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her press reporting only when, a week before Darwin was bombed in February 1942, she was reluctantly but
compulsorily evacuated to Sydney, where she purchased a small lending library that, at the war’s end, she reopened
from self-built premises as, the Roberta Library in Darwin. Her interests extended to almost every facet of life.
She exchanged seashells and stamps with people from all over the world; she entered and won poetry contests;
she sent fat, cocoa and sugar to war victims in Yugoslavia and Germany; she sent plant specimens to the British
Museum and she wrote to friends all over Australia, keeping them posted on Territory life.
Through her prolific letter writing to influential people, Litchfield crusaded for the rights of residents in the
post-war reconstruction of Darwin and for Territory self-government. Her personal correspondence files contain
letters to and from McAlister Blain, C L A Abbott, Sir Robert Menzies, John Curtin, George Pearce, Arthur Calwell,
Norman Rockwell, Bill Harney, Ernestine Hill, Dame Mary Gilmore and US District Court Judge Waring.
Litchfield was a particularly strong advocate of traditional Aboriginal life and once defended it in a letter to
the editor of the New York Times after a journalist had referred to Australian Aborigines as ‘probably the most
primitive human beings in the world’.
However, she was never more vocal about Territory issues than when, in 1951, at the age of 68, she unsuccessfully
contested the Territory federal seat as an independent against Labor’s Jock Nelson, hiring a taxi to drive
5000 kilometres throughout the Territory to campaign. One of her platforms was the creation of two separate states,
North and Central Australia. Her political bid failed; but her grandson, Marshall Perron, became the Territory’s
Deputy Chief Minister and Treasurer when the Territory won self-government in 1978.
In 1953, Litchfield was presented with the Coronation Medal for outstanding service to the Northern Territory
and later became the first Territory woman Justice of the Peace. In 1954, she helped establish the North Australian
Monthly, edited in Cairns by Glenville Pike with Litchfield serving as Assistant Editor and Territory correspondent
until her death while in Melbourne on a holiday in 1956. She had, during her life, published hundreds of poems,
short sketches and articles on the Territory and its people, but of the six novels which she completed, all of them
set in the Territory, only one was ever published.
As requested in her will, she was cremated and her ashes scattered over Darwin. She left all her manuscripts and
her 3 000 Pounds estate to the Melbourne Bread and Cheese Club, requesting it to establish the Jessie Litchfield
Literary Award to be presented each year to the person who, in the opinion of the club committee, had made the
best contribution to Australian literature. Preference was to be given to works dealing with Northern Territory
life.
Like most strong and controversial figures Jessie had her critics but when she died tributes poured in from
all over the country, including, from Dame Mary Gilmore: ‘In Northern Australia and beyond Darwin, she was a
builder, an influence and an historian. Her interest never dulled and her spirit never failed. She personified the true
Territorian. Her passing was a loss to the Australian people.’
Glenville Pike, long-time friend and editor of the North Australian Monthly, put it this way: ‘Jessie Litchfield...
battled hard nearly all her life for the NT and was admired for her sturdy independence, her fearlessness in
championing the cause of the neglected North and for her faith in its eventual progress. Coming to the NT in 1907,
it was a remote, negative and very poor [place]; from then on, by means of her pen, Jessie Litchfield kept it before
the eyes of the world.’
J Dickinson, Grand Old Lady of the Territory, 1982; Various issues, Northern Territory Times, Northern Standard; J S Litchfield’s personal
papers, courtesy of Christa Roderick.
BARBARA JAMES, Vol 1.LITTLE, JOHN ARCHIBALD GRAHAM (1843–1906), was senior and inspecting officer of the northern
section of the Overland Telegraph for nearly 34 years. He was born near Echunga, South Australia, on 23 May 1843,
the son of William Little and his wife Jane, nee Scandrett. His mother, a teacher before her marriage in July 1842,
emigrated from Ballymena, Northern Ireland, and arrived in South Australia in December 1839. His father came
from Mackside, Roxboroughshire, Scotland, and was employed as a clerk in a banking institution before leaving
Scotland to join his parents in December 1839 as an agriculturalist in the Mount Barker district of South Australia.
He had, however, an interest in optics and metallurgy and the development of these skills led to his engagement
with the Yatala Smelting Company at Port Adelaide. In May 1850, with twelve others associated with the company,
he was lost at sea, presumed drowned, when the coastal cutter Jane Flaxland foundered in St Vincent’s Gulf Jane
Little remarried in June 1854.
Young John attended J L Young’s private school in Adelaide until February 1857 when he joined the South
Australian Government Service with permission to learn, without salary, the working of the magnetic telegraph.
Appointed as a junior clerk in July of that year and assistant telegraph operator in February 1861, he was stationed
at Adelaide Railway, followed by Woodside, Nairne, Mount Gambier and Naracoorte before taking charge of the
Penola Post and Telegraph Office on 1 December 1863.
In June 1866, he became stationmaster at Guichen Bay (Robe) in the southeast of South Australia. Here,
his duties were expanded to include those of sub-collector of customs and harbourmaster.
Following the cancellation, in May 1871, of the Darwent and Dalwood contract to construct the northern section
of the Overland Telegraph, the South Australian government organised its own expedition under Robert C Patterson,
aiming to complete the northern section of the telegraph line before the end of that year. John Little was appointed
telegraph stationmaster at Port Darwin on 1 August 1871 and, after a briefing in Adelaide, left for Port Darwin in
the barque Bengal late in that month. His initial tasks were to take charge of the section of line already erected
(Port Darwin to Katherine), assist Patterson by organising telegraph operators to man the various sections completed