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study the Mulluk Mulluk dialect, the lingua franca of the Daly region. At the end of 1889, he was sent by the then
Superior, Father Anton Strele to found a new station at Serpentine Lagoon, 30 kilometres west of the Old Uniya
Station on the Daly. For a year, he laboured ineffectively there with four companions to found a colony among the
Madngella and other tribes who had never seen whites before.
In December 1890, MacKillop was made Superior of the whole mission, which then included three stations and
a residence in Darwin. As such, he was responsible for the direction of policy and the financial upkeep of the whole
venture. The latter bore heavily on him, since the assistance promised by the bishops did not materialise. Deeming
the three existing stations to be doomed to failure (because of expense, the European and Chinese encroachment
and consequent tribal disintegration, and the great agricultural unsuitability of two of the sites—a legacy of Strele’s
impracticality), MacKillop closed all three and concentrated his 11 Jesuits in one new station, also on the Daly,
in August 1891.
Despite successes (at times up to 600 Aborigines were camped in and around New Uniya, and 20 families
were settled on two-acre farms), the policy of small, self-supporting agricultural townships did not catch on with
the Aborigines, and inconstancy was the dominant trait of the few conversions made. Poverty, to the extent of
near starvation, struck the station again, and MacKillop was forced to make begging tours in the south and east
in 1892–93—unsuccessful because of the Depression and apathy. At the same time the continuing decimation of
the tribes made the Jesuits seriously doubt the survival of the Aboriginal people. MacKillop clung to his policies
of preserving the native culture and of ‘religion primary in intention but secondary in practice’ and described his
model as ‘a kind of socialism’, but outside factors crowded in to produce a tragic desperation as he foresaw the
end of the mission, ‘the daydream of my life’. In vivid prose, he frequently lashed out in the press at ‘blood-stained
Australia’, at the white and Chinese population and at the government, castigating the latter for its pusillanimity
in grants of land in tribal territories and finance. Worn out and seriously ill he was ordered south in October 1897.
Leadership of the mission became mediocre after his departure, and, following floods in 1898 and 1899, the station
was closed. MacKillop’s direction had been realistic, though his forthright criticism of official government policy
probably alienated co-operation from that area.
MacKillop spent the rest of his life in intermittent good health, working in Jesuit parishes in Norwood, South
Australia (1898–1901); Hawthorn, Victoria (1902–03); Richmond, Victoria (1904–10), Sevenhill, South Australia
(1911–13) and Norwood, South Australia (1914–24), where he died on 2 February 1924. As the evidence of former
Residents J L Parsons and C J Dashwood before the Select Committee on the Proposed Aborigines’ Bill of 1899
(SA) suggests, it was the failure of the Jesuit enterprise in the Territory that helped confirm the negative character
of government legislation on Aborigines for the next two or three decades.
D MacKillop, ‘Anthropological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of the Daly River, North Australia’, TRSSA, 1893; Nouvelle Revue de Science
Missionaire, vol 2, No 3, 1952; Northern Territory Times Almanac and Directory, 1886–90; ‘Reports to Resident from Roman Catholic
Mission’, SAPP, 1886–89, 1891–94, 1895–99; Diaries, Chronicles, Annual Letters to Rome, Australian Jesuit Provincial Archives, Hawthorn,
Vic; G J O’Kelly, ‘The Jesuit Mission Stations in the Northern Territory, 1882–1899’, BA (Hons) Thesis, 1967; R M Berndt, ‘Surviving
Influence of Mission Contact on the Daly River, Northern Territory of Australia’, Nouvelle Revue de Science Missionaire, 1952.
G J O’KELLY, Vol 1.MAHAFFEY, GWENDOLINE MARY (GWEN) (1932–1975), nurse, was the daughter of Robert and
Molly Mahaffey of Moree, New South Wales, and was born there on 10 May 1932, the youngest of four children.
She grew up in the town and was educated at the Moree High School. An excellent sportswoman, she held trophies
in tennis, swimming and diving and was part of an aquatic ballet formed at the baths in Moree in post war years.
After leaving school, she worked in a local pharmacy before beginning her nursing training at the Concord
Repatriation Hospital in Sydney in September 1954.
She completed her training at Concord in 1958 and then undertook a Midwifery Education program at the
Canterbury District Memorial Hospital in Sydney between May 1959 and May 1960, going on to do her Tresillian/
Mothercraft (Infant Health training) at the Royal Society for Welfare of Mothers and Babies at Vaucluse in Sydney.
After a brief visit to the Territory in 1962, she began to know of that region’s charms when travelling with her
friends Jacqueline Seale and Vern O’Brien. She was bridesmaid at their wedding in July 1964.
Mahaffey came to the Territory in 1965 as a Survey Sister in Rural Health and learnt a great deal about the
outback and nursing in remote areas on outback station runs as well as in Aboriginal communities. She visited
Maningrida, Milingimbi and Elcho Island at a time when the outstation movement was beginning and visited the
mainland (Arnhem Land) from Milingimbi to help establish some of these new communities, where she gained
the title ‘Yappa Mahaff’—Sister Mahaffey. She spent time at Elcho Island (now Galiwinku) during a busy measles
epidemic in 1965.
Transferring to the Darwin Hospital in 1966, she worked as a Charge Sister. In 1967, she came to the School
of Nursing as a Tutor, a Nurse Educator. She gained a Diploma of Nursing Education in 1969 and a Diploma in
Nursing Administration in 1973 at the College of Paramedical Studies. She was totally committed to student nurse
education and continuing education for all registered nurses. Following the lead taken by Jacqueline O’Brien, the
first post war qualified Nurse Educator at the Darwin Hospital; Mahaffey devoted herself to the daunting task of
maintaining professional nursing education standards with only limited staffing.
Nurse educators had to upgrade a system that dated back to the 1920s and in which there was little correlation
between theory and practice. Practical instruction was simply ‘left to the Ward Sisters who gave students structural
bedside teaching according to their degree of motivation. Lack of interest on the part of a Ward Sister meant that
the student “picked it up” by trial and error.’ Gwen Mahaffey had an excellent rapport with the student nurses and
spent a great deal of time counselling them through their problems or anxieties.