part
owner of the South Australian Hotel and several stations in Central Australia, some with S Kidman. He became
a member of the Legislative Council of South Australia in 1897 and remained so for many years. He died on
25 August 1923 and was buried at Burra, South Australia.
During Lewis’s time in the Territory, he exhibited qualities of hard work and self-reliance. He organised an
extensive surface transport and supply system, was one of the few who succeeded in mining ventures and was
universally respected. He usually saw things as black or white and was quite authoritarian. Most of these qualities
he passed on to his sons, Essington in particular. An entry in his diary in 1873 is revealing: ‘One of the Telegraph
Company’s men gave me a little cheek so a clout to the head soon brought him around.’ His book Fought and Won,
published in 1922, contains an account of his Territory experiences and portrait photographs of him.