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In 1932 he entered the University, intending to become a teacher. Between then and 1938, he completed both a
Bachelor of Arts degree and a Diploma of Education, managing to combine part-time studying, secondary school
teaching, active involvement in sporting activities, and a high level of involvement in student affairs. In 1937 he was
President of the University Sports Council, and in the following year President of the Guild of Undergraduates.
In March 1939, as the prospects of war loomed, he enlisted in the first motorised ‘Light Horse’ unit in Western
Australia—the 25th Light Horse Machine Gun Regiment. The following year he won a scholarship to attend the
first Physical Education course in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. Subsequently, following his
move to Melbourne, he joined the Melbourne University Rifles Reserve and in August 1941 volunteered for the
Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
In Melbourne he completed a Master’s degree in education as well as a Diploma in Physical Education.
The latter course had been recently established by Dr Fritz Duras, a refugee from Nazi Germany, and was linked to a
broader policy objective, being pursued under the Commonwealth Director General of Health, Dr J H L Cumpston,
of fostering national fitness.
For the remainder of the war years, Harry Giese moved between the worlds of war service and national
fitness administration. In February 1942 he was seconded to an Army training school in Victoria for two months,
to develop a physical education curriculum. At the end of this period, he was transferred back to Perth, and in
April was posted to Port Hedland. However, in September of the same year he was selected for a three month
Administrative and Special Duties course for the RAAF, to be conducted at the University of Melbourne. Then,
in the middle of that course, he was released at Cumpston’s request in order to take up the new post of Director of
National Fitness in Western Australia.
In 1944 he moved once more, to take up a position as inaugural director of Physical Education in the Queensland
Department of Public Instruction. He arrived to find neither staff nor facilities, but an atmosphere of optimism and
energy. He began by appointing all nine new graduates from the University of Queensland’s recently established
Department of Physical Education as a ‘flying squad’, who traversed the state, instructing primary school teachers
in how to teach physical education, and in the inter-connections between physical education and health.
In 1946, Harry married one of his ‘flying squad’ members—Nancy Wilson or, as she was better known, Nan.
In the following year Harry, now accompanied by Nan and their infant daughter Diana, moved once again, this
time to Canberra to take up a position as a National Fitness Officer in the Commonwealth Department of Health.
Faced with a housing shortage, the family spent two years in one hotel room. While in this position, he took part in a
major epidemiological study of postural defects among 35 000 Australian schoolchildren. He also published in the
Medical Journal of Australia the results of an investigation of student health services in universities in Germany,
Scandinavia, the United States and England, with a view to making recommendations that might overcome the
high levels of mental breakdown and TB among Australian students.
In 1952, he transferred to a position as Assistant Principal Training Officer with the Public Service Board,
also in Canberra. Two years later, he was appointed to the position in which he was to exercise his most lasting
and pervasive influence in the Northern Territory—as Director of a newly created Welfare Branch in the Northern
Territory (NT) Administration.
Following his appointment, Giese drove to Darwin, arriving on 23 October 1954, to find that he and his family
had been allocated a house on the outskirts of Myilly Point. The kitchen had no flywire, and none of the bedrooms
had overhead fans. By now the Gieses had two young children, who arrived in Darwin with Nan in February
1955.
From the outset, the new Director’s position was contentious. The Welfare Branch replaced the Native Affairs
Branch, which, as its name implies, had been the vehicle for Commonwealth Aboriginal policy in the NT until that
time. Behind the name change lay a shift in policy, brought about by the Commonwealth Minister for Territories,
Paul Hasluck, from ‘protection’ to ‘assimilation’. The new policy did not, at least in the short term, involve
abandoning all discriminatory measures. However, restrictive measures were no longer to be justified on the
grounds of race, but rather on the basis of special ‘needs’. For legislative purposes, individuals deemed to be in
need of discriminatory measures were to be defined as wards.
In the Northern Territory, the shift was embodied in two new Ordinances: the Wards Welfare Ordinance,
which replaced the Aboriginals Ordinance, and the Wards Employment Ordinance. Both bills had been introduced
into the Northern Territory Legislative Council in 1953, and both had been passed, but not without vigorous
opposition, not only from elected members of the Council, but also from some of the government’s own appointed
members.
In the debates surrounding the Ordinances, it soon became apparent that, for all the semantic changes, the status
of ‘ward’ was intended to apply to most if not all full-blood Aborigines, and to some part-Aboriginal people.
However, in order for the new laws to take effect, a comprehensive census of all persons designated as wards had
to be compiled. Because of the unstated intentions behind the legislation, this required in effect a full census of the
Aboriginal population of the Northern Territory.
The Register of Wards took four years to prepare. As a result, the Welfare Ordinance was not implemented until- Even longer delays beset the Wards Employment Ordinance, which did not come into effect until 1959.
Despite the legislative setbacks, the 1950s witnessed significant increases in government expenditure on social
welfare in the Northern Territory, even when other spheres of expenditure were being cut back, and an expanding
role for the Welfare Branch. The term ‘welfare’ in the Branch’s title had much broader connotations that it normally
carried later. In the case of Aboriginal policy, it implied responsibility for fields such as education, health and the
creation of economic infrastructures. Under Giese’s administration responsibility for Aboriginal education was
transferred from the Commonwealth Office of Education to the Welfare Branch. The Welfare Branch already had