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Their fourth major crisis concerned the evacuation of the part-Aboriginal women and children from North
Australia in 1942 because of the imminent Japanese attack. The party from Groote Eylandt and Roper River, with
Mrs Port in charge, made the arduous journey by truck, rail and military convoy to Sydney via Alice Springs and
Adelaide. They were cared for by the CMS at Mulgoa, New South Wales.
The Ports resigned for family reasons in 1944. The Society accepted their resignations with genuine regret,
stating that they ‘had given invaluable service at Groote Eylandt and Roper River’. By their painstaking supervision,
thoroughness and spiritual fervour, they have made a very definite contribution to the Society’s missionary activities
among the Aborigines of north Australia.
On their return to Melbourne Stan Port became superintendent of St Hilda’s Training Home where missionaries
and deaconesses were trained. In his later years, he joined the Department of the Navy as a clerk. During this time,
until his death on 12 February 1986, he developed considerable skills in watercolour painting, and had several
paintings accepted for art shows and competitions. Marjorie Port suffered ill health in her later years and died on
1 August 1980.
K Cole, Roper River Mission 1908–1968, 1969; K Cole, Groote Eylandt Mission, 1971; CMS Records, Melbourne.
KEITH COLE, Vol 1.
PRESLEY, VILLIERS CLARENCE MURRAY (c1859–1934), miner, businessman, prison guard and politician,
was born in about 1859 on the ship in which his parents were emigrating from Argyleshire, Scotland; the birth
apparently being registered at Brisbane, Queensland. He was well known in Blackall and Croydon in Queensland
and on Thursday Island before coming to the Northern Territory with his wife, Emily Edna, whom he married in
about 1888. They arrived in Palmerston, soon to be renamed Darwin, in 1908 with four children. Presley tried his
luck in the tin mines at Umbrawarra Gorge, out of Pine Creek, while his wife opened a ‘European refreshment
room’ in Cavenagh Street, Palmerston, with a ‘gorgeous assortment of confectionary’.
In 1914, Villiers had joined his wife in a general business that included a fruit shop. In December of that year,
he advertised the business in his own name, advising all that he was also a ‘maker of rubber stamps’. In June
of the following year, he installed a ‘first class up to date’ soda fountain, the establishment soon becoming a
‘mecca’ for the juvenile population. Two weeks later a circulating library, books, magazines and school requisites
had been added. By 1920, he and his wife had moved to a store at the Two and a Half Mile, on the main road
out of Darwin, opposite the Emigrants’ Home. Here they ran a general store, which had a telephone connection,
selling confectionary, fancy goods, aerated water and hop beer, as well as a catering business, until Emily died on
23 February 1924, aged 55.
Presley also followed a political ambition. He was Secretary of the Umbrawarra Progress and Political
Association but was unsuccessful in his bid for Labor preselection for the South Australian elections in 1910.
When the Australian Workers’ Union was formed in Darwin in 1911, he took the minutes and then was elected to
the committee. For a period in 1912, he acted as Town Clerk of Darwin and was elected to the Town Council in
July 1914, having been unsuccessful at a by-election in January. When the elections were held for a reconstituted
Darwin Town Council in November 1915 he was again unsuccessful and this pattern continued until 1919.
He was extraordinarily tenacious and nominated again in 1920, campaigning for a return to the owner/occupier
franchise that had been the prerequisite prior to the introduction of the 1915 Act. The 1915 changes had also made
provision for government nominees on the Council, one of whom was the Inspector of Police, Nicholas Waters,
and Presley’s platform included a fully elected Council. He had enlightened town-planning views and wished to
see minimum standards maintained for housing, but the electors were not convinced.
In the elections held in November 1921, under amended legislation that had removed the nominees, Presley,
again a candidate, was the first eliminated at the count. He had won himself few votes for advocating the modernising
of the road from the Daly Street Bridge out to the Two and A Half Mile, near his store, when the properties fronting
the road were leasehold and held to be unrateable at the time. The election in 1922 was an even worse humiliation.
Presley fell victim to the Ratepayers’ Defence Association and received only one vote, presumably his own.
He did not stand in 1923.
Still he persevered and 1924 was a different story. He was one of four Councillors elected unopposed for
the period 1 July 1924 to 30 June 1926. He was elected Mayor on 20 July 1926. Presley was always his own
man. He had his views and he stuck to them. In March 1927 during his term as Mayor, he led a deputation of
Councillors to the Administrator (as was his right) while at the same time distancing himself from the views of the
other Councillors. The Northern Territory Administration had decreed that the Medical Officer, who had always
been provided with accommodation, should now find his own. Presley disagreed but other members of the Town
Council, particularly D C Watts, argued that the doctor was entitled to government housing, notwithstanding that
he owned a house in the town. Any popularity he may have enjoyed was fleeting; Presley was unsuccessful when
he stood again in 1927 and 1928, the last time he contested a place on the Council.
The Presleys were typical of many small battlers of their day and they never made their fortune. In 1914 a town
Lot, 837, which they had leased from the Administration, was forfeited for non-payment of rent. The Lot was one
of a number, now in the Larrakeyah Barracks area, which was selected by land order holders in 1870, the vast
majority of whom remained absentees. Eventually, when the Commonwealth government took over, some were
offered for lease.
On 9 August 1920, Presley appeared before the court to answer a charge of ‘possessing a quantity of beer on
which excise duty had not been paid’. The summons was dismissed, but according to Douglas Lockwood, was
overturned on appeal on a technicality which eventually found its way to the High Court, and which had nothing to