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E Hill, The Territory, 1970; D Lockwood, The Front Door, Darwin, 1869–1969, 1974; G Pike, Frontier Territory, 1972; G H Sunter, Adventures
of a Trepang Fisher; Government Administrator’s Reports 1922, 1923, 1925; AA, Canberra A659–39/ 1/5261; AA, Northern Territory, Access
File F1–39/4; Letters R J Cooper and P Cahill to W Baldwin Spencer; Spencer Collection, National Museum of Victoria; AIAS, MS 71 Item 4,
Paper 13; H G Harnett, ‘Goodnight All-about’, AA, Canberra, CP 52 M65 (Entry 4); Northern Territory Star, 30 August 1979.
ANNE BRIGGS, Vol 1.COOPER, ROBERT JOEL (JOE, JOKUPA) (1860–1936), buffalo hunter, timber-getter and trepanger,
was born on 29 February 1860, at Fairview near Riverton, South Australia, to George, a farmer and horse-breaker,
and Harriet, nee Peverett. He was the third of six children and later was closely associated with his brother
George Henry (born in 1861 and known as ‘Harry’).
No details of their early life are known, but in about 1878 the two brothers overlanded a mob of horses
from Adelaide to Darwin and from then until 1894 engaged in various activities in and around Darwin and in
timber-getting and buffalo shooting on the Cobourg Peninsula and adjacent areas.
In 1894, accompanied by E O Robinson (the pastoral lessee of Melville Island) and brother Harry,
Cooper kidnapped four Tiwi from Melville Island and returned with them to the Port Essington area, where
reciprocal Tiwi/Iwaidja language training was undertaken. In 1895 Cooper, as Robinson’s manager, returned to
Melville Island with his four ‘hostages’, Barney Flynn, and a party of Iwaidja Aborigines and set up a camp to
shoot buffalo. In June of that year, Cooper was speared in the shoulder and returned to the hospital in Darwin for
treatment. After an absence of three weeks, he returned to the island, where the party continued to shoot buffalo
until 1898. No figures are available for the total number of buffalo shot by that time, but with Robinson’s estimate
of 2 000 in the first six months they were there, it is not surprising that the party was withdrawn to the mainland
in 1898 for fear of overshooting.
The next seven years were spent mining at Pine Creek, and timber cutting and buffalo shooting in the Malay Bay
area. His wife Alice, an Iwaidja woman from Port Essington whom he had married by Aboriginal custom in about
1890, accompanied him on all his expeditions, and their son Reuben John was born in 1898 while they were at
Pine Creek. Little is known of Harry’s activities during this time, but as Joe is known to have held timber licences
for both the mainland and the islands, it is probable that he spent most of the time in the Port Essington area.
For 10 years from 1905 the family (Joe, Alice, Reuben and Harry) lived on Melville Island with a party
of about twenty Iwaidja, and it was probably during this time, supported by stories of his first foray, that the
legends of ‘King Joe’ started to grow amongst the white population. He was the first European settler on the
island since Fort Dundas had been abandoned in 1828, others having been deterred by the reputedly fierce and
aggressive Tiwi. He overcame their aggression by the expedient of learning their language and treating them fairly
and with kindness. He considered that he was on good terms with the Aborigines, who knew him as ‘Jokupa’,
but nevertheless, he rarely left his camp unarmed. They shot upwards of 1000 buffalo a year and cut cypress pine,
delivering products to Darwin in Cooper’s lugger Buffalo.
Cooper was a large man, slow and sparing of speech, temperate, intelligent and courageous. Although
nominally of the Church of England faith, he had little respect for the missions, feeling that they did less good
than harm and managed to divert Father Gsell’s attention to Bathurst Island for a mission site in 1911. He proved
a good neighbour, however, and often visited the mission once it was established. In 1911, too, he was appointed
Honorary Sub-Protector of Aborigines on the island, and mainland Aborigines addicted to opium and alcohol
were placed in his care. He hosted a visit by Hermann Klaatsch, the German physical anthropologist, in 1906 and
visits by various local dignitaries in the years he was there, including Administrator J A Gilruth and Professor
W Baldwin Spencer, who stayed with Cooper while studying the Aborigines in 1911 and 1912. Cooper enjoyed
the confidence and friendship of these men to the same extent as he did that of the local people.
In 1914 Cooper resigned as Honorary Sub-Protector and, by late that year, when his son Reuben returned from
college in Adelaide, many of the mainland blacks had been removed from the island. Stories abound with reasons
for this action by the authorities—from complaints by one Sam Green, a saw-miller on the island, about Cooper’s
cruelty to the islanders and the overbearing attitude of his band of Iwaidja, through indiscriminate shootings of
Tiwi by the Iwaidja, to Cooper’s own statement in a letter to Baldwin Spencer in December 1915 to the effect
that the authorities were complaining to him about the Tiwi, while the Tiwi were complaining to him about the
government in Darwin. Although he was largely exonerated in the subsequent enquiry, the Melville Island lease
having changed hands and all the mainland Aborigines having been removed, Cooper and his remaining family
left the island in 1916.
Cooper’s family at that time comprised Alice, his son Reuben, and his daughter Ethel, who was born in 1915.
Another daughter, Josephine, had been born and died while they were on the island, and Harry had died of (possibly)
dengue fever in 1907. During the remainder of his lifetime, Joe was associated with several mainland pastoral
leases, shot buffalo for various contractors in the Adelaide River and Cobourg Peninsula areas, tried trepanging at
Trepang Bay, and spent some time at Port Bremer. Until his son Reuben married, they worked together, camping
at Blue Mud Bay during the wet season.
Despite his many friendships and lauding as a ‘living legend’, Cooper preferred to play a lone hand, and
cannot have been popular with white ‘society’. As were but few others, he was faithful to his Aboriginal wife,
formally marrying her in Darwin in 1917 and ensured that his son Reuben was well, even extensively, educated by
contemporary standards. A modesty apparent in interviews apparently did not extend to physical modesty—on one
occasion he was chided by A J V Brown for visiting a white man’s camp naked, and he obviously took the message
to heart. Baldwin Spencer refers to his customary bush attire as being ‘a pair of tattered shorts’.