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Lease No 14 at Nightcliff over an area of 400 acres. The annual rent was 10 Pounds and the lease was granted for
five years to 1 July 1901. This lease was in an area previously occupied by Jesuit missionaries. The Dolans appear
to be the earliest family to have actually resided in the area once the Jesuits had moved to the Daly River.
Thomas Dolan, meanwhile, was making a name for himself in sporting circles, particularly cricket and the
new sport of cycling, of which his son, Dudley, was also an enthusiast. During most of the 1890s Thomas worked
as a railway ganger. In the January 1897 cyclone which devastated Palmerston, the Dolan family’s cottage near
the railway yards at the Two Mile (Parap) was totally wrecked. Six months later, in June, Anna was granted a
temporary certificate by the Palmerston District Council to carry on business at the railway refreshment rooms
at Adelaide River. This she managed for the next two years and she and Thomas, who was apparently living in
Adelaide River as well, were particularly praised for their hospitality to the cycling team in April 1898.
On 20 January 1899 Thomas applied for an Agricultural Lease over 26 acres of land, mostly on a high stony
ridge, about a kilometre north of the Adelaide River Bridge between the river and the railway line at the 75 Mile.
It appears he wanted a garden in connection with the refreshment rooms but the application does not appear to have
been pursued. In March 1899 the refreshment rooms at Adelaide River passed from Anna Dolan to Edith Lydia
Lauder. From this time on Anna and Thomas seem to have spent long periods of time apart. At the time of the 1901
census Thomas was living at the 88 Mile and Anna and her two sons were living at ‘Knight’s Cliff’.
A description of the property appears in the Northern Territory Times on 12 April 1901. ‘Mr T J Dolan’s
farm at Knight’s Cliff presents quite a different appearance just now to that it wore a few months ago. He has
now quite a respectable area cleared and a large and promising coconut plantation is springing up. A small area
has been reserved for pineapples, which thrive excellently, and several hundred banana trees are now being put
in. Altogether, Mr Dolan is to be congratulated for his energy and enterprise and congratulated upon the splendid
results achieved in such a short time’. Although the part played by Anna and the children remains unacknowledged
in this account it is fair to assume that Thomas’ work as a ganger kept him away from home for long periods of
time and that the hard work of maintaining the farm was kept up by Anna and her sons. This is reinforced by a
report in the paper later in the year, which described the Mission cutter Evangel being damaged after striking the
edge of the reef at Lee Point and temporary repairs being made ‘near the residence of Mr Dolan at Night Cliff’.
This sparked an immediate reaction from Anna and caused the newspaper to write, on 13 December 1901: ‘In our
report of a recent boat accident we inadvertently used the words ‘Mr Dolan’s residence at Nightcliff’. Mrs Dolan
writes directing attention to the fact that she is the registered owner of the property in question and scathingly
remarks ‘now a paper should be reliable and you had only to look in the Gazette to see that I am the registered
owner and reside here’. Alas! and Alas!’
On 15 October 1902 Anna gave birth to a daughter she named Daisy Wedd Norton Dolan. It is interesting to
note that in the 1901 census at Rapid Creek, near Nightcliff, there was a Henry Charles Wedd, aged 38, a stockman,
but it is not known whether there was any special relationship between Anna and Henry Charles.
Only six months after this event, however, on 14 April 1903, Anna, then 40, died in Palmerston Hospital of
peritonitis. Although no notice appeared of her death in the newspaper that year, for some years subsequently
Thomas placed an ‘In Memoriam’ notice in the paper mourning her death.
Thomas took over the Agricultural Lease and managed it, in addition to working for the railway, until his own
untimely and horrific death on 20 June 1908 when he was crushed to death on the Palmerston to Pine Creek railway
while in a state of intoxication. The report of the inquest in the newspaper was lengthy and very descriptive with
magistrate, W G Stretton, finding that he ‘accidentally and by misfortune was killed by the train passing over him
whilst he was asleep on the line’. He was buried in the Palmerston cemetery (Goyder Road).
As far as can be ascertained the Dolan children did not remain in the Territory for more than a few years and
they made little or no claims on their father’s estate. On 2 April 1913 an auction sale, on behalf of the Public
Trustee, was held of the Dolan’s land at Nightcliff. It was described as suburban section No 842 comprising a little
over 204 acres and sold to Felix Ernest Holmes. In July 1940 it was purchased by Chin Pack Cheong, a Darwin
storekeeper, and was compulsorily resumed by the government, along with the rest of Darwin, in 1946, with little
to mark the pioneering efforts of the Dolans in what was later described as the ‘garden’ suburb of Nightcliff.
L Barter, ‘Biographical Study: The Dolan Family’, 1994; B James, Occupation Citizen, 1995; Genealogical Society of the Northern Territory
records; Northern Territory Times and Gazette, various editions.
LEITH BARTER and BARBARA JAMES, Vol 3.
DOOLAN, ANN JANE: see HAYES, ANN JANE
DOOLAN, ELIZABETH: see NICKER, ELIZABETH
DOOLAN, JOHN KEVIN RAPHAEL (JACK) (1927–1995), sailor, cane cutter, patrol officer, truck driver,
soldier, Aboriginal welfare officer, politician and consultant, was born on 14 June 1927 in Nudgee (Brisbane),
Queensland, the son of Mr and Mrs S R Doolan. He was educated at St Joseph’s College in Nudgee and served
with the Royal Australian Navy in New Guinea and the Pacific islands between 1945 and 1947. He then worked
as a cane cutter in Queensland until taking up appointment as a cadet patrol officer with the Native Affairs
Branch in the Northern Territory in January 1949. On 25 November 1950 he married Myrna, daughter of Mr and
Mrs W A Pott. Before separating they had three sons and six daughters.
Initially posted to Darwin, he joined a fellow patrol officer, Syd Kyle-Little, on the north coast of Arnhem Land
developing a scheme to arrest the ‘drift’ of people from the Aboriginal reserve. From April that year he helped