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had dropped into the Residency at Alice Springs to say goodbye before ‘going up the road’. Wells’s informality is
shown by an incident in 1943 when Constable McFarland, while driving the judge from Alice Springs to Darwin,
served a summons on a man who protested he had neither the time nor the fuel to drive to court in Darwin and
offered to pay his fine on the spot. The judge agreed to an immediate hearing and accepted a cheque for the fine he
imposed and shook hands with the defendant.
Wells remained in Darwin after the war living in a cottage at Parap. In 1946 he observed in his address to the
jury in a murder trial of an Aborigine from Milingimbi that, ‘The idea prevalent in the community that native
wrongdoers should not be punished by the white man’s law was sloppy sentimentality and should be discouraged.’
In 1947, he refused to hear cases until the conditions for his court in the Soldiers’ Memorial Hall in Darwin
were improved and said cases would be heard at Alice Springs. This tactic precipitated a rapid response from the
Administration, which earmarked 7 000 Pounds for a temporary courthouse in Darwin. Wells was not unmindful
of the conditions at Fannie Bay Gaol and in 1946, he refused to impose a penalty on an Aborigine called Dick who
had escaped from what the judge considered to be appalling conditions.
In February 1951, the press reported that Wells was convalescing in Sydney after having suffered a stroke that
concluded his judicial career. He spent his final years back in Darwin in the company of friends selected from
among those who had managed to avoid evacuation after February 1942 and is reputed to have despised those who
had ‘moved on’.
Wells was a strict interpreter of the law and upholder of police authority but he did seek some reforms to
serve the interests of Aborigines. His preoccupation, though, with corporal punishment as a suitable alternative to
incarceration although repugnant fitted the sentiments of white society at the time. His stubbornly held opinion as
to the unreliable nature of Aboriginal witnesses was based upon their uncertain demeanour in court made worse
by the almost total inadequacy of the interpreting services available. Pidgin English cross-examination appears to
have been as unintelligible for Aboriginal witnesses as the formal language of the law. The Japanese plaintiffs in
the ‘lugger’ cases were more than fortunate, by comparison, for having the bilingual Peter Nakashiba, who was a
model interpreter and who lacked self-doubt almost to the point of arrogance. Wells was impressed by the Japanese
who knew how to conduct themselves in the courts while the Aborigines were unaware for the most part, of what
the white man’s courts were all about.
The differences Wells had with Abbott may be traced to the time when Abbott was with the New South Wales
Police Department and Wells was a shorthand writer at the Supreme Court in New South Wales. In 1913 and
1914, while Wells was recording criminal proceedings Abbott was preparing briefs for the police prosecutors.
Moreover, Wells’s brief war service in France as a non commissioned officer had none of the glamour of Abbott’s
commissioning in the field at Gallipoli and years with the Australian Light Horse, mainly in Sinai and Palestine.
Wells had to work hard against considerable odds to gain his legal education and qualifications while Abbott seems
not to have engaged in any further study after he left the Kings School, Parramatta, at the age of 14. The least
endearing feature in Abbott’s career, in Wells’s view, was the fact that he was a politician and his appointment as
the highest civil official in Darwin was a reward for long service in the Country Party. While Wells came to judicial
office without outstanding qualifications, he still had to be proficient in his profession whereas Abbott brought only
his political skills to his appointment.
Wells died on 13 September 1954 in the Darwin hospital after a long illness. He had retired from the bench in
1952 when he had been absent from his judicial duties for almost two years following his stroke. He left an estate
of 545 Pounds. His widow, his daughter Jean Kearney, and sons Tom and Will survived him. The Roman Catholic
Bishop of Darwin conducted his funeral service on 14 September 1954.
S Downer, Patrol Indefinite, 1963; A Markus, Governing Savages, 1990; Commonwealth Law Reports, vol 52; Advertiser, 14 September
1954; Herald, 14 September 1954; Northern Standard, 1933–1951; Northern Territory News, 14 September 1954; Sydney Morning Herald,
22 August 1933; Queenslander, 9 August 1934; Australian Archives, Canberra, CRS A43/33/1892, A432/34/1477, A432/37/155, A432/41/85,
A432/41/366, A432/38/378, A432/57, A432/38/46, A432/78/758; Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra,
PMS 3524; National Library of Australia, Canberra, MS 4744/5/5.
PETER ELDER, Vol 2.WHITE, EDITH ALEXANDRA McQUADE (1901–1988), nurse, was born in Grafton, New South Wales, on
20 January 1901, the daughter of Joseph Alexander White, an accountant, and his wife Catherine Jane, nee Roberts.
Much of her girlhood was spent in South Africa and she did not return with her family to Queensland until 1919.
She commenced her nursing career at the Brisbane General Hospital in 1924, doing her Midwifery at Lady Bowen
Hospital, and later securing her Infant and Maternal Welfare Certificate. She was Matron of the Delta Private
Hospital at Ayr in north Queensland and did some private nursing as well.
White arrived in Darwin in 1937 to take up an appointment as Sister in the Darwin Hospital. After six months,
she was posted to Katherine. There she was Sister in Charge with several other duties, such as reporting daily on
the temperature to the Darwin weather office. She also had to learn how to set out kerosene flares on the aerodrome
runway for Dr Clyde Fenton, who used an aeroplane to attend patients at a distance, if he was returning after
dark. She also had the anxiety on one occasion of his non-arrival with the subsequent search for his aeroplane
and his rescue. All these memories she preserved in her booklet Reminiscences of an Australian Army Nurse.
White served, as well, for seven months in Tennant Creek. She had break when she escorted to Adelaide a young
woman who was suffering from polio to Adelaide, travelling by truck to Alice Springs and train from there to
Adelaide. At the end of the seven months she was advised that she was return to Darwin Base Hospital and, shortly
afterwards, in September 1939, she was informed that she had been appointed Staff Nurse in the Australian Army