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29 May 1939. She held office as Treasurer and President. Her days were filled with selling raffle tickets, making
cushion covers, mats and anything generally that could be sold to benefit the financial situation of the CWA.
In recognition of her work the unveiling of the plaque inscribed ‘Sarah Shaw Hostel’ on the CWA Hostel in
Katherine, took place on Sunday 24 June 1956, by Mrs Roberts, QCWA State President of Brisbane, Queensland.
A slightly built woman, who always walked quickly, people knew Sarah Shaw for her direct, outspoken
approach. She was a very strong, capable person who did not like alcohol and who always put her family first.
In many situations where she lived, there were no other Europeans and most of the time, no other white women
for hundreds of kilometres. She personifies what many pioneering women did in the Territory fifty years ago.
Her death on 27 April 1965 was a severe loss to her family and the district.
P Ogden, Leg’s More Sweeter than Tail, 1983.
PEARL OGDEN, Vol 1.SHEPHERDSON, HAROLD URQUHART (SHEPPY) (1904– ), and SHEPHERDSON, ISABELLA
(ELLA) nee GRAY (1904–1989), missionaries. Harold was born in Bunbury, Western Australia, in 1904, a son of
George and Elizabeth Shepherdson. His father was a saw miller, an occupation which had been a family tradition
for several generations and which Harold was also to learn. He also had some training in mechanics for which he
had much aptitude, as his later career would testify.
While he was still a youngster, his family moved to Payneham, South Australia, where he was educated
and where he attended the Methodist Church. There he met Isabella (generally called Ella) who was born in
Edinburgh, Scotland, on 17 March 1904 but whose family had migrated to Campbelltown, South Australia,
in 1913. They were married on 8 October 1927, having volunteered to become lay missionaries with the Methodist
Overseas Mission.
In preparation for their life of service, Harold had completed a fitting and turning course and had preached
regularly while Ella had spent seven months as a nursing aide. They spent their first six months in the Northern
Territory in Darwin during which time both suffered dengue fever but in April 1928, they set out for Milingimbi,
where they had been posted, in the mission’s coastal lugger. Harold’s first job was to set up the sawmill. For a year,
they shared a home with Reverend T T Webb and his family while Harold built their own home of corrugated iron
and cypress pine in time he could spare from other duties. In the meantime, Ella discovered that her meagre nursing
experience was to be tested on some 500 Aborigines. She brought much relief with the aid of simple remedies such
as castor oil and eucalyptus oil and had considerable success with bismuth tartrate in treating the sores with which
many Aborigines were afflicted.
They took their first furlough in late November 1930 but it was far from relaxing. Harold began to learn
to fly at Parafield and as they were able to obtain a pedal wireless, not only did he learn its technicalities from
Alfred Traeger himself, but also they both learnt Morse. Harold was later described by the base operator at
Cloncurry, Queensland, as the most competent transmitter in the area. To Harold fell the task of informing the
police about the infamous Caledon Bay murders and their tragic aftermath.
In March 1932, a small boat was launched at Milingimbi to aid communications along the coast. It was built by
Harold and named after his father George Urquhart. A new church was built at Milingimbi in 1934 and he spent
September to December 1935 erecting the basic structures for a new mission at Yirrkala. In 1938, he gave up part
of his furlough to return there to install a large water storage tank.
Harold obtained his flying licence in Adelaide at the end of 1934 but benefiting from the preliminary training
he had received in 1930, he had already flown a Heath Parasol single seater aeroplane that had taken him two years
in his spare time to build. In 1936, funds were inveigled out of the Mission Board for a two-seater Miles Hawk
aircraft. Harold, on his own expense, travelled to Adelaide and flew it back to Milingimbi. This crashed trying
to take off from Groote Eylandt after only six months but not before the daughter of a missionary at Goulburn
Island had been evacuated to Darwin for treatment after a fall. The aircraft was sent to Brisbane to be repaired
but was totally destroyed when fire swept through the hangar. It was not until 1947 that the means were available
to purchase another aircraft. The first was a Tiger Moth bought from a disposal store. Thereafter Harold was not
without an aircraft, the last being a Cessna.
The outbreak of war brought many changes and in 1942, Milingimbi became a Royal Australian Air Force base
so it became necessary to move the mission to a safer place. All the mission families were evacuated, with the
exception of Ella Shepherdson, who resolutely refused to leave. A temporary hideout was set up at the mouth of
the Wulun River and for a few months until the new settlement at Elcho Island was ready, she lived alone with a
few faithful Aborigines. The move to Elcho Island was completed in August 1942, although it had been seen as a
desirable situation for more than a decade. Milingimbi was flat and the soil was poor. Elcho offered some slopes,
better water and better soil. There they both remained for the duration of the war and only then took a long furlough
to the south. It is for their association with this mission that the Shepherdsons are best remembered.
In 1943 Ella began a small correspondence school which she ran until a trained teacher arrived in 1953.
She continued to teach older girls some basic nursing and domestic arts and Harold, now in charge of the
mission, preached and oversaw the training of the young men in practical carpentry and saw milling. A small
prosperous fishing industry was also set up. Once it was firmly established, Elcho Island had a population of about
1 000 Aborigines with 500 of school age.
In the post war years, Harold encouraged the development of a number of ‘outstations’ so that groups could
stay in their own areas while still being associated with the mission. It was thought that these outposts would
‘arrest the drift to Darwin’, as Maisie McKenzie put it. By then universally known as Bapa, Harold flew to