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The party sank three wells en route to Tanami, two of which remained unfinished in their haste to reach Tanami
owing to the urgent need for water there. Pearce named Turner’s Gum Creek, (at which he sunk his first well,
50 kilometres from Mucka) and Frog Valley on the Wilson Creek about 125 kilometres from Tanami. The party
reached Tanami in mid-December 1909 and began working on a well with three shifts of men to keep operations
going night and day. A private party digging in a likely site selected by Pearce struck the first water in early
February. On 22 February the government party struck good water at forty-three metres. Ironically, five days later
3 425 millimetres of rain fell in three consecutive days! A second well was sunk by Pearce’s party that then left
Tanami amply supplied.
In 1915, Vestey Brothers purchased Willeroo, then some 6 475 square kilometres, 8 000 head of cattle,
and 300 horses including the 20 stallions Pearce had imported over the years. Apparently, Mary Pearce did not
especially like the station life and the couple moved to Sydney where they lived for three years. It was the only
thing Pearce regretted having done during his life. He said on leaving the Territory, ‘I have since found I was
leaving the civilised people with kind hearts and thoughts for others.’ Mary died in April 1919 in Sydney, victim
of the influenza epidemic of the time. There were no children of the marriage.
Pearce felt he could not live in the city without ending up in the ‘Nut Factory or the Cemetery’ and returned to
Central Australia. He bought into the Crown Pastoral Company including Allandale and Crown Point stations that
he managed for about 10 years before returning to Adelaide. At Walkerville, he established a Wattle Bark factory
that extracted dyes for tanning from the bark. A lack of importing embargoes and the Depression forced him out
of this business.
In 1946 Pearce wrote and donated a manuscript to the Mitchell Library, Sydney that describes his droving
experiences through Central Australia to the Northern Territory, his involvement with Victoria River Downs and
the death of a friend Henry Peckham, ‘The Fizzer’ of Mrs Gunn’s book.
Pearce retired to a small cottage at Scotts Creek in the Adelaide Hills continuing to live the bushman’s lifestyle
to which he was accustomed, chopping huge gum trees by hand for firewood, and even using his stockwhip to
round up his chickens! It would seem he never lost his sense of humour during his 89 years.
Pearce died on 9 January 1952 at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and was cremated the following day. He wished
to be buried at the Elsey Cemetery ‘amongst my friends’, characters of the book We of the Never Never. Although
there is no memorial to him in the Elsey Cemetery, it can only be assumed that his wishes were carried out.
Pearce Street in Katherine is purported to have been named after him and probably Mount Pearce, which lies
near the northern boundary of Willeroo. Mount Pearce first appeared on the 1910 pastoral series map during the
time that Pearce held the Willeroo leases.
E Hill, The Territory, 1965; J Gunn, We of the Never Never, 1908; P F Donovan, A Land Full of Possibilities: A History of South Australia’s
Northern Territory, 1981; Place Names of the Northern Territory; SAPP, vol 3, no 45, 1902; Government Resident’s Reports, vol 3, no 45,
1906; vol 3, no 45, 1908; vol 2, no 31, 1911–12; Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 8 May 1903, 17 June 1904; Adelaide Advertiser,
7 June 1905.
SUSANNE L HEWITT, Vol 1.
PEARSON, KATHERINE MAUD MARY (KITTY) nee WORLAND formerly BERNHARD (1882–1963),
cook, boarding house manager, storekeeper, publican and pastoralist, is believed to have been born in Hobart,
Tasmania, in 1882.
Katherine’s first husband, John William Bernhard, was born to Pieter Geradus Bernhard and his wife Emily
Martha, nee Woodhaus, at Custon, South Australia, where Pieter Bernhard was the railway station master on
13 March 1888.
Nothing is known of their childhoods or education, but John and Katherine are believed to have met in Western
Australia, where John had been working with his large team of horses. By 1918, they were both living and working
in Pine Creek, Northern Territory. For a time John worked on the railway that was being extended south from
Pine Creek to the Katherine River, using his horses and scoops to undertake clearing and embankment work.
A Church of England minister married them at the Pine Creek Hotel on 19 February 1919.
By October 1920, the couple had moved to Victoria River Downs Station. John Bernhard became a fencing
contractor on the Killarney fence line and Katherine accompanied him as the camp cook. The cooking and living
conditions in the camp would have been much rougher than those she had previously experienced at the Pine Creek
Hotel. From there, they moved to Emungalan and by 1922, John held an Occupational Licence on two blocks of
land. It was at that time that he formed a business partnership with Reuben Redmond Rundle. Katherine was
always called Kitty; her husband was called Jack and their partner Reuben was known to all as Charlie. Kitty ran
a boarding house at Emungalan and when the auction was held in 1926 for blocks of land in the new town of
Katherine, on the southern bank of the river, both Rundle and Jack Bernhard were successful bidders.
Rundle and Bernhard used local cypress pine and corrugated iron in the construction of their new store and
employed Jim McDonald, a returned soldier, as their builder with Windy Allwright undertaking any plumbing
work required. They moved into ‘residence in their store on Block 16 in March 1927 and were granted lease on
the land in March 1928.
Within three years, Rundle and Bernhard had a disagreement and Jack and his wife decided to take over
McAdam and Gill’s store at the other end of town and set up in opposition. The exact date on which this occurred
is unclear, but J W Bernhard was the Licensee of the Sportsman’s Arms Hotel in 1930, just three years after it
opened. Presumably, Jack and Kitty took over both business houses owned by McAdam and Gill, situated side by
side in the main street, around the same time.