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1924; Centralian Advocate, 29 October, 11 February 1971; SAPP 1865 (89), 1805–66 (131), 1866–67 (17), 1870–71 (36), 1875 (122), 1877
(103); McMinn papers, SAA; University of Adelaide Archives.
V T O’BRIEN, Vol 1.McRAE, FLORA: see WORGAN, FLORAMEDLONE also known as ‘JACK DAVIS’ (c1835–c1914), well-known Aboriginal identity, had a long
association with Port Essington from the 1830s until his death sometime after 1914. According to Crawford Pasco,
Medlone was about four years old in 1839 when the Port Essington garrison was established. He was said to have
become ‘something of a pet with the regiment’, running messages for the officers and strutting beside squads of
marching men in imitation of their drill. It is quite likely that he was the same small boy whom John Sweatman
said was nicknamed Jim Crow’ and was ‘a sort of hanger-on at the mess’. This boy’s claim to fame was his habit of
‘giving vent to the most horrible blasphemies and obscenities’, which he had been taught by ‘a certain Lieutenant
of the North Star’.
With two other young boys, Mijok and Aladyin, Medlone was taken to Hong Kong in 1847 on a merchant ship.
The master of the ship died, stranding the three boys in Hong Kong. Miraculously, Crawford Pasco, who had been
in naval service at Port Essington until 1841, was posted to China. In Hong Kong, Pasco recognised the boys and
managed to arrange for their return to Port Essington on a schooner bound for Torres Strait. Captain MacArthur,
then commandant at Port Essington, wrote to Pasco advising him that Medlone had arrived but that one of the other
boys had died on the voyage.
Shortly after Medlone’s return, the Port Essington garrison was abandoned. He became one of a number of
well-known Port Essington Aboriginal people who provided a friendly port of call for passing ships and gave
valuable service as pilots and interpreters for over half a century. These included ‘Jack White’ and ‘Bob White’.
As a very young man, sometime during the years 1850–70, Medlone joined the crew of a merchant ship and
sailed on it for a number of years to quite distant places, becoming a fluent speaker of English. During this time,
he acquired the name ‘Jack Davis’. He was away so long that he was presumed dead by his people, had forgotten
some of his own native language and had aged somewhat. As a result, he was not at first recognised by his people
and had some difficulty proving his identity, particularly as this made him the leader of his clan.
From 1870 to 1914, Medlone, as ‘Jack Davis’, is mentioned by virtually every visitor to Port Essington who
recorded their impressions. William Wildey described him as ‘the native chief in 1873, noting that he was assisting
Robinson of Northern Light to gather trepang. He became a friend of John Lewis when he established his buffalo
enterprise at Port Essington in the 1870s.
Lewis took Medlone’s son, Nanyenya, with him to Adelaide. This type of action was not uncommon but more
often than not ended disastrously. Nanyenya was very popular and full of mischief and finally ‘became too much
for the people of Adelaide’. For a year or two, Lewis tried unsuccessfully to find a home for Nanyenya on several
rural properties.
Lewis then tried to send Nanyenya to Melbourne but the young lad escaped and returned on foot to Lewis’s
property at Burra. The next year, Lewis put Nanyenya in the charge of Captain Cadell who was sailing back to Port
Essington. Nanyenya jumped ship in Gladstone, Queensland. With great expense and difficulty, Lewis eventually
managed to have him brought back to Adelaide. Regrettably, before another ship left for the Northern Territory,
Nanyenya became ill and, after four months in hospital, died in Adelaide.
Medlone lived to a ripe old age and was still alive in 1914 when Elsie Masson visited Port Essington.
She described him as ‘a stooping, sightless old blackfellow, the last of his race’ and the last ‘living soul in the
Northern Territory who remembers the days of the settlement at Port Essington’. He could still ‘mumble out the
story of the settlement’, repeat the names of the officers and feebly endeavour to mimic the voice of the drill
sergeant. So, said Elsie Masson, did the ‘long-forgotten tones of some Cockney Sergeant-Major linger ghost-like
for a few more years in the voice of an ancient North Australian Aboriginal’.
A Searcy, In Australian Tropics, 1909; J Allen & P Corris (eds), The Journal of John Sweatman, 1977; E R Masson, An Untamed Territory,
1915; W Wildey, Australasia and the Oceanic Region, 1873; Crawford Pasco, correspondence, SAA; John Lewis papers SAA; George
Lambrick letterbooks, SAA, NSWA.
JOHN HARRIS, Vol 1.MEMORIMBO, also known as ‘FLASH POLL’ (c1836–c 1907) was a well-known and popular resident of
Port Essington from the 1830s until 1907. The ‘Plash Poll’ described by almost all visitors to Port Essington in
the second half of the last century was probably the young Aboriginal girl whom Sweatman called Memorimbo
in 1846. According to Sweatman, she was then about ten years old and employed as a servant by George and
Emma Lambrick, and used to ‘wait at table wearing a sort of petticoat’. This is probably the same person whom
George Lambrick referred to as young Emma’s nursemaid although we cannot be certain. The nickname ‘Flash Poll’
was not acquired until later and there is conflicting evidence of the age of Flash Poll. The Lambricks may have
employed other local girls at other times, one likely contender being Marilima, sister of Medlone (‘Jack Davis’),
described by Crawford Pasco as being about three years old in 1839 and obviously well known to him at the
garrison. There is also the further complication that Aboriginal people possess and use more than one name.
Memorimbo would have been about 37 years old when ‘Flash Poll’ was first being described in the early
1870s, by which time she seems to have acquired her nickname, no doubt through the friendly association
of Port Essington people with visiting survey ships and other vessels. In 1872 or 1873 she was, according to