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Skelton continued to practice what he preached and in June 1881 aroused the ire of some townsfolk when he
wrote an editorial, under the heading of ‘Our Annual Visitation’, about Aboriginal women being brought to town
for the purpose of prostitution. V L Solomon and Foelsche among others were horrified at such matters being aired
publicly and withdrew their subscriptions. Others, however, who believed the reaction was hypocritical in a small
town where everyone knew the marital misdeeds of all, quickly took subscriptions themselves. It was a storm in a
teacup as not only was Solomon to become one of Skelton’s executors but he also became Editor and owner of the
Northern Territory Times and Gazette.
From the beginning, Skelton was interested in the development of the Territory and in November 1873 called
a public meeting to discuss the unsatisfactory mining regulations then being implemented. In the complaints
that followed the South Australian, government arbitrarily closed the Mining Warden’s Court and Skelton was a
signatory to the petition that protested against this action. He also signed a memorial petitioning for a gold escort
in 1876. In 1879, he was a member of the Hospital Management Board and was appointed a member of the first
School Board of Advice in 1880. His interest in the Palmerston Institute, which ran the library, was in keeping with
his newspaper business. He was on the first committee in 1878 and elected President in 1883. The cost of telegrams
was a running sore between the townsfolk and the South Australian government for years. The government’s
response was that as the Port Darwin line worked at a loss it could not ‘afford to be very generous’. Skelton and
his colleagues were told that they should club together to receive news at press rates. Again, in 1884 in a further
petition on telegraph rates Skelton was the first signatory.
He was always concerned to foster improvements in the lifestyle of those in the north. He was an enthusiastic
gardener and encouraged the planting of trees. His orange trees were the first to bear in Palmerston and he had
some success with cotton in his home garden.
Joseph Skelton died in Sydney on 25 April 1884 at the age of 61 from ‘general debility’. He had been ill for
some months and was eventually induced to travel to Sydney for medical treatment only weeks before his death.
He was one of the most prominent figures of his day and the half column obituary in the Northern Territory
Times and Gazette was not stinting in its praise. ‘He was’, the columnist averred, ‘a man possessed of plenty of
shrewdness, observance and extremely strong opinions of his own, and was generally respected by all those who
really knew him. Invariably honest in public and charitable movements, he both wrote and spoke strongly upon
public questions.’ On the other hand, W J Sowden, who accompanied a parliamentary party to the north in 1882,
considered him eccentric. But the editor of any small town Australian newspaper in the late 19th century was the
public voice of the hopes and fears of its residents, and any eccentricity was surely a reflection of the stop and go
policies of the South Australian government.
He left a comparatively large estate of 1 500 Pounds and by his Will directed that his wife, Maria, be paid three
Pounds a week for life by his trustees. She died at Corryton near Magill in South Australia on 9 November 1903.
Two children are thought to have predeceased him but nothing else is known of his family. He left legacies of
35 Guineas to his trustees H H Adcock and V L Solomon, (together with provision for appropriate remuneration
to the latter for any literary work in connection with the newspaper). The Palmerston land was not to be sold for at
least 10 years and appears to have been administered by trustees until 1938. One third of his residuary estate went
to his wife and the balance to the children of John Skelton, a farmer in Kent, England, who may have been a son.
D Lockwood, The Front Door, 1969: W J Sowden, The Northern Territory as It Is, 1882; North Australian, 5 September 1887; various issues of
Northern Territory Times and Gazette, particularly 7 November 1873, 15 September 1877, 27 January 1883, 3 May 1884, 11 December 1908;
Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April 1884; New South Wales Births, Deaths and Marriages, 84 000783; South Australian Probate Records; State
Records of South Australia, GRS 1- 62/1874, 103/1876, 68/1878, 396/1878, 182/1880, 485/1880, 196/1881, 384/1881, 688/1881, 178/1884.
HELEN J WILSON, Vol 2.SLADE, JOHN (JACK) (1915–1990), aviator, was born in Melbourne on 21 June 1915, the only child of a
carpenter and his wife. Slade followed in his father’s footsteps and studied carpentry at Swinburne College,
Glen Iris, Victoria. When war broke out, he joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and trained at
Point Cook. He was a big man, both tall and broad.
Flight Lieutenant Slade was posted to the Northern Territory late in 1942. He travelled overland by truck and
train to Manbulloo Station to join Six Communications Unit under the direction of Wing Commander Clyde Fenton
of flying doctor fame. This unit carried the mail and supplies to all the isolated outposts and were often involved in
search and rescue operations. The Unit transferred to Batchelor on 25 February 1943 on the same day as the enemy
bombed the new RAAF Medical Receiving Station at Coomalie Creek.
In May 1943 the RAAF base at Milingimbi Mission was bombed. A barge loaded with aviation fuel was sunk
and the medical centre and the church were destroyed. Slade landed just after the raid and had to race to a slit trench
when the bombers returned. After the raid a fitter helped repair the bullet holes in the RAAF Dragon and Slade flew
two wounded men to Coomalie Creek. On 24 May 1943, during a flight to Goulburn Island in the Dragon bi-plane,
Slade noticed a suspicious looking sampan at the mouth of Sandy Creek on the mainland. He had no radio so, after
delivering his load, he came back for a closer look, tipped the top of a tree and crashed. The visitors were Dutch
servicemen who had escaped from Timor; they laid the unconscious pilot under the shade of a tree and contacted
Darwin on their radio. The operator in Darwin refused to accept any message not in official code. One Dutchman,
a sailor, knew an old Dutch navy code and used that; it had to be sent to Melbourne to be decoded. A whole day
later Clyde Fenton received the news and made a beach landing to rescue his pilot. Slade had a fractured skull and
a fractured leg. He spent the next eight weeks in the Medical Receiving Station at Coomalie Creek before being
transferred to a hospital in Melbourne.