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the post–Cyclone community. During this time as Mayor, she was also a member of the Darwin Reconstruction
Commission.
Ella Stack had been an Alderman of the Darwin City Council since 1969, and, in May 1975, she was elected
to the position of Mayor of Darwin. She was re-elected in 1978 and proclaimed the first Lord Mayor of Darwin in
1979 that also gave her the honour of being the first female Lord Mayor of an Australian capital city. The Darwin
City Council noted that when Lord Mayoralty status was conferred upon Darwin in 1979, Dr Stack was measured
for the Lord Mayoral robes, which were to be made up in London. Hence, the Darwin Lord Mayoral robes fitted a
person 155 centimetres in height.
Dr Stack had become Mayor in order to help fulfil her desire to see Darwin rebuilt after Cyclone Tracy. She was
made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1979 for her services to the community. In 1980,
she retired from Council when she was satisfied that the redevelopment of the city was progressing well. She was
made a Freeman of the City of Darwin in 1989.
In 1981, Stack returned to the University of Sydney, where she completed a Master of Public Health degree.
After returning to Darwin in 1982, she was appointed to work with the Health Department on Aboriginal Health
programs. She was appointed Secretary of the Northern Territory Department of Health in 1985, and in 1987,
preferring medical work to administration; she became the Department’s Chief Medical Officer.
During her medical career in the Northern Territory, Dr Stack was instrumental in starting the Trachoma Control
Committee, the Communicable Diseases Centre, the Aboriginal Ear Health Committee, Banyan House for drug
rehabilitation and was involved with the establishment of the Menzies School of Health Research. An initiative for
which she remained particularly proud was the Aboriginal Pharmacopoeia project that resulted in an impressive
publication from the collaborative efforts of Aboriginal knowledge and scientific research.
Dr Stack was a member of the St John Ambulance Council, 1974–1989, of which she became a Commander
Sister; a member of the Medical Registration Board of the Northern Territory, 1974–1989; a member of the
Board of the Menzies School of Health Research, 1984–1989; and a member of the National Health and Medical
Research Council, 1985–1989. She was a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of General Practitioners; a
Fellow of the Australian College of Occupational Medicine; and a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of
Medical Administrators.
During her time in the Northern Territory, Dr Stack was also involved in many community based organisations,
and either chaired or was a member of several committees including the National Australia Day Committee,
1979–1989; the Northern Territory Australia Day Council, 1984–1989; the Northern Territory Local Government
Association, the Darwin Bougainvillea Festival Committee, the Darwin City Council Building and Reserves
Committee, 1972–1975; the inaugural Darwin Community College Council, 1973–1975; the Northern Territory
Council of the Australian Bicentennial Authority, 1980–1989; the Northern Territory Anti-Cancer Foundation
and the National Women’s Advisory Council. During the early 1980s she was a also a member of Chief Minister
Paul Everingham’s Territory Railway Action Committee (TRAC) which promoted the establishment of the
north–south railway.
Dr Stack wrote about many public health and community issues and often commented publicly about
controversial issues. She was notably outspoken in opposition to the use of abortion as a means of contraception.
Throughout her life and career, she had stood for the rights of women, having experienced and witnessed the
exclusion of women from professional and other opportunities. She was known as a straightforward person with
a strong will who worked to get the job done. Her dedication to the Northern Territory, particularly after Cyclone
Tracy, gave her national recognition and throughout this time, she maintained a high profile in the community.
In October 1989, she retired with her husband Tom Lawler to a farming property outside of Moruya on the
south coast of New South Wales. Her interests included reading, music, golf, the farm, and being near to their
children and grandchildren.
Darwin City Council Record of Aldermen and Mayors, 1957–1990; family information; Northern Territory News, 10 December 1989; E Stack,
Aboriginal Pharmacopoeia, Occasional Paper no 10, Northern Territory Library Service, 1988; Transcript of Speech by A Fong Lim, Lord
Mayor of Darwin, at a civic reception for E Stack, 27 October 1989; Who’s Who in Australia, 1991.
GREG COLEMAN, Vol 3.
STANDLEY, IDA (1869–1948), schoolteacher, was born in Adelaide, the daughter of Mr and Mrs H Woodcock,
financiers of Kermode Street, North Adelaide. She was educated at Hardwicke College and Miss Tilley’s Private
School. She married George Standley of Mount Wudinna Station and from 1897 taught in the Education Department
schools at Bootby, Franklin Harbour and then at Gawler River. In 1914, she was lent by the department to go to
Stuart (Alice Springs) and was met at Oodnadatta by a police escort, Sonny Kunoth.
The town of Stuart waited 25 years from the time it was surveyed until its first school opened in 1914.
Ida Standley was the first teacher. She left her family in South Australia to work in unpromising conditions in a
small stone building behind the town gaol. The school was planned initially to cater for white children. However,
it was her work with Aboriginal children of mixed descent—in those days called ‘half-castes’—for which she
would become famed in the Territory.
The Commonwealth government, when it took control of the Northern Territory in 1911, inherited a deep
concern about ‘the half-caste problem’. So, it was that the Commonwealth Act of 1911 made the Chief Protector
of Aborigines the legal guardian of every Aborigine and half-caste, any of whom he could take into his custody.
The government acted, in 1912, on Baldwin Spencer’s recommendation that half-caste children be separated
from their mothers and housed and educated in Darwin’s Kahlin Compound; the school opened in 1913. In his
report on the Aboriginals Department for 1913, W G Stretton was ‘impressed by the large number of half-caste,