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Kyle-Little in making seaworthy the launch Amity, which was lying at the Snake Bay settlement. At the beginning
of June they were prepared to set off for the Liverpool River. With them they had a cargo of trade goods and salt
for the preparation of the crocodile skins that were to provide their main source of cash to sustain the operation.
After a hazardous voyage, the pair reached the mouth of the Liverpool where they built a paperbark shelter for
stores and explained their purposes to the local Aborigines. The site of their base camp later became the town of
Maningrida. Sailing east to search for likely areas for pearling and crocodile shooting, they were shipwrecked on
the Blyth River after Amity hit a submerged tree and sank. With help from Aboriginal people, they refloated the
vessel and eventually sailed it to Goulburn Island. There they wrote a preliminary ‘Report on the Development
of Local Industries in the Liverpool River area’, which argued that prospects were good for developing a trade
in crocodile skins, and trepanging but the prospects for pearl shell gathering needed more investigation. While
Kyle-Little sailed Amity to Elcho Island for repairs, Doolan walked and swam back to the Liverpool to resume
operations. When Kyle-Little returned, they set up trepanging camps, resumed crocodile shooting and collected
handicrafts from the local women. Instructed to return to Darwin, Doolan sailed with the skins and other goods for
Goulburn Island early in September.
Unhappy with his recall to Darwin, Doolan resigned from the Native Affairs Branch and became a truck driver
in the Territory. In 1951 he joined the Australian Regular Army, serving in the Korean War and in Japan until his
discharge in 1956. He then worked in the Queensland Aboriginal settlement of Palm Island before returning to the
Territory as a patrol officer with the Welfare Branch of the Northern Territory Administration in 1965.
Over the next 12 years he worked as a superintendent at Snake Bay and a district welfare officer in the Victoria
River District. In late 1971 he made what was to be the last general patrol of the district. A few months later, in
April 1972, the Aboriginal workers at Victoria River Downs walked off, first to join the former Wave Hill people
at Dagaragu and later to establish a separate camp at Yarralin. Doolan’s report on the ‘appalling conditions’ at the
station largely explained why the move took place. The Aboriginal camp there was filthy, Aboriginal pensioners
only received a small part of their pensions in cash and white workers used alcohol to obtain Aboriginal women.
He recommended that the Commonwealth Department of Labour and National Service investigate the situation.
In August 1977 Doolan contested the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly’s Victoria River electorate
as a candidate for the Australian Labor Party. His opponent was the Country Liberal Party’s Dr Goff Letts,
the Majority Leader in the Assembly and the man almost certain to become Chief Minister after the achievement of
self-government. In a stunning upset, Letts’ party won the general election but Letts lost his own seat. The two-party
preferred vote swing against him exceeded 20 per cent. While the Majority Leader spent little time campaigning
in Victoria River, Doolan worked hard there and did particularly well in Aboriginal communities, where he was
already well known.
He used his maiden speech to attack what he regarded as the racism of his political opponents. ‘They have’,
he said, ‘a paranoic [sic] hatred of Aboriginal people... They regard them as less than human. They fear them
because they are so devoid of compassion they will not even try to understand them. In past years Australians have
been noted all over the world for their willingness to give the underdog a go... that spirit is now dead and with its
demise democracy in this country has a very short prognosis indeed’.
In 1980 Doolan was appointed to the shadow ministry with responsibility for primary industry and public works.
In the election of that year he easily held his seat. His subsequent political career, however, was unimpressive.
A heavy drinker, by 1982 he was an alcoholic. On a couple of occasions he attempted to speak in parliament while
incoherently drunk. On the second of these all his Labor colleagues walked out of the chamber. The Speaker,
Les MacFarlane, adjourned the House to save further embarrassment. Doolan had lost just about all political
credibility. Deprived of his Labor endorsement, he contested the December 1983 election as an independent. The
poll resulted in further humiliation when he won only 5.9 per cent of the valid votes cast. Victoria River went
back to the Country Liberal Party. ‘There was’, David Nason later commented, ‘no room for old-style political
mavericks like Jack’.
Doolan spent his final years writing and working as a consultant in the areas of Aboriginal sacred sites and
heritage protection. The quality of his reports varied enormously as his drinking often adversely affected him.
But he had vast knowledge of the Territory and its Aboriginal people that sometimes proved invaluable to those
who employed him.
He died in Darwin on 29 January 1995. A huge crowd attended his funeral at the city’s Roman Catholic
cathedral. Despite all his faults, he was genuinely and widely mourned. A former Country Liberal Party minister,
Roger Steele, gave a eulogy at the funeral. The well-known Darwin journalist Frank Alcorta declared that,
‘With him died an era in Northern Territory history that will never return’. One of the most perceptive comments
came from another Darwin journalist, David Nason. ‘Today’, he wrote, ‘the thriving community of Maningrida
stands as a lasting tribute to Jack Doolan but Jack himself would probably elect the reconciliation process as
highest on the list of achievements he was involved in—a sign perhaps that the spirit of democracy had a better
prognosis than he once thought’.
The Australian, 10 February 1995; J Doolan, The Founding of Maningrida, 1989; D Jaensch & D Wade Marshall, Point of Order!, 1994;
J Long, The Go-Betweens, 1992; Northern Territory News, 31 January 1995; Who’s Who in Australia, 1983.
DAVID CARMENT, Vol 3.DOUGLAS, WILLIAM BLOOMFIELD (1822–1906), Naval officer and Government Resident in the Northern
Territory and at Selangor in the Malay States, was born in Aberystwyth in Wales on 25 September 1822, the son of
Richard W C Douglas and his wife Mary, nee Johnson.