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Elsie Jones provided nursing care of a high standard and was greatly respected and loved by the patients.
Young women from among the patients were trained as nursing assistants, knowledge that was very helpful during
the war emergency. Jack Jones commanded respect among the men and achieved a high standard of discipline.
He obtained a Morse lamp and taught patients how to signal messages to the police station on the Esplanade in
Darwin. In 1938, the King honoured Elsie Jones when she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire
(MBE) for services to nursing.
When other women were evacuated during the build-up of war in December 1941, Jones remained on the job
while her children were sent to school at Charters Towers. She was not well and on the morning of 19 February
1942, she was attending Darwin Hospital as a patient when the enemy bombed Darwin. The following day she
managed to return to Channel Island to arrange the evacuation of many of the patients to the quarantine station
on the mainland. Elsie Jones left Darwin by train on 24 February. At Tennant Creek, she left the convoy and went
to Rockhampton Downs to stay with friends. While there, she became acutely ill and contacted the Royal Flying
Doctor Service at Cloncurry on 10 March. As the service could not immediately go to her aid Dr Walter Straede
from Tennant Creek and his wife set out on the long drive by road; their car broke down and they perished.
Elsie Jones was flown to Cloncurry and then by Qantas to Brisbane. She died in Brisbane General Hospital on
17 May 1942 aged 54 years. Her husband and two children survived her.
J S McPheat, John Flynn—Apostle of the Inland; Inlander, vol 7, no 1, June 1922; Victorian Nursing Council registration; Argus, Melbourne,
7 November 1924; Australian Inland Mission records; Sydney Morning Herald, 29 August 1935; AA, Canberra Series A1928, 716/12 &
34/5746; Series A431, 46/121; Channel Island patients, oral evidence; Eileen Fitzer, personal communication.
ELLEN KETTLE and JAQUELINE M O’BRIEN, Vol 1.JONES, SARAH (SALLY): see FEENEY, SARAH (SALLY)JONES, TIMOTHY GEOFFREY (TIM) (1922– ), public servant and writer, was born in Sydney on
6 January 1922, son of Thomas Jones and Emily, nee Bodel. He attended Rose Bay Public School and Canberra
High School, obtaining the New South Wales Leaving Certificate in 1938. He joined the Commonwealth Public
Service in 1939 and then joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in February 1942. After being a Radar
Operator with 37 Radar Station (RS) at Milne Bay, Papua, from 1 August 1942 to 5 December 1943 he returned by
DC3 to Townsville on a flight that also carried the famous actor, Gary Cooper. After leave, he spent six months at
20 RS, Nelsons Bay, New South Wales and then returned to Milne Bay to join 330 RS. After only a short time there,
he was transferred to Port Moresby to wait for orders and was then sent to Madang. The station was not operational
so with a colleague he spent his days on the harbour in a little outrigger canoe, locally called a lakatoi.
When the war ended, he returned to Sydney and resumed duty as Staff Clerk at the Patent Office. He married
Thelma McEwen in July 1946 and there are three children of the marriage, Carol, Imogen and Michael. In 1954,
he graduated Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne. He was promoted to the Department of
Information and then the Public Service Board.
In 1956, he was appointed Public Service Inspector for the Northern Territory. The position was based in
Canberra but necessitated periodical visits to the Territory until 1968 when a regional office was established in
Darwin. The role covered establishments, appeals, conditions of service and included a delegation to ‘resolve
anything of an urgent nature without reference to the Board’. During these years he travelled widely throughout
the Territory and developed the interest that would be later reflected in the histories he would write. He also has
much first hand knowledge of many of the individuals who made up the Northern Territory Public Service of the
day and he has a particular respect for Colin Adams, then Director of Mines. Another stalwart for whom he had a
high regard was the ‘upright and fair’ transport officer, Jim Farrell, to whose lot it fell to see that Commonwealth
vehicles were not improperly used.
The first decade after the end of the Second World War was difficult in the Northern Territory. Staff and
resources were limited and Tim acknowledged the difficulties faced by, for example, the newly appointed Director
of Welfare, H C Giese, in converting Aboriginal settlements that had been little more than ration depots and first
aid posts into centres with training and educational facilities. As he put it ‘the Director had... a light in his eyes,
enthusiasm and zeal’ but he ‘had inherited a number of officers from the old days and had found that it was virtually
impossible to retrain them into the new philosophy. In some cases they were hopeless addicts to the rum bottle’.
Of Tim’s own role, a colleague was later to say, ‘he very quickly adjusted to the unconventional environment
and developed a keen appreciation of the aspirations and temperament of Territorians... and was at great pains to
assist people at all times irrespective of race, colour or creed. The rugged lifestyle imposed by so doing around his
even greater enthusiasm for the Territory and its people, particularly in the remote areas’. One of the Public Service
Inspector’s jobs was to see that proper practices were maintained and that public money was not wasted. Tim told
the story of arriving in Maningrida on a normal visit of inspection and finding a ‘six-foot high mound of Kellogs
corn flakes cartons’. The Welfare Branch had directed that fowls be kept to ‘ensure a supply of fresh eggs for the
Aboriginal people’. Tim’s response was that ‘this seemed most acceptable but I did not quite see the connection
with Kellogs corn flakes’. It seems that they forgot to order chook food and then it was discovered that fowls were
keen on corn flakes. As Tim put it ‘consequently, the fowls enjoyed a life of luxury and eggs were produced at an
enormous cost’.
He remained in this position until 1968 when he was promoted Public Service Inspector, Canberra,
later redesignated as Regional Director for the Australian Capital Territory. Functions included recruitment, with
power to appoint up to Class 11, conditions of service, and training including a group of some 200 secretarial