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Daughter Fay recalls her mother’s self-sufficiency and diligence in organising her family’s domestic life,
an essential quality for women living a great distance from facilities. Their main stores were purchased once a
year from Burns Philp in Brisbane. As a professional dressmaker, and with the help of catalogues and magazines,
she could design stylish clothes for her teenage daughters thus keeping up with fashions. Despite Maranboy’s
remoteness, she enjoyed cooking and entertaining for the many visitors who passed through. In the late 1920s,
groups of people from Katherine would make the three-hour drive out for a weekend of parties and to play tennis
on the ant bed court at Maranboy. Two young men who enjoyed the Stutterd’s hospitality were engineers with
the North Australia Commission, George Thornthwaite and Frank Shepherd, who were to marry Norma and Fay
Stutterd. Sadly, the fair-headed Frank Shepherd who married Fay and became the Chief Surveyor of the Northern
Territory died in 1939 of melanoma, after only eight years of marriage.
Louis Stutterd was a keen photographer and documented the erection of the battery and plant at Maranboy.
He enjoyed hunting and fishing in the surrounding countryside, and was considered a good bushman. He is
mentioned in several books including Tom Ronan’s Packhorse and Pearling Boat and HV Clarke’s The Long
Arm. In 1927, the family spent four months on long service leave on a driving/camping tour to Melbourne, Louis’
first visit south in 11 years. The Melbourne Argus described the tour and Ethel’s enthusiasm for travelling in their
T Model Ford overland. However, their teenage daughters did not share their parent’s excitement for this mode
of travelling.
Due to a stroke in 1944 at the age of 64, Louis Stutterd retired after 30 years in the Northern Territory mining
industry. He and Ethel bought the Sportsman’s Arms at Katherine, where they lived out the rest of their lives.
Ethel Stutterd died on 6 April 1952 and Louis on 3 December 1953. They are buried together at Katherine
Cemetery. There is a street in Katherine named after Louis Stutterd in recognition of his contribution to mining in
the Northern Territory.
Australian Archives, Northern Territory, CRS A3 NT20/1871; G Blainey, The Rush that Never Ended, rev ed, 1993; H V Clarke, The Long Arm,
1974; Family information from J L Stutterd; S Harlow ‘A Social History of Mining at Maranboy, 1913–1962’, BA (Hons) Thesis, Northern
Territory University, 1992; Northern Territory Archives Service, NTRS 226 TS118; Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 15 March 1919;
T Ronan, Packhorse and Pearling Boat, 1964.
SUE HARLOW, Vol 3.
STYLES, EILEEN MARJORY: see FITZER, EILEEN MARJORY
SULLIVAN, WILLIAM JAMES (BILL) (1906–1977), local government officer, was born in Toowoomba,
Queensland, on 21 February 1906. After a basic education in Brisbane, he worked in a variety of jobs, including
a stint as a railway fireman in north Queensland. In 1933, he took up a position as a clerk in the Main Roads
Department. Shortly after his marriage to Jean Neville (who resided in Darwin after his death) in 1935, he was
transferred to Townsville where he began studies to obtain local government qualifications. He gained his Clerk’s
Certificate in 1942. Sullivan’s long service in Queensland local government commenced in the Hinchinbrook
Shire Council in 1938. From 1942 until 1959, he held Clerk’s postings successively in Hughenden, Emerald,
Camooweal and Cloncurry.
In November 1959 he was appointed the first Deputy Town Clerk in the infant Darwin City Council and in
August 1960, following the abrupt departure of the incumbent, became (and without national advertisement) Town
Clerk. He was to remain in that position until his retirement in March 1974.
Representative local government had been restored in Darwin only in July 1957; Sullivan joined the Council
at a time of considerable confusion and controversy about the Council’s functions and structure. Although he
played a relatively minor role in the reorganisation and stabilisation process of the early 1960s, by the middle of
the decade he had developed a commanding presence. In his last 10 years as Clerk Sullivan virtually dominated
the Council’s business and identity. Tough-minded and plain speaking he was able to impose discipline on both
his staff and the elected members. Through his thorough understanding of Council activities, the advantage of
full-time occupancy (as against the part-time status of the elected members) and the close relationships he forged
with successive Mayors and pivotal aldermen, he established open control of Council. Sullivan was widely seen as
an unelected alderman and the personification of Darwin’s local government.
Sullivan’s administrative style was autocratic; he was extremely suspicious of delegation and his authority
was keenly applied throughout the whole of the Council’s management system. But his enormous capacity for
hard work and his personal fairness won him general respect from his staff, from whom he demanded equal
commitment. Concern for punctuality, albeit sometimes obsessive, was seen as a hallmark of the Sullivan era. In
many ways, Sullivan represented the traditional Town Clerk in Australian local government and, by the end of his
career, was uncomfortable with the changing municipal context, particularly the moves to more democratic and
accountable administration, the expansion of community functions and new management imperatives.
After failing to be granted an extra period of employment (he had served a further year as Clerk after his
normal retirement age), he left the Council on a rather sour note. In later newspaper letters and comments, he
sometimes expressed his concern at the new (and, to him, misguided) directions in which the Council was heading.
Bill Sullivan died on 4 July 1977 at the age of 71.
There is no doubt that Sullivan made a large and valuable contribution to local government in Darwin.
During his time as Clerk the Darwin City Council became firmly established and most of its early achievements
bore the stamp of the man who still remains Darwin’s longest serving Town Clerk.