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obtained work as a drover, and for a time walked mobs down the Birdsville Track. Tiring of this he then joined the
railway staff at Maree, South Australia, working as a labourer unloading the trains.
By now, he was a man of great wiry strength, with speed and a long reach. Although he did not pick fights, he
did not back away from them either. On one occasion, when a man had been offering to take on anyone at the hotel,
the regular customers decided to give him what he asked for. They marched him down to the railway yards and
offered him a fight with Paddy Tucker. ‘Good God no’, he said, ‘That’s Paddy Tucker. Fighting him is the same as
being thrown into a hessian bag with a pack of wild cats.’
Loading and unloading trains was a hard job, and not very inspiring, so when offered the chance of taking
charge of a camel string (team) carrying the loading from Oodnadatta to Alice Springs, Paddy decided to accept.
He found that the work ideally suited him, and he soon built up his own string. However the extension of the rail
line from Oodnadatta towards, and finally to, Alice Springs meant that Paddy increasingly worked his camels
further north—invariably taking his dingo traps with him so that the dogging brought extra money.
The year 1925 found him 250 kilometres north west of the Alice, his camels hired by a stockmen hoping to
become a pastoralist; Paddy believed that they were the first outsiders to come, by sheer chance, upon the famous
and sacred Ngama ‘Snake Cave’ near present day Yuendumu. He followed this with carrying the bagged red
ochre from the Rumbalara area ochre deposits, south of Alice Springs, to Oodnadatta. Then came dogging and
prospecting out to the Granites and Mount Doreen country, upwards of 500 kilometres north west of the Alice.
Here, in 1927 to 1928, he met for the first time the Pintupi people, driven east by severe drought. And also, hearing
of the Walpiri people’s red ochre deposit, he inspected their famous site, Karku.
Early in the second week of August 1928, he was in the Coniston country, and Walpiri people whispered to him
that Fred Brooks, an old dogger, had been murdered. He urged them to scatter, and spread the word to all others
to scatter. ‘We’ll be allright’, they replied, ‘We have worked on the stations. The policemen will only shoot that
murderer man.’
But Paddy was worried. It could be different, he knew. And tragically, in the end, he was right. Thirty one
were admitted shot, and several careful estimates put the number at over 100. Paddy always believed that at least
200 men, women and children were shot, perhaps even as many as 300.
The severe drought of the late 1920s, the coming of the railway line to Alice Springs in 1929, and the Great
Depression of 1929–1933, all meant that the cameleers’ days were numbered. Although he was to continue to
obtain some work into the 1930s, Paddy’s last major job was with the CAGE (‘Lasseter’) expedition. He took
stores and fuel on his camel string out to Ayers Rock, helped in the early days of construction of an airstrip, and
was commended for taking only 11 days on the return to Alice Springs when the initial journey out had taken a
month. Later he was to return again to Ayers Rock to retrieve fuel drums and other equipment from the disastrous
expedition.
The 1920s and early 1930s had increasingly seen Paddy back in his home country of Owen Springs and
Alice Springs. During the course of these stays, he had fallen in love with Topsy Forrester (born 1911), and they
were to be married in an Anglican ceremony in the Alice. For a time Topsy joined Paddy in some of his travels
with camels, but the death of an infant on one journey, and then care of a son, Bruce, meant that she stayed at home
in the Alice.
As the years passed, Paddy took whatever jobs he could find—he was never afraid of hard work. The early
1930s found him at the Granites Goldfield; in the 1940s, he was back droving for a time, then he purchased an old
truck and—as he had before—tried a bit of prospecting at Arltunga and elsewhere. He and Topsy came to own a
nice, cool home, with a very large yard, in the southern part of Alice Springs. Here, in old age, with the dingo traps
rusting and the old truck on blocks, Paddy enjoyed a yarn. At other times, he could be found outside the Stuart
Arms, yarning with old mates like Walter Smith and Frank Sprigg.
By late 1973 Paddy was talking about the possibility of selling the house and, if the Hayes family agreed,
setting up camp on a bore on Undoolya Station. However, by the mid 1970s, after their home was sold, he and
Topsy were prevailed upon to take up residence in the Old Timers’ Home, immediately south of Alice Springs.
In mid year 1979 Paddy died. He had lived a long, hard but, as he saw it, a rewarding life. He was survived by
his wife Topsy, son Bruce (since deceased), and adopted son Desmond and family.
E Coote, Hell’s Airport, 1934; I L Idriess, Lasseter’s Last Ride, 1931; R G Kimber, Man from Arltunga, 1986; notes and tape recordings of
interviews by R G Kimber, 1971–1974.
R G KIMBER, Vol 2.TUCKIAR also spelt as DAGIER, TARKIERA (?–c1934), a leader of the nomadic Dhayyi-speaking people of
the Blue Mud Bay area in eastern Arnhem Land, was probably born in the Blue Mud Bay area, the son of parents
from the same region. He had a traditional education from the elders of his tribe. He had three known wives,
the first being Djaparri (or Yapparti).
The known story of Tuckiar’s career covers little more than two years, 1933 to 1934. He first came into
prominence during September 1932, when a police party was sent to eastern Arnhem Land after the killing of five
Japanese at Caledon, which had occurred earlier in September 1932, by the Caledon Aborigines.
Tuckiar and three other Aborigines of his tribe had killed two trepangers, Fagan and Traynor, on the beach at
Woodah Island in a dispute over women sometime in the winter of 1933.
It was not until 1 August 1933 that the police party, under Mounted Constable Ted Morey, seeking information
about the Caledon Bay killings, but not knowing of the deaths of Fagan and Traynor, arrived at Woodah Island.
Tuckiar and Merara, with guilty consciences, thought that the police had come after them and they disappeared,