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She was accomplished in other fields. She was a skilled craftswoman, able to fashion intricate handbags,
stubby holders, belts and riding crops using the techniques of leather carving.
Sister Mahaffey died suddenly on 10 May 1975. The high esteem in which she was held was evidenced by
the Gwendoline Mahaffey Memorial Trust Fund which was set up by her many friends and nursing and hospital
colleagues following her untimely death. Her significant contribution to nursing education and student nurse
counselling is remembered in this memorial award and a photograph of the former Nurse Educator was mounted
in the former School of Nursing at the Darwin Hospital. The Fund provided for an annual award in the form of a
gold medallion to the student nurse who achieved the best all round standard in his or her final year of training.
The street at Howard Springs where she planned her retirement bears the name Mahaffey Road after the first
resident who built a home on this subdivision.
J Cunningham, History of Moree, nd; V Dixon, ‘The Lighted Candle’, in Northern Perspective, vol 10, No 2, 1987; Northern Territory
Women’s Register, 1991; undated cutting from Moree newspaper, ‘Memorial to a Nurse Educator’.
JACQUELINE O’BRIEN, Vol 2.
MAHONY, JOHN JOSEPH (JACK) (1895–1959), police constable and hotelier, was born 7 February 1895
in Richmond, Victoria, the third of six children of Edmund and Teresa Mahony. Edmund Mahony was a tailor
who received a framed citation from the Pope for his work for the Catholic Church and for starting the St Vincent
de Paul’s Society in Victoria. The family were descendants of migrants from Cork in Ireland. Teresa Mahony,
nee Trowbridge, born in Monmouth, Wales, was a milliner.
Jack Mahony, educated at St Ignatius’s School, Richmond, had blue eyes, brown hair and was of stocky build,
173 centimetres tall. A keen athlete and boxer, he was co-founder of the Brighton Beach Lifesaving Club and
taught lifesaving and diving. Not all details of his early life can be traced, but it is known that after a brief period
in the watchmaking trade, he spent several years as a printing machinist in Melbourne. He joined the Light Horse
during the First World War, and learned horsemanship. Because of an injury in childhood, one of Mahony’s
feet was shorter than the other and he was not allowed to serve overseas. Mahony moved to the State Electricity
Commission in Victoria in the early 1920s working on transmission lines, and then moved to Canberra as a clerk.
Around 1925 he joined McKellar’s team as a chainman on the Oodnadatta–Alice Springs railway line survey.
In 1926 and 1927 he worked on the survey of a deep-sea port at Borroloola, taking soundings from a native canoe
and experiencing difficulties that taught him valuable lessons of survival.
After joining the North Australia Commission as a draftsman in Katherine in 1928, Mahony also continued in
survey teams, and the skills learned are evident in sketches in later police journals.
In Katherine, Mahony met the O’Shea family, well-known Territory pioneers in mining and hotel keeping
in several centres. Tim and Catherine O’Shea owned the Railway Hotel and had six attractive daughters all of
whom were to marry and remain in the Territory. The eldest, Kathleen, later married Mahony.
Jack Mahony went to Darwin in the hope of joining the Northern Territory Police Force, and spent three
unhappy months as a warder at Fannie Bay Gaol at a time of many fights and riots. He succeeded in joining
the police force on 18 May 1931. His early service was in Darwin, Timber Creek and Maranboy, with duties in
Pine Creek, Tennant Creek and Katherine. In January 1932, he was sent to Pine Creek after the police station had
been blown up during a riot of the unemployed and recorded in his diary a close escape when a revolver aimed at
him misfired.
From Timber Creek, in July 1932, Mahony and Ted Morey left to search for the fugitive Nemarluk, wanted
for the murder of three Japanese pearlers. Their patrol encompassed 2 000 kilometres of rugged Fitzmaurice
River country. They were forced to return more than two months later without their quarry when food supplies
were exhausted and witnesses and sick prisoners proved an encumbrance. Mahony was critical of the obsolete
equipment issued.
Almost immediately, Morey and Mahony left on a foot patrol for Caledon Bay to investigate the murder of five
Japanese trepangers by the Balamumu clan led by Wonggu. The two men carved their names and the date on a tree
near the scene of the murders.
A second patrol investigated the same murders in June 1933. Morey and Mahony formed a land party leaving
from Urapunga Station. Vic Hall and Stewart McColl were to meet them at the coast. Trackers accompanied both
groups. Mahony’s report detailed rugged terrain with steep inclines, huge saltpans, bogs, and ‘dense jungle scrub,
at times being pulled off our horse and left hanging on a vine like a dried grape’. Numerous bridges had to be
built and men and horses arrived exhausted, the men suffering from dysentery caused by a diet of wallaby when
supplies were finished. The four went to Woodah Island to enlist the aid of an Aboriginal group led by Tuckiar,
not knowing that these men had killed two drifters, Traynor and Fagan, in the same area and were ready to kill
again. The members of the patrol became separated and McColl was fatally speared on 1 August. Ted Morey wrote
of Mahony’s bravery when he drew spears from the remaining members of the police party by yelling a warning.
Mahony narrowly escaped death from two spears, one of which cut through the puggaree of a hat which his family
still has. The police force was later criticised by Mahony and Hall for sending out a small and poorly equipped
party, which they both felt led to the death of McColl.
Further attacks were expected, and Mahony, Morey, Hall and Clive Graham, were assigned to protect those
at the mission on Groote Eylandt, from September 1933 until April 1934. Following protests from humanitarian
groups in the southern states, a missionary peace party went into the area, and persuaded Tuckiar and others
to return to Darwin where they were tried in August 1934. At the trial, Judge Wells was critical of a situation
whereby missionaries acted as policemen, while police had to wait at the mission. During the time of mission duty,