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I Mudie, The Heroic Journey of John McDouall Stuart, 1968; J M Stuart, The Exploration of Australia, 1864; M Webster, John McDouall
Stuart, 1958; Adelaide Advertiser; SAPP, recording Stuart’s expeditions of 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861 and 1862.
EDWARD STOKES, Vol 1.STUTTERD, LOUIS NORMAN (1880–1953), mine manager, was born on 26 January 1880 at Wynyard,
Tasmania, son of Benjamin Gardner Stutterd and Elizabeth, nee Borradale. He attended primary schools at
Wynyard and Ulverstone in Tasmania and Essendon, Victoria. At 13, he became a pupil of Gurney’s Private
School in Ulverstone. On leaving school at 15 Stutterd moved to Sydney to take up an apprenticeship as an
electrical engineer with Watts & Vernon. He stayed with this company for less than a year before he moved to
Hillgrove, New South Wales. There he gained experience in the treatment of gold and antimony ore, beginning a
long and successful career in mining.
Returning to Tasmania in 1900, he spent the next 15 years working in a number of silver and tin mining
treatment plants throughout the state. In 1903 at the age of 23, he began formal training at the Zeehan School of
Mines, Tasmania where he earned a first class Diploma in Metallurgy.
During the late 1890s and early 1900s, Australia experienced a mining boom. Trained mining specialists
were in demand as they revolutionised the mining industry throughout the world. Many, like Stutterd, worked
in the mining industry by day and studied at night. These specialists were a product of the new efficiency and
increased production taking place in an industry that was rapidly moving away from the crude and ineffective
mining techniques of the nineteenth century. In May 1914, Stutterd travelled to the Northern Territory to take up
the position of mine manager at the newly discovered Maranboy tin field near Katherine.
Stutterd was well experienced as a mining manager, having designed and erected batteries and concentrating
plants in both Tasmania and Queensland. He was employed by the Commonwealth Government to redesign and
erect the long awaited and desperately needed 10-head stamper and tin-concentrating plant to treat the unusually
hard tin ores found at Maranboy. Despite his previous experience, Stutterd was to find that his position as the
manager and construction engineer for the extensive plant and infrastructure to be transported to Maranboy from
Darwin fraught with obstacles. Rough terrain, climatic changes and distance from the railhead made his first task
of moving 260 tons of heavy plant machinery from Pine Creek to Maranboy difficult. After numerous setbacks, the
battery and plant were finally completed along with a house for his family. His professionalism and competence in
overseeing this huge task prompted the Director of Mines to comment that ‘the battery reflects the greatest credit
on Mr Stutterd’s abilities’. He later designed mills for Hayes Creek and Hidden Valley tin fields and was to carry
out much of the Commonwealth’s mining construction work in the Territory.
Stutterd, as a product of the new breed of mining managers, often came into conflict with miners over the
inefficient and primitive mining methods used by the tin gougers. The miners often made very optimistic estimates
of the tin content of their hard won ore and consequently blamed the manager for poor returns from the processing
plant. Before the advent of large mining companies, most claims in the Northern Territory and particularly at
Maranboy, were owned and operated by individuals or small syndicates working on meagre budgets, often with
government assistance. Although Maranboy was the chief producer of tin in the Northern Territory between 1916
and 1954, the field was always a ‘poor man’s field’. Stutterd received much praise for his professional and technical
ability, but sometimes his personality and lack of patience in his dealings with miners both at Maranboy and at
Tennant Creek caused hostility and animosity. The Maranboy correspondent to the Northern Territory Times and
Gazette ensured that these criticisms were widely aired. Subsequent mining managers at Maranboy came in for
the same criticism.
While stationed at Maranboy Stutterd’s duties were many and varied. He continued his work as the mining
manager and was also superintendent of bores and was responsible for maintaining government bores on the
Telegraph line between Bitter Springs and Newcastle Waters. In 1935, he was briefly acting Director of Mines.
That same year he was promoted from manager to the position of Mining Warden and Inspector of Mines on
the Tennant Creek goldfield. In 1936 while holding the office of Special Magistrate at Tennant Creek, he was
appointed Commissioner of the Supreme Court of Queensland. Stutterd was transferred back to Maranboy in 1940
to continue his duties as manager of the battery.
On 27 July 1905 at St Mark’s Church, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Louis Stutterd married Agnes Ethel Keating, the
daughter of John Keating and Mary Josephine, nee MacMahan, who was born in 1881 in Fitzroy. Ethel (as she was
known) was a wardrobe mistress for J C Williamson’s theatrical company. She shared her husband’s fondness of
adventure and the bush. She was independent and accustomed to travelling both before her marriage, and after with
her family throughout various mining fields in Tasmania and Queensland. In 1915, on completion of their home at
Maranboy, Ethel Stutterd travelled to the Northern Territory with her three young daughters to join her husband.
Norma was aged 10, Fay was eight and Audrey three years of age. A son, John, was born in 1923.
Life at the small, isolated community of Maranboy was not easy for the mother of small children. Stutterd’s
work meant that he spent little time at home and he was often away for long periods checking bores. As the local
magistrate, Stutterd also spent time at the police station hearing cases. Nonetheless, like many other women on the
mining field, Ethel adapted to her lifestyle and the hardships of isolated living.
Fay and Norma were sent interstate to school in Brisbane in 1916 and did not return to Maranboy until 1923,
when their brother John was born. After the girls left an outbreak of malaria devastated the small community.
Tragically the Stutterd’s youngest daughter, Audrey, died from the disease at the age of four. Another small child
and several adults also succumbed. Louis Stutterd lay unconscious for five days. The nearest medical help was in
Pine Creek so Ethel was virtually alone with the responsibility of nursing her sick family and coping with the grief
of losing her youngest daughter. Some years later Ethel also contracted the disease.