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leaving their women at their camp. When the police found them, they handcuffed the women and, leaving Constable
Stewart McColl to guard the women, the remainder of the party set off after the men.
Later, McColl, having heard shots, took the handcuffs off Djaparri and went to investigate the shots, taking
the woman with him. She is said to have surreptitiously, advised Tuckiar by stick talk of McColl’s location and at
the critical moment, she moved out of his line of sight, allowing Tuckiar to spear him with a shovel-bladed spear.
He died almost at once.
The other police returned and buried the body in a shallow grave, from which it was recovered and buried on
Groote Eylandt, before being reburied in Darwin.
Sometime after the death of McColl, Tuckiar and Merara were persuaded by a Church Missionary Society
‘Peace Expedition’ to accompany them to Darwin. They sailed on 10 April 1934, in the cutter Oituli with the
Reverend A J Dyer, accompanied by fourteen Aborigines, amongst whom was Tuckiar, charged with murdering
McColl, and Merara, charged with murdering an unknown man. Three of these were charged with the murder of
the Japanese and others were witnesses.
On arrival at Darwin, Tuckiar and Merara were alarmed at being put into Fannie Bay Gaol, since they had no
idea that they were to be tried. The trial was described in a special supplement of the Proletarian of 8 August 1934,
as ‘one of the greatest travesties of a trial in Australia’. There were no witnesses who were capable of giving
adequate evidence. On 5 August 1934, Tuckiar was sentenced to death for the murder of McColl, although
His Honour Judge Wells, did not put on the Black Cap, nor was the sentence translated for Tuckiar.
An appeal was made to the High Court of Australia. This appeal, heard between 29 October and 8 November,
resulted in the quashing of the conviction. Tuckiar’s discharge was ordered.
On 12 November 1934, Tuckiar escaped (or disappeared) from the compound at Myilly Point. As far as can
be established, he was never seen again. Rumour had it that the police had taken their revenge upon him; but no
evidence of it has ever come to light.
There is a photograph of Tuckiar and his three wives in Keith Cole’s book, The Aborigines of Arnhem Land
(1979).
K Cole, The Aborigines of Arnhem Land, 1979; K Cole, Fred Gray of Umbakumba, 1984; S Downer, Patrol Indefinite, 1963; V C Hall,
Dreamtime Justice, 1962; I Idriess, Man Tracks, 1935 (1956); M McKenzie, Mission to Arnhem Land, 1976; G Pike, Frontier Territory, 1981;
Commonwealth Law Reports, 52, 1934; Northern Standard, 6 July—24 August 1934; Proletarian, 8 August—5 September 1934.
E W PRETTY, Vol 1.
TUCKWELL, ELIZA (1836–1921), Territory urban pioneer and midwife, and TUCKWELL, NED (1835–
1882), railway worker. Eliza was one of the ‘founding mothers’ of Darwin. She was on the first passenger ship,
Kohinoor, which arrived in January 1870 and she remained in Darwin until her death in 1921.
She was born Eliza Hemming in London in 1836, the daughter of a soldier who left Eliza’s mother widowed at
a young age and Eliza to be raised by an aunt. In 1855, she applied for a berth on the immigrant ship Norman and
came to South Australia as a domestic servant. After working in various domestic jobs around Adelaide, she met
and married Ned Tuckwell, then foreman in the Bowden Railway sheds. They were married on 21 February 1857.
During the next 10 years, they had five children, one of whom died early.
In 1864 Ned was sent with the second expedition to Escape Cliffs where he served under the Government
Resident, B T Finniss, until the latter’s departure for Adelaide in the following year. Ned then joined explorer
John McKinlay who had been sent to Escape Cliffs to report on the Finniss administration. A carpenter and
shipwright by trade, Ned played a crucial role in saving the lives of McKinlay and 14 men when they attempted to
return from the Alligator Rivers region to Escape Cliffs at the height of the 1866 rainy season. Ned helped build
a raft out of horsehides and safely navigated the frail craft along the shore of Van Diemen Gulf until it reached its
destination.
Ned returned to Adelaide when the Escape Cliffs settlement was abandoned at the end of 1866 and two years
later joined Surveyor-General George Goyder’s Moonta expedition to Port Darwin as ship’s carpenter. When the
job was completed, Eliza and their four remaining children boarded the first passenger ship to the Territory and in
January 1870 joined Ned in Palmerston.
Within the next four years, Eliza gave birth to two more children. Ned became an overseer in the government
workshops and helped to construct the first Government Residency. He later opened his own carpentry business
and built a family home in Mitchell Street in the grounds of the Commercial Hotel. Eliza demonstrated her assertive
spirit early in the piece when she advertised in the local press that she would ‘not be responsible for [her] husband’s
debts’.
When Ned died in 1882, the Northern Territory Times and Gazette praised his work and said the government
had ‘lost a good, honest, and faithful servant and one whom they [would] find difficult to replace’.
With the full responsibility of a young family now hers alone, Eliza—one of the few resident female ratepayers
in Palmerston—opened a boarding house, advertising she had ‘sleeping accommodation for four steady, respectable
young men’. Called Resolution Villa, it became her main means of income for many years, although she was also
an accomplished nurse and midwife and her services in this area were always in demand.
Eliza, a stalwart member of the Methodist Church all of her Territory life, needed all the faith and support she
could muster. By 1881, her eldest daughter Mary had lost three children and her husband, and seven years later,
she herself died of consumption.
Eliza lost her home in the 1897 cyclone which devastated Palmerston. With the help of her son-in-law,
V V Brown, one of Darwin’s most prominent citizens, she was soon back on her feet and again operating her
boarding house.