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HARITOS, GEORGE (NUNDY) (1920–1992), carpenter, fisherman, crocodile shooter, pearler and shipmaster
was born at ‘Greek Town’ (the Doctor’s Gully end of the Esplanade) in Darwin on 14 April 1920. He was the eldest
son of eight children born to Greek immigrants Eustratios George Haritos and his wife Eleni, nee Harmanis.
Eustratios had immigrated to the Northern Territory in 1915, to work on the Pine Creek–Katherine railway
extension. Eleni and her family had come to the Territory about the same time. His parents were married in Darwin
on 5 September 1917. George spent the first years of his life in ‘Greek Town’ along with other Greek immigrants
who built camps there of any materials they could find, mostly the structure was of saplings and kerosene tins
flattened out to make walls.
When George was very young, Eustratios moved his family out to the salt works he had established on Ludmilla
(Racecourse) Creek. When he was six the family moved from Ludmilla Creek to a house in McMinn Street so
he could attend school at St Joseph’s School run by Our Lady of the Sacred Heart nuns. George could not speak
English when he started school and so had to pick up the language quickly, but he did not recall having any
difficulties. During his school years St Joseph’s School was a very multicultural and mostly tolerant environment
of some 200 students of white Australian, part Aboriginal, Filipino, Chinese and Greek backgrounds.
Out of school hours George spent playing with his neighbours, the Aboriginal children of Joel Cooper,
a well-known buffalo shooter and his wife, a Port Essington Aboriginal woman. George spent a lot of time with
the children hunting, food gathering, learning bush lore and skills that would make him adept with the spear,
harpoon and a source of local knowledge. They hunted goannas, turtles, bandicoots and possums. ‘Nundy’ was
the nickname given to him by these children. It was thought that it was an Aboriginal word, but in fact was given
to him for the Greek word he shouted when he found someone in the game of hide and seek, ‘Nundy, nundy’,
he would shout, meaning, ‘Here they are! Here they are!’
As a teenager George was a member of the local boxing club, held at the old Star Theatre, along with his
younger brother Nicholas and uncles George and Steve Harmanis. He had a reputation as a fighter in and out of
the ring.
Salt flowed through George’s veins from an early age and he was 15 years old when he became the proud
owner of his first boat made of karri hardwood built by his uncle Louis Harmanis. George named the five-metre
boat Wingah that is Tiwi for ‘salt water’ and ‘spirits’ like rum and whisky. George was 14 when he left school and
he worked at odd jobs around Darwin and out of town places like Maranboy tin-field at Rogue Hill. There was a
building boom in Darwin in the 1930s and George was apprenticed to builder George Kafcaloudes. In Darwin they
worked on Marrenah House on the Esplanade and on houses at Myilly Point. Around 1936 George helped build the
police station at Timber Creek. The builders drove from Darwin in May in a Chevrolet truck and Maroubra took
materials up the Victoria River. In the 1930s Timber Creek was a depot, a ‘sort of a pub where a lot of drovers used
to put in their wet seasons’. Characters like Bert Drew, who had a 70 odd donkey wagon team, would sit and drink
at the depot and write poetry during the wet. In the late 1930s George worked with his uncle, Louis Harmanis,
building the police Station at the Roper Bar where in 1940 the river flooded and swamped the police station and
all that could be seen of the building was the ventilator on the top of the roof. The Katherine River also flooded
that year and Louis and George did some work on the Katherine aerodrome drainage. They had also built a school
in Katherine in 1939.
In 1941 after several earlier attempts George enlisted in the Army. He was at West Point (Mandorah) attached
as a carpenter building gun emplacements when the first bombing raids occurred on Darwin. From his position
on the beach George saw three ships get hit: Peary, British Motorist, and some time later he witnessed the mighty
explosion of ammunition on Neptuna. George recalled the debris of steel plates ‘up in the air like magic carpets’.
George was still on the beach when searchlights from a Zero aircraft came along the beach and he dived for cover
under a hibiscus tree. He went weak at the knees at the thought of his father and brother and the possible danger
to them across the harbour in Darwin. Sometime later George’s unit moved to Katherine, then in April 1943 he
was shifted to the Royal Australian Engineers unit at Kapooka in New South Wales. From Kapooka George went
to New Guinea where he served for 14 months until late 1944. Then he went further north to Morotai near the
Philippines. He was there until the end of the war.
During recreational leave in Brisbane, George met his wife to be Joan Monica Algie, who was from Chinchilla
and in the Land Army based at Home Hill. They began 12 months of weekly correspondence from Morotai until
they were married in Gympie, Queensland, on 12 October 1946. There were two children of the marriage: a son
George (deceased) and a daughter Helen. The family returned to Darwin after the end of the Second World War.
Joan shared George’s love of the sea and she became a shell collector of some note. She reportedly had one of the
largest collection of shells in the southern hemisphere during the 1960s and 1970s. They shared a common love
and interest in the bush and fishing in Kakadu. She supported him in anything he did over the 46 years they were
together.
George had done some commercial fishing during 1938 and 1939. At disposals sales after the Second World
War with two partners, Leo Hickey and Jim Edwards, he bought two 48-metre ketches Australia and Derna.
With these the partners carted buffalo hides, fished and went crocodile shooting. They carted buffalo hides from
Sampan Creek, the Point Stuart outlet then owned by Bill Black, from the Wildman River for the Gadens and from
Kapalga on the South Alligator, Cannon Hill on the East Alligator for Smeaton and Doyle. They noticed lots of
barramundi in Sampan Creek so got a net and an icebox for Australia. Their first attempts at fishing were not very
successful as Italian hemp nets were soon cut by crocodiles, sharks and fish.
In April 1951 George and his partner Jim Edwards left Darwin in Australia for a crocodile-shooting trip
to Blue Mud Bay in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Whilst sailing up the Walker River a tree trunk staved in a plank.