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COLLEY, ALFRED EDWARD (ALF) (1919– ), ‘bushie’ and crocodile shooter, was born on 6 October 1919
at Mailang, South Australia, the fourth of seven children of Alfred Colley and his wife Gertrude, nee Balderstone.
Alfred, senior, was a farm labourer and the family moved several times before settling at Balhannah, where young
Alf spent his boyhood. His first job after leaving school was cutting wood into one and a half metre lengths to fire
the furnace at Chapman’s Bacon factory at Nairne, South Australia. He then tried cleaning runners (intestines)
for sausages and cutting up lard for packaging but found he preferred the work outside and went back to wood
cutting. Later he had a job at Woodside helping with a dairy and with potato growing before he decided to travel
to the Northern Territory where he believed job prospects might be better. When he was 15 he lost the sight in his
left eye through an accident.
Alf had two aunts, his father’s sisters, in Darwin; Olive Wickham and Elsie Cox whose husband was a fettler
on the railways. There was also another uncle, Arthur Colley, who had a fishing camp at Shoal Bay but he left no
descendants. (The Colley name has been in the Territory record since 1875). Alf Colley arrived in the Territory
in 1939 having flown on the ‘milk run’ with Guinea Airways. At that time the trip required an overnight stop in
Alice Springs.
He obtained work with Gascoyne Brothers who were then building the Darwin hospital. The company also
had contracts for the Commonwealth Bank and the Hotel Darwin, then also in the course of erection. Once the
Second World War had started life began to get increasingly difficult for the residents of the north, as the military
took over more and more. Alf was refused permission to join up as his eye rendered him unfit for service though
he later became a ‘superb shot’ and many of his friends did not realise he only had sight in one eye. He refused an
offer to return to Salisbury, South Australia, with the company and went cutting wood for Harry Farrer, husband
of his cousin, Olive, nee Wickham.
Wood was cut into three quarters of a metre lengths for trains, which Alf and his uncle cut at the 10 Mile and
took to the railway yards at Salonika. On 19 February 1942 Alf was cutting wood at Holmes’ slaughter yard in the
vicinity of Bishop Street. He turned off the engine and became aware of the noise from the wharf area. He observed
aircraft strafing the town and heard the boom, which he realised later, was Neptuna exploding.
With all civilians being evacuated, he accompanied Harry and Olive Farrer and their children to Ban Ban
Station where Harry’s parents, Bob and Phoebe lived. He then assisted with the evacuation of Aboriginal children
from Oenpelli to the railway at Pine Creek. He stayed in the north during the war, mustered cattle for the Army in
the Adelaide River area and worked for the Byrne Brothers at Tipperary.
At war’s end Alf tried peanut growing on the Daly River but that didn’t turn out well so in 1947 he went
crocodile shooting. Often he shared a camp with Harold Knowles who shot buffalo. Alf’s equipment consisted
of a .303 rifle and a flat-bottomed tin boat framed up on a water pipe. He had put this together on the Daly, using
discarded water pipe and three sheets of flat tin he had found on the Stuart Highway. The boat was three metres
long and just over a metre wide and drew 45 centimetres. Originally he soldered the seams, but putting it in and
out of his truck cracked the seams so he put melted bitumen in the joints instead. A spotlight was mounted, as he
needed to get close enough to shoot the animal and thrust in a bamboo harpoon before it began to roll. As soon as
he could he took the spear out and pulled the croc (about three metres long) by the tail into the boat. Alf says ‘when
it got to the back leg it was easy to flip over into the boat’. His word has to be taken for that!!
At other times he baited a large barramundi hook with a hunk of meat and tied it with four and half metres of
cotton sash cord to a 198 litres drum. When he spotted the drum moving he would wait until the crocodile surfaced
and then shoot. The biggest crocodile he got by this method was at Shady Camp and measured over five metres.
He then used his truck, a four wheel drive Blitz bought at a disposal sale for 70 Pounds, to pull the crocodile out
of the water. The skins were sold to Jolly’s store in Darwin or to Roy Edwards of Newcastle Waters Station who
had an export business.
In the wet season of 1952 Alf went to Grove Hill, staying in one of the rooms of the old hotel. He worked on his
truck in a shed at the back. Early in 1953 he applied for a Garden Area Lease at Saunders Creek on which he built
a house and developed a garden. On 11 April 1954 he went to town accompanied by Harold Knowles, who had
come in from Point Stuart. Alf took in a load of pumpkins and they left Harold’s truck at the block. A flood after
381 millimetres of rain swept away the house, about half a hectare of peanuts, potatoes and pumpkins as well as the
truck. After that Alf shifted to a Garden Area Lease at Ban Ban about five kilometres from the Grove Hill Hotel.
The publican was Margaret Lucy, senior. After her husband, Bill, died on 25 February 1956 Alf helped the
family as he had promised Bill he would do. Alf took on the job of renovating the hotel to bring it to the standard
required by the licensing laws. He also made numerous small items of furniture, handmade metal ashtrays, a can
piercing device and a bottle capper, which are illustrative of his ingenuity and dexterity. Mrs Lucy was hospitalised
early in 1972 and died on 18 August 1972 shortly after Margaret (known as Gret) was diagnosed with meningitis.
This left her severely handicapped and blind. Her brother, Bill, a known alcoholic, took over the pub but things
became so bad that the Adelaide River police at Alf’s request closed it. Conscious of his promise to her father,
Alf took over the care of Margaret, who was largely wheelchair bound, at Grove Hill. He did the cooking, cleaning
and the gardening. There was a good orchard of citrus trees and vegetables were always grown. He also did small
repairs for people in the area. They lived on the pensions each received. While in Darwin for a medical check in
1975 soon after Cyclone Tracy it was decided that Margaret should be evacuated to a nursing home in Sydney.
Alf visited her later in the year but she became so distressed that he began to pester the authorities, helped by
Peter Dermoudy, to have her returned.
She returned to Alf’s care and died at Grove Hill on 13 September 1984. Her brother, Des, inherited the hotel.
Alf returned to live on his lease in a caravan at Ban Ban. He lost everything when a gas refrigerator he was trying to