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the birth of Lena Pak Foon, daughter of Hang Gong’s partner, Yam Yan, who later married Sarah’s grandson,
Willie.
Sarah was clearly a strong and assertive woman. When her first-born son Thomas died in Palmerston
in January 1902 and the Northern Territory Times referred to the death of a well-known Chinese resident,
Sarah immediately corrected the comment. In the following issue the paper apologised: ‘In referring last week to
the death of Thomas George Hang Gong we inadvertently described the deceased as being Chinese. His mother,
Mrs Hang Gong, has pointed out to us that her late son was a native of the colony of Victoria and a British subject
and that in describing him as Chinese an error has been committed which has caused his relatives pain. This is a
matter for regret.’
Sarah also took an interest in politics and was listed in the newspaper in 1902 as one of the supporters of
Charles Herbert, who was running for the Territory seat in the South Australian parliament at the time.
Sarah received a particular mention in an article published in December 1904 in the North Queensland Register
when Alex Dowker, who had just visited the Territory, gave an interview to the paper about the Hang Gong family’s
fortunes. After describing other members of the family, he said ‘Mrs Hang Gong is also much in evidence; she is
stout, hale and hearty and converses celestially as readily as in her mother tongue... the Dalar [sic] Lama [is] not
in it... compared with Mrs Hang Gong in Palmerston.’ Sarah apparently lived in a small house behind the family
store in Cavenagh Street from which she had practised her midwifery until she became partially paralysed in later
years and had to be cared for by her children. One of her granddaughters recalled having to help look after her by
staying home from school to fan her, and by cleaning out the clay pipe that Sarah smoked.
When Sarah died of acute alcoholism and associated illnesses on 6 April 1911, her daughter Jane Elizabeth Tye,
placed the following ‘In Memoriam’ in the newspaper on behalf of all Sarah’s children: ‘In memory of my dear
mother, Sarah Lee Hang Gong, who died on April 6th 1911 after great suffering. Released from sorrow, sin and
pain and free from every care; By angels hands to heaven conveyed to rest for ever there.’
Most of Sarah’s children had long associations with the Northern Territory. Many of her descendants were still
resident there in 1992.
Various newspaper articles and genealogical records; family records held by A O’Neil and the Tye and Hassan families; personal research
records.
BARBARA JAMES, Vol 2.HARDY, FRANCIS JOSEPH (FRANK) (1917–1994), worker in many occupations, soldier, journalist and
author, was born on 21 March 1917, in Southern Cross, Victoria, into a large Catholic family. Brought up in Bacchus
Marsh, Victoria, he left school at the age of 13 and subsequently worked as a casual labourer and in various other,
mainly unskilled, jobs. A member of the Communist Party from 1939, he served in the Army between 1942 and
1946.
Posted to Mataranka in the Northern Territory in 1942, he established a camp newspaper there, the
Troppo Tribune, providing the illustrations and most of the written material himself. ‘I thought’, he commented,
‘of what I might write while in the North... I was vaguely aware that the land might offer me some straw to grasp
at, some interest outside myself to quiet the inner turmoil’. He later contributed stories and cartoons to the armed
services journal, Salt. Following the war he was employed as a journalist and worked on his best known and
perhaps most controversial book, the semi-fictional Power Without Glory, which appeared in 1950. He later wrote
other books, many of which revealed his radical political views, and became well known because of his radio and
television appearances.
During the 1960s he turned his attention to the plight of the Australian Aborigines. He visited the Northern
Territory and wrote an account of the Wave Hill ‘walk-off’ and the efforts of the Gurindji to establish a settlement
at Wattie Creek in Unlucky Australians (1968). For some, he immortalised the struggle as a watershed in the
movement towards Aboriginal land rights, but for others, he belittled the role of other Aboriginal industrial action
that took place in north Australia from the late 1940s. The historian Ann McGrath has criticised Unlucky Australians
for its failure to effectively discuss the role of white men’s unfair sexual monopolisation of Aboriginal women as
a key reason for the Wave Hill walk-off.
Hardy also wrote more popular accounts of the Northern Territory lifestyle in his capacity as a ‘yarn spinner’
in books such as The Great Australian Lover and Other Stories (1967) and The Loser Now Will Be Later to Win
(1985). During the last years of his life he visited Darwin to participate in yarn spinning competitions at the Hotel
Darwin and was several times a champion.
He died sitting at his writing desk at his home in North Carlton, Melbourne, on 28 January 1994, reportedly
with a racing guide in his hand.
J Arnold & D Morris (eds), Monash Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Australia, 1994; M Dewar, ‘In Search of the ‘Never Never’’,
PhD Thesis, Northern Territory University, 1993; F Hardy, The Unlucky Australians, 1968; A McGrath & K Saunders with J Huggins (eds),
Aboriginal Workers, 1995; W H Wilde, J Hooton & B Andrews, The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 1985.
DAVID CARMENT, Vol 3.HARITOS (traditionally CHARITOS), EUSTRATIOS GEORGE (STRATOS) (1888–1974), salt worker and
storekeeper, was a son of George Haritos and Despina, nee Samios. He was born on 5 January 1888 at Mitilini,
Lesbos, an area long settled by Greeks but very close to the Turkish mainland. As a young man he spent a number
of years working the saltpans on the Turkish coast. His family believed that he fought with the Greek Army during
one of the Balkan Wars, mainly around Bulgaria, and was badly wounded in 1912. At a Russian hospital in Piraeus