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WHITTLE, WILFORD WILLIAM (1892–1964), army officer, was born in August 1892; his family and
education details are unknown.
In March 1912, Whittle entered the Royal Australian Garrison Artillery as a Lieutenant, before attending the
ATT Special School of Instruction at Albury in May. From July 1912 until June 1913, he attended several military
courses, including a master gunner’s course. In 1914, he was posted to 2nd Military District and in April 1915 to
5th Military District at Fremantle, Western Australia.
In May 1915, Whittle joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) as a Lieutenant in the Siege Brigade of the
54th Battery, remaining there until October 1916, when he joined the 3rd Australian Siege Battery. One year later
Whittle was in France, having attained the rank of Captain, as Adjutant in the 36th Heavy Artillery Group. He held
this position until October 1918. In February 1919, his AIF appointment ended.
In January of the same year, Whittle was promoted to Brevet Major and, in February, attended a course at the
Ordnance College at Woolwich, in the UK. In October 1920, he transferred to the Staff Corps. In January 1921,
Whittle was appointed Inspecting Ordnance Officer of 3rd Military District where he remained for two years.
He then took the position of Inspecting Ordnance Officer, Southwest area. While holding this position, he was
promoted to the rank of Major, Staff Corps.
In January 1932, Whittle transferred to become Staff Officer, Equipment, at Army Headquarters. In January
1936, he was promoted Lieutenant Colonel and two months later was appointed to command the Darwin garrison
in place of Lieutenant Colonel C A Clowes. There he remained until March 1939.
He held the Darwin command at a time of increasing world tension as Japan and Germany built up their military
strength—and a time of frustration for advocates of north Australian defence as the Australian government, faced
with a national economy which was still recovering slowly from the devastating depression of the early 1930s,
remained reluctant to provide adequate defence funds. In 1936, the Darwin garrison consisted of four officers and
eighty-four other ranks. As the Northern Standard observed in 1937, the town was ‘merely a death trap for the
garrison which could not fight a bigger force than a cruiser’s landing party’.
The first major military support for the Darwin garrison, 11 officers and 220 other ranks of the Darwin Mobile
Force, under the command of Major A B MacDonald, did not arrive until March 1939, the same month that
Whittle left the town. Assessed as ‘staid, somewhat slow and deliberate, but sound in judgment’, Whittle had need
of all these qualities in holding the Darwin command at a difficult time. His service was recognised in transfer to
command of 2 Heavy Brigade (Victoria) in March 1939 and promotion to Colonel, Staff Corps, in November of
that year. He held ordnance posts in Australia during and after the Second World War, with promotion to Brigadier
(November 1940), temporary Major General (January 1947) and reversion to permanent rank in October 1948.
In May 1946, he was appointed Acting Master General of the Ordnance and 4th Military Member of the Military
Board. He was confirmed in this post in February 1947. He retired with the honorary rank of Major General at the
end of 1948.
Whittle died in Melbourne on 17 June 1964, survived by his wife, Marie, a son and a daughter.
A Powell, The Shadow’s Edge, 1988; Who’s Who in Australia, 1950; Melbourne Age, 19 June 1964, 22 June 1964; ADB file; Australian Military
and Army Orders and Gazette Notices; AWM card index, 1914–18 & 1939–45 war, personnel; Gradation List of Officers of the AMF, vol 1,
March 1946.
J HAYDON, Vol 1.
WICKHAM, JOHN CLEMENTS (1798–1864), naval surveyor, explorer and colonial administrator, was born
at Leith in Scotland on 21 December 1798, the third child of Captain Samuel Wickham, of the Royal Navy, and
his wife Ellen. He entered the Royal Naval College in February 1812, and in 1815 joined HMS Nightingale as a
Midshipman. Wickham served as lieutenant in HMS Adventure under the command of Captain Phillip Parker King
in the expedition with HMS Beagle to survey South American waters between the years 1826 and 1830. He next
served as First Lieutenant in Beagle from 1831 to 1836 in the furtherance of that work.
In January 1837, Wickham was advanced to the rank of Commander and appointed Captain and Surveyor of
Beagle, prior to her voyage to Australia. For that voyage, Lieutenant John Lort Stokes was appointed Assistant
Surveyor, and from 1837 to 1841, during the partnership of Wickham and Stokes, much hydrographic and scientific
work was completed in Australian waters.
In the summer of 1838–39 Wickham surveyed the western entrance to Bass Strait, and in July 1839 visited
the newly established settlement at Port Essington on the north coast of Australia. From Port Essington Beagle
sailed westward to make three important discoveries: the Adelaide River, Port Darwin and the Victoria River.
Wickham led the first boat expeditions up those two rivers, and in September 1839 while Beagle was at anchor in
Port Darwin with parties surveying its waters, Wickham explored westward in his gig and discovered, charted and
named Bynoe Harbour.
During the months of October, November and December 1839, for a period of over six weeks, Beagle lay
at anchor in Holdfast Reach in the Victoria River, where the men suffered severely from the great heat, leading
Wickham to state that the riverine country of the Victoria would never be of much use to Anglo-Saxons without
the use of coloured labour to develop it.
Wickham’s hard years of service and recurrent attacks of dysentery so undermined his health that in 1841 he
was invalided in Sydney, took passage to England at his own expense, and was placed on half pay. In 1842 he
returned to Australia in HMS Fly, and on 27 October that year he married Anna MacArthur, daughter of Hannibal
Hawkins MacArthur, in St John’s Church, Parramatta. At that period of his life, Wickham was a man of medium
build, with regular features, blue eyes, a slightly aquiline nose and thinning hair. The colonial matrons thought him