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Connellan also volunteered for military service, but the authorities considered his work essential to the war
effort. This provided him with the opportunity to consolidate his service and, confident of securing extra routes,
he registered the name, Connellan Airways, on 23 July 1943.
Connellan married his long time girl friend, Evelyn Bell, at Alice Springs on 29 August 1940. The couple had
three children; Cynthia Mary, born on 25 July 1942, but who died on the following day of a cerebral haemorrhage,
Roger was born on 4 October 1944 and Christopher, on 10 July 1948. The Connellans lived for nine years in rented
accommodation in Alice Springs but as soon as possible established a home on a property immediately west of
the town aerodrome, which they named Araluen. Here Connellan established a citrus orchard to supply fresh fruit
to stations throughout the Territory and later a nursery where he grew trees and shrubs to be transplanted to his
Narwietooma Station as part of a program to develop high quality feeds for use in time of drought.
Pioneering his air services gave Connellan the opportunity to encourage the Northern Territory development
in which he passionately believed. To this end, along with E S Lackman, an Alice Springs storekeeper and
Dick Ward, a solicitor, he convened a public meeting in Alice Springs on 13 June 1944 to establish the Northern
Territory Development League. Connellan was elected Chairman of a provisional committee charged with writing
the constitution but soon quarrelled with other leaders of the League who used it as a means of pursuing a vendetta
against the Administrator, C L A Abbott. The replacement of Abbott in 1946 defused that contentious issue and
later the same year the Chifley government sought its views on the most appropriate form of self-government for
the Territory. Otherwise the League simply disappeared.
The war years also gave Connellan the opportunity to establish his pastoral station northwest of Alice Springs.
He selected the site on unoccupied crown land in 1938 but it was 1945 before he and Fred O’Keefe could acquire
the lease for Narwietooma. The death of the two O’Keefe brothers during the war allowed Connellan to acquire
the whole of the lease, but it was 1947 before the lifting of wartime restrictions permitted him to sink the first bore
on the station before moving cattle there in 1948.
In 1948 Connellan went into partnership with Ted Morey, the famed Northern Territory policeman, to promote
shooting safaris in the Top End on Wildman River Station, 115 kilometres east of Darwin. Connellan conceived
the safari idea in 1941, although he had to wait until the opening of his second air service to Borroloola on
2 May 1945 before he found the appropriate locality and a suitable partner. The first seasons were quiet affairs.
He was unable to complete an airstrip at Wildman River until the end of the first season in 1948 and a great deal
of work in providing suitable accommodation needed to be done. Before the start of the 1949 season, however,
Morey abandoned the project, forcing Connellan to purchase the lease to protect the 1 500 Pounds which he had
already spent developing the business. He took sole control of the operation from 30 June 1949, with Bob Rixon
acting as safari guide during the 1950 season. However, soon afterwards he abandoned the venture after a second
guide, Paul Becker, was killed in an accident in Darwin.
Wildman River apart, the immediate post-war years saw the consolidation and development of Connellan’s
many enterprises. He floated the bush air service as a limited company in February 1951 and was gratified that
station people and staff acquired many of the shares. Its growth could be measured by the new equipment that
was brought into operation to keep pace with the increased demand for the services. In 1947 the operation carried
249 passengers over 83 400 passenger miles, with 12.8 tonnes of freight and 18.1 tonnes of mail. Thirteen years
later, Connellan Airways flew 3 268 passengers over 1 102 000 passenger miles with 31.3 tonnes of freight and
50.4 tonnes of mail. Staff members increased from 20 in 1950 to 66 in 1960 and three years later, Connellan
Airways officially became a Regular Public Transport Operator with all the added responsibilities for schedules,
safety and maintenance that this required.
Connellan left the operation of the Airways in the hands of a manager and devoted more time to Narwietooma
in the post war years. He was persuaded to begin living there with his family in 1955 and manage the property
himself after a resident manager allowed 1 500 head of stock to perish.
Connellan was a long time member of the Executive of the Centralian Pastoralists’ Association and served a
term as President in 1950 and 1951. He stepped down from the Executive in 1954 after having been a member
for 10 years, yet continued to play an important role in the Central Australian pastoral industry. During the 1960s
Connellan finally began to reap the benefits of the great amount of effort and capital invested in Narwietooma, which
in 1961 he had consolidated into a single pastoral lease. The 12 years to 1966 were hard years on Narwietooma,
but Connellan showed that his pasture protection techniques were successful, through an increase in the numbers
of breeders. He wrote about his ideas in a small pamphlet published in March 1965, Drought Management and
Pasture Protection in Central Australia.
A succession of honours testified to Connellan’s contributions to the outback communities of Central Australia.
He received the Queen’s Coronation Medal in 1953 for his services to aviation and, four years later, in the New
Year’s Honours List of 1957 was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) ‘for services to civil
aviation in Northern and Central Australia’. He also received a singular honour from the aviation fraternity when
he was awarded the 1965 Oswald Watt Trophy for his ‘outstanding contribution to general aviation’.
Narwietooma and air service issues consumed much of his time and attention, but Connellan remained deeply
interested in federal and Territory politics, although except for his time with the Northern Territory Development
League, he always remained outside the mainstream. He never belonged to a political party for he had decided
early in his career that, if he must treat with governments, it was essential that he remain non-partisan. However,
Connellan did have his time as a parliamentarian, when in December 1965, the federal government appointed him
to the Northern Territory Legislative Council as one of its Non Official nominees. He embarked on the challenge
enthusiastically, but quickly became disillusioned once he found himself the target of criticism from opponents of
the federal government who suggested that his receipt of a loan from the government and an ongoing subsidy for