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MacArthur’s marines career continued to flourish as he gained promotion to the rank of Brevet Major in 1851,
Lieutenant Colonel in 1852 and Brevet Colonel in 1854. During his colourful career he saw action in France and
on the west coast of Africa.
John MacArthur in many ways remains something of an enigma. His dispatches, his letters and the few surviving
reports from those who knew him depict him as an able leader, a meticulous recorder of events and, above all, an
English gentleman who strove to keep a remote outpost civilised at all times. None of his writings hint at whether
he felt he had wasted eleven years.
On 15 August 1853, MacArthur was placed on a full pay retired list. In Buckinghamshire nine years later he
died on 28 July 1862.
F H Bauer, Historical Geography of White Settlement in Part of Northern Australia, part 2, 1964; C P Conigrave, North Australia, 1936;
A Powell, Far Country, 1982; P G Spillett, Forsaken Settlement, 1972; Historical Records of Australia, Series I, vols 23 & 24, Records of the
British Royal Marines, ref ADM 196/58 N Folio 107.
TED STREET, Vol 1.MACARTNEY, FREDERICK THOMAS BENNETT (1887–1980), poet, writer, critic and public servant, was
born in Melbourne on 27 September 1887, youngest child of Irish born Thomas Macartney and Elizabeth Emma,
nee Jacob. His mother was Australian born, descended from a long line of English yeomen from Warley, Essex.
Macartney’s father died when he was five and he was brought up in what was then called ‘genteel poverty’ though
assisted by his mother’s family who had not approved of her marriage. He left school at 11 having, by his own
admission, learned only those things drummed into him by rote. A succession of jobs followed, always with an
eye to advancement. He acknowledged that he always had an inclination and a feel for words but employment,
particularly in his younger years, always came before his literary tastes. Although he was much involved with the
Melbourne literary scene, he spent some years away from Melbourne working on pastoral properties in clerical
positions for which he learned shorthand and typing.
In 1921, he was appointed Assistant to the Government Secretary of the Northern Territory Administration and
he arrived in Darwin in February that year. The Government Secretary at the time was Colonel Story for whom
Macartney had little regard. Story resigned in 1922 and Macartney was appointed to his position. He was to spend
12 years in the Territory.
In addition to the position for which he had been appointed, Macartney was given a number of other duties,
among which were Clerk of Courts, Sheriff, Public Trustee, Registrar General, Registrar, Births Deaths and
Marriages and so on. As he himself put, he was the ‘legal Pooh Bah’. When the Commonwealth took control
of the Northern Territory in 1911 Territorians were completely disenfranchised until 1922 when, after a great
deal of well-documented agitation by the locals, they were allowed to vote for one member of the House of
Representatives. The second election was held in December 1925 and Macartney was the Returning Officer. There
was strenuous campaigning but the local press noted that in his role Macartney had ‘carried out the election in a
strictly impartial manner and there was not the slightest hitch or even argument during the whole proceedings’.
His own view was that ‘the whole place, of course, is an anomaly. We elect one member of the Reps, and he hasn’t
got any vote in Parliament. We might just as well send down a few gramaphone [sic] records of our own making.
The opponent to the sitting member Nelson, is one, Story, who, after an honorable period of three years uselessness
as Govt. [sic] Secretary here, was euphemistically sacked, and therefore (probably with perfect fitness) considers
himself suitable for parliament. The fight is beautifully bitter, and everybody is hating everybody else about it
so much that I almost love them all. They even try to impeach my Olympian neutrality, so far without any result
except mental grins with a slight lemon flavor.’
Macartney was apparently a ‘strict disciplinarian’ in the office though he seems to have been held in great respect.
Among his staff when he was Clerk of Courts was Miss A M O’Neil, who in 1936 was appointed Acting Clerk of
Courts, ‘the first known time such a position has been filled by a woman’. The press noted that she had received
her early training under Macartney and had gone on to be ‘right hand “man”’ to his successor, J W Nichols. For his
part, Macartney increasingly got bored with Darwin. As he wrote to his long time correspondent, Nettie Palmer,
‘I’m really an excellent official, but that’s about all... The principal difficulty is perhaps that I despise the people
here so completely, and I don’t seem to care much whether they deserve it or not. Don’t imagine I’m really
despondent... Nor have I lost my sense of humor. Life, particularly here, is too much of a scream for that’. By 1930
when the economic situation threatened to overwhelm the whole country he wrote: ‘ “Things (as the phrase goes)
are just as bad here as elsewhere in Australia, and we officials are expecting shortly to have our salaries reduced.
This, however necessary or just, is exceedingly annoying to one like me, who gets no satisfaction at all from
the place except the money it brings. I don’t mind selling my soul to the devil but I do expect him to keep his
promises’.
Macartney had been brought up a Methodist and in the best tradition was ‘saved’ at a revival meeting as a young
teenager. By the time he came to the Territory he was a ‘backslider’ so far as religious observance was concerned
but his upbringing had instilled a lifetime’s ‘moderation’ into his activities, though as he put it ‘abstemious youth
was renounced in early manhood’. In the north, these habits stood him in good stead; Macartney makes it clear in
his autobiography that he did not succumb to the indulgences that brought many another man down. He maintained
his health and vigour, (except for several bouts of ‘one of our brands of fever’), swimming by then being his
‘religion’. He was a regular at the Lameroo baths and much frustrated when a ‘tired’ town council failed to keep
up the maintenance so it was not a safe place to swim.