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in Natimuk, Camperdown, Tatura and Mildura then joined the Melbourne Herald in 1940. On 4 October 1941 he
married Ruth, daughter of Reverend A Hay. They later had a son and a daughter.
In 1941, he was sent to Darwin as the Herald’s correspondent, witnessing the Japanese bombing of the town in
- He then served with the Australian Imperial Force in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands before returning
to journalism in 1944 as a war correspondent in the South Pacific area. In 1946, he went back to Darwin as the
Herald’s correspondent, remaining there, except for the period 1954 until 1956 when he worked in the London
Bureau of the Herald until 1968. He was Managing Editor of the South Pacific Post in Port Moresby, Papua New
Guinea, from 1968 until 1971 and 1974 to 1975, Editorial Manager, the Herald and Weekly Times in Melbourne in
1971 and 1972, Manager of the Herald in 1973 and Managing Editor of the Bendigo Advertiser from 1976.
During his many years in the Northern Territory Lockwood travelled extensively, covering news and writing
human-interest reports for the Melbourne Herald and its associated newspapers throughout Australia. He visited
cattle stations, Aboriginal reserves and drovers’ camps and was banned for life from stations owned by the absentee
English landlords Vesteys for drawing attention to their treatment of Aboriginal employees. His regular ‘Bush
Week’ column became a popular feature in ‘southern’ papers.
In 1954, he was on the spot for the defection of Evdokia Petrov at Darwin Airport. In 1957 his report of
Bas Wie’s incredible journey to Darwin from Timor in the wheel nacelle of a Dutch Air Force Dakota won the
‘World’s Strangest Story’ contest run worldwide by the London Evening News. In 1958, he covered the heart
rending trial and jailing in Alice Springs of artist Albert Namatjira. He won the W G Walkley Australian National
Award for Journalism for 1958’s best piece of newspaper reporting with his report of Ruth Daylight, 16, who came
from her Aboriginal camp at Halls Creek in the Kimberley to Canberra to meet the Queen Mother at Yarralumla,
then returned to ‘normal’ conditions with a packing case for a dwelling. He moved easily among black and white
people in the country he called his own, the country he called ‘The Land of God’s Eighth Day’. In 1963, he went
with officers of the Welfare Branch of the Northern Territory Administration into the Gibson Desert seeking and
meeting Pintubi Aborigines there who had never seen people with white skin.
On his travels through the Northern Territory as a journalist, Lockwood gathered a unique store of material for
books he wrote about the region. Based on his own knowledge and experience, these made his name known as
an author throughout Australia and in many other parts of the world. Published in German, Danish, Russian and
Polish as well as in English, they included Crocodiles and Other People (1959), Fair Dinkum (1960), Life on the
Daly River (1960, with Nancy Polishuk), I, the Aboriginal (1962), the biography of a Territory Aborigine which
was awarded the Adelaide Advertiser Literary Competition Prize, We the Aborigines (1963), The Shady Tree (1963,
with Bill Harney, Up the Track (1964), Alice on the Line (1965, with Doris Blackwell), The Lizard Eaters (1964),
Australia’s Pearl Harbour: Darwin 1942 (1966), Northern Territory Sketchbook (1968, with Ainslie Roberts),
The Front Door: Darwin, 1869–1969 (1968) and My Old Mates and I (1979).
Lockwood’s writing appealed to ‘general’ readers who in most cases had never been to the Northern Territory.
Many of his books became best sellers and were reprinted in paperback editions. His prose style was brisk and
breezy. He described the world of gold miners, explorers, cattlemen, buffalo hunters, pearlers, seafarers, public
servants, Aborigines and a host of other people, recounting the stories some of them had told him. His enthusiasm
for the Territory was infectious. As he wrote in Up the Track, ‘I have been on a journey through the Northern
Territory of Australia which, so far, has lasted twenty years. I’ve been gypsying around this land of enchantment
for so long it has become part of me.’ ‘In the Territory’, he stated in the same book, ‘you must get to know us.
After that, you’ll have fun... and be accepted.’ Some of his writing, however, was more serious in tone and intent.
Australia’s Pearl Harbour for many years remained the most accurate and comprehensive account of the bombing
of Darwin. The Front Door was for a long time the only well-researched book on Darwin’s history.
I, the Aboriginal was the basis for a television program and in 1980; Lockwood featured in the Australian
Broadcasting Commission’s television documentary series ‘A Big Country’.
Lockwood and his family lived for many years in an attractive home on Darwin’s Esplanade, which was later
demolished to make way for the Darwin Performing Arts Centre. Many older Darwin residents later remembered
him as being gregarious and popular. The changes that took place in Darwin after the mid 1960s were not always
to his liking and he preferred the town he had known in the 1940s and 1950s.
He died in Victoria on 21 December 1980, survived by his wife and children. His ashes were scattered over
the Kakadu wetlands he loved. His son, Kim, followed in his father’s footsteps as a well-known author and
journalist.
D Lockwood, works cited above; Who’s Who in Australia, 1974; W H Wilde, J Hooton & B Andrews, The Oxford Companion to Australian
Literature, 1985; reminiscences of several Northern Territory residents with memories of Lockwood; family information.
DAVID CARMENT and RUTH LOCKWOOD, Vol 2.
LONG, HARCOURT HILTON (1922– ), town planner, was born on 23 September 1922 in Fremantle,
Western Australia, into a professional family. His father, Ernest Hilton Long, was an architect. His mother was
Maud Victoria Curnick who, during the Second World War was a technician with the Army, using very early
forerunners of computers. He completed his schooling at Scotch College, Melbourne, in 1940.
At the age of 19, one week before the onset of the Pacific war, he joined the Australian Army and saw service in
Darwin as a member of the 55th Anti-Aircraft Composite Regiment. This was not only his introduction to Darwin,
but also to the exacting and intense work of map preparation required to plot the courses of enemy aircraft. During
this time, he acquired a detailed geographic knowledge of Darwin and its hinterland.