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The first Bishop of Darwin commenced his duties on the eve of the Second World War. Things were fairly
quiet until Pearl Harbour and Singapore fell, then, on 19 February 1942, Darwin was severely bombed and a
wave of raids followed. Bishop Gsell praised the courage of Father McGrath, who had stayed at his post at the
Bathurst Mission and issued a radio warning that Japanese aircraft were approaching Darwin: his warning went
unheeded. In 1942 Bishop Gsell was evacuated to Alice Springs with most of the civilian population. He stayed
until 1945, taking a keen interest in the growth of the church in the town. He supervised the establishment of
missions at Arltunga, at Port Keats with Father Docherty and a community for part-Aboriginal children at Garden
Point under Father Connors. He somehow also found the energy to respond to an SOS from the government to
re-establish the leper station at Channel Island, which had disintegrated during the war years.
On his return to Darwin after the war the Bishop won the regard of all Territorians regardless of creed or colour
when he defied the Darwin Lands Acquisition Act of 1946. Under its terms all church land was to be surrendered
to the government and payment accepted at the department’s valuation. Bishop Gsell wrote to the prime minister
and categorically refused to participate in the scheme. When he literally ‘held his ground’ the land was leased back
to the church in perpetuity at a nominal rent.
Before he retired the bishop made a last visit to his beloved Bathurst Island Mission and received a tumultuous
welcome. Then in 1947 he sailed on a French liner for Rome to visit his old friend of student days, Pope Pius
XIL He returned for a last visit to his homeland, calling on the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart at Marseilles and
visiting his native village in Alsace. As Bishop O’Loughlin, who succeeded him in 1949, stated: ‘Francis Xavier
Gsell was more French than the French themselves.’ It was eminently fitting that finally in 1952 his own country
recognised his work in the far-flung missionary fields of Papua and Australia’s Northern Territory. In his 80th year,
Bishop Gsell received the Cross of the Legion d’Honneur, his most treasured award.
The old Bishop spent his retirement at Randwick in Sydney, but his thoughts remained with his mission.
‘My black children are continuously in my thought, and I should like to use my last strength for them.’ And so he
set to work to compile his memoirs. In the end he put down his pen and dictated them in French to a colleague.
The story of ‘the bishop with 150 wives’ was presented for posterity. It was published years later—first in French,
then in English. At the age of 88 Gsell died at the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Hospital at Randwick in Sydney
on 12 July 1960.
‘At his consecration, Bishop Gsell devised as his coat of arms the image of the Sacred Heart above crossed
spears and a boomerang.’ Darwin’s first Catholic bishop was remembered in its northern suburbs where the streets
of Gsell and Martina lay parallel, close to the Holy Spirit Church, and in the city itself, in the crypt of St Mary’s
War Memorial Cathedral, where Bishop Gsell’s remains lay at rest.
F Flynn, Distant Horizons, nd; F Flynn, Northern Gateway, 1963; F X Gsell, The Bishop with 150 Wives, 1956; J P O’Loughlin, The History of
the Catholic Church in the Northern Territory, 1986; John Pye, The Tiwi Islands, 1977; P Read (ed), A Social History of the Northern Territory,
vol 8, The Mission Stations, 1978; St Mary’s Star of the Sea, War Memorial Cathedral—Darwin, Church Centenary Edition Booklet with a
foreword by J P O’Loughlin, 1982.
ROBIN HEMPEL, Vol 1.GUNN, JEANNIE nee TAYLOR (1870–1961), author, teacher and charity worker, was born on 5 June 1870 in
Melbourne, Victoria. She was the second youngest of six children, two of whom were boys. Her father, Thomas
Taylor, had migrated from Scotland in 1857 with his father who was a Baptist minister. Thomas worked as a writer
for most of the Melbourne newspapers. Jeannie’s mother Anna, nee Lush, arrived in the colony in 1841 with her
parents.
Jeannie’s mother must have been well educated because she supervised her four daughters’ lessons at home.
Jeannie passed her matriculation exam at the age of 17. She and two of her sisters opened a school for young ladies
in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn, which operated successfully from 1889 to 1896. They named the school
‘Rolyat’, the reverse of their own name, Taylor. After the school closed Jeannie visited other schools, teaching
elocution and gymnastics.
Jeannie was an accomplished horsewoman and one day, while attempting to alight from a buggy to pacify the
restless horses, she literally fell into the arms of the man she was destined to marry. Aeneas Gunn had seen the
problem and had hastened forward to help.
Aeneas was also of Scottish ancestry. His father was the first Gaelic preacher in Melbourne and a graduate of
the University of Edinburgh. Aeneas had spent five years in the Northern Territory, having first gone there in 1890
in the schooner Gemini with his cousin, Captain Joseph Bradshaw. He helped establish what became known as
‘Bradshaw’s Run’ and later managed it himself. He made several trips to Darwin while there. Aeneas wrote many
articles for the Royal Geographical Society as well as countless letters to newspapers telling of his adventures and
describing the nature of the country.
Aeneas contracted malaria and returned to Melbourne to recuperate. He took a job as librarian in the suburb of
Prahran, but his love for the Northern Territory made him restless to return. One of his relatives had an interest in
Elsey Station on the Roper River and he pressured his aunt to speak on his behalf for a job there. He was finally
engaged as manager.
A friendship developed between Jeannie and Aeneas as they had many interests in common, particularly
literature. Jeannie and Aeneas were married on 31 December 1901. Jeannie was 31 and Aeneas 39. Two days
later they boarded SS Guthrie and sailed via Queensland for the Northern Territory. Well-meaning friends had
suggested that Jeannie stay in Melbourne while Aeneas prepared a place for her but she would have none of
that. A knowledge of the isolation and lack of female companionship in the north, as well as Jeannie’s eagerness
to accompany him, persuaded Aeneas to take her with him. He knew that, despite her size—barely five feet