>> Go Back - page - >> List of Entriess
he conducted hotels at Kalgoorlie, Boulder and Meekatharra. He ran several hotels in the city of Melbourne,
including the Imperial, opposite Parliament House. He also ran hotels in country Victoria and New South Wales.
Parer came to Darwin in 1916 just after all the Northern Territory hotels were resumed, to be run by the
government. On 1 November 1921, he was granted a lease for 10 years over the Terminus Hotel, then in Cavenagh
Street. Outside stood a large banyan known as the Tree of Knowledge; it still stands in the courtyard of the Civic
Centre, which is built on the Terminus Hotel site. Parer also had the lease of the Club Hotel (the Darwin Hotel is
now on this site), which he continued to run for a short time after the Terminus was closed in 1931.
Parer was a very keen sportsman and he is credited with the foundation of the Wanderers Football Club ‘under
the old banyan’. In its early days, it was a very successful team. In 1927, Parer gave a trophy at the Rifle Club
prize giving.
After the closure of the Vesteys meatworks in 1923, the Top End economy declined markedly for the balance
of the decade. Parer played a prominent role in trying to draw the attention of others to the Territory’s resources
and their prospects. In December 1921, he convened a public meeting ‘to discuss the advisability of sending
delegates to America to place before the financers (sic) of that country the vast resources of the Northern Territory’.
The proceedings of the meeting were reported in full in the local press. Among the recommendations were that the
railway was essential. The Northern Territory Progress Committee was formed with Parer as a committee member,
along with such luminaries as H G Nelson. In 1922, he published a booklet entitled The Northern Territory, Its
History and Great Possibilities, which was designed to give information to prospective settlers. Details of the
various land tenures are given and there are many attractive photographs. Interested persons were also invited to
join the North Australian White Settlement Association.
On a visit to London in 1924 Parer made arrangements to see that a group of investors was offered 8 000 hectares
in the Hundred of Howard, not far from the Adelaide River, for cotton growing. Despite what appear to have been
good terms, such as no rent for 21 years but 200 hectares to be cleared and cultivated in the first three years,
nothing came of the project. On 4 October 1927, Parer wrote to the local newspaper complaining about the neglect
of the Territory by the Commonwealth Government, confident that he had much support locally. He increasingly
became disillusioned with the Territory, however, and left about 1933.
He died in Toronto, New South Wales, in October 1936 aged 74, survived by his wife, two sons and three
daughters, one of whom married the policeman Jack Stokes. At the time of his death, he and his wife were
preparing to celebrate their 47th wedding anniversary, which fell on 31 October.
Northern Standard, 16 December 1921; 4 October 1927; 20 October 1936; Northern Territory Archives, F5 P192A; J J Parer, The Northern
Territory, 1922; H J Wilson, ‘The Historic Heart of Darwin’, 1994.
HELEN J WILSON, Vol 3.PARSONS, JOHN LANGDON (1837–1903), clergyman, politician and administrator, son of Edward, a farmer,
and Jane, nee Langdon, was born at Botathan, near Launceston, Cornwall, England, on 28 April 1837. Educated for
the Baptist ministry at Regents Park College, London, he was twice married, first to Marianna Dewhirst, then to
Rosetta Angus Johnson (the granddaughter of George Fife Angas, one of the founders of South Australia). A son of
the second marriage, Herbert Angus Parsons, was later to become a judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia
and a member of the South Australian Parliament.
Parsons arrived in South Australia in 1863 and, after four months, left for New Zealand and a ministry at the
Baptist Church at Dunedin. On his return to South Australia four years later, and after a short term at Angaston,
he became pastor of the Tynte Street Church, North Adelaide. During his time at the Tynte Street Church, he was
also president of the local Evangelical Alliance. After a few years, he resigned his ministry to enter into business
as a broker and agent.
He was elected to the South Australian House of Assembly as member for Encounter Bay in April 1878, a seat
he held until March 1881. He then became the Member for North Adelaide and held that scat from April 1881 until
March 1884. As the Member for North Adelaide the active part he played in a movement several years previously,
which resulted in the adoption of a new educational system, qualified him for the position of Minister for Education
in the government formed by Sir J C Bray. Included in his portfolio was responsibility for the Northern Territory.
His appointment as minister, as well as marking the beginning of his interest in the north, was also to begin twelve
years of official connection with the Northern Territory.
The time spent by Parsons as minister responsible for the Northern Territory was short but active, and during
his tenure of office the Northern Territory Land Act 1881 (for the leasing of the Herbert River country), the Sugar
Cultivation Amendments, the Indian Immigration Act, Customs Acts (for increasing duties on articles chiefly
consumed by Chinese), the Crown Lands Consolidating Act and the Palmerston and Pine Creek Railway Act were
passed. The need for the construction of the railway was to remain a life-long conviction and one that dogged him
throughout his Residency.
In 1882, prompted by mounting curiosity, Parsons led a parliamentary party to the Territory. Enthused by what
he saw, to the extent of asking an accompanying natural scientist, Professor Tate from the University of Adelaide,
to change or omit his unfavourable report on the agricultural prospects of the country, and later admitting to the
charge of writing ‘rosey-hued reports’ and making ‘tropical speeches’ himself, he severed his connections with
the ministry to become Government Resident at Palmerston in 1884. The appointment was popularly received and
moved one resident to proclaim ‘that the Territory was... in... good hands; and [had] a ruler whose sympathies
[were] entirely with the country’. Parsons’s period as Resident, begun with such optimism, was however to end
with despondency, plagued he believed, by ‘petty, contemptible economics’, a government in South Australia,