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Alice Springs and always won. Failing eyesight forced him to eventually give up the game. He was also a fanatic
bridge player partnered by Con Perry.
Jimmy’s daughter Pat grew up in Tennant Creek and attended Girton Church of England Girls School in Adelaide
for several years. She returned to her hometown where she worked as a telephonist. She married Jack Canty in
1951 and two daughters and a son were born. They remained in the Territory until Jack’s promotion to Tullamarine
Airport, Melbourne. Pat died of cancer aged 40 in 1971.
Family information; Northern Territory Archives, oral history interview, NTRS 226 TS 251; Tennant Creek Times, 6 May 1988.
ANN RICHARDS, Vol 3.MALONEY, JAMES LAWRENCE (JIM) (1875–1948), bushman, miner and bookmaker, and MALONEY,
CHARLOTTE nee MARTIN (1885–1959), homemaker. Jim Maloney was born at Pundeet, Victoria,
on 16 April 1875, son of Mark Moloney (the spelling on the certificate) and his wife Annie, nee Calahan.
Both were Irish born, from Cork and Galway respectively. Jim was the second of 13 children, many of whom died
at birth. In his teens, he went to Western Australia looking for work. He lost a leg in a shunting accident while
working on the railways and while in hospital learned to read and write. On 22 June 1904 at Bunbury, Western
Australia, he married Charlotte Martin, daughter of James Martin and Priscilla nee Wright. Charlotte was born at
Lygon Street, Carlton, Melbourne on 29 October 1885, the second daughter of eight children, one of whom died
as a baby. It is not known when her family went to Western Australia.
After his marriage, Jim worked in forestry and the young couple spent some time in the southwest of the
state. He later drove trucks for the Main Roads Department. Jim Maloney was a very keen union man and took a
great interest in politics. Jim and Charlotte’s son James, (known as Jimmy or Jerry), was born at Collie, Western
Australia, late in 1904.
In 1915, Jim went to Wyndham to act as a bush bookmaker. He travelled widely in the northwest and was
described by Ernestine Hill as ‘the Knight of the White Lettered Bag, the one and only bookie in the outback,
shouting the odds from a beer-case’. During these years two more children were born. Charlotte and Jimmy
travelled to Westonia, Western Australia, where Betty was born on 21 January 1918. The family returned to Derby
by sea and then had a ‘terrible journey overland by buggy’ to Wyndham. Soon after Charlotte’s mother died of a
form of bubonic pneumonia, then sweeping the world. In 1923, Shirley was born in Wyndham.
Son Jerry married Ellen Walsh and had a daughter Patricia. Ellen (Nellie) died of a rheumatic heart and Jim and
Charlotte took over the rearing of Patricia. Their house in Wyndham was simple but Charlotte was known for her
obsession with cleanliness. She was a quiet person and rather pessimistic. For years she had the same Aboriginal
helpers, Billy and Liddy, and when they went walkabout, Nipper and Lucy—and vice versa. She kept goats, sold
milk, and scalded cream. She also made bread and Victoria sponge cakes and sold these. Mary McIntyre was the
schoolteacher at the time and she bought a cake from Charlotte every Saturday. Rumour had it that she was ‘going
with’ Ted Whelan. Ted was in prison for rustling cattle. On Ted’s release, Mary married him after which he changed
his name back to Ward. Ultimately he found the Blue Moon mine near Tennant Creek and developed Banka Banka
station nearby with the proceeds. The Maloney and Ward families maintained contact until Mary Ward’s death.
In 1928 or 1929, Jim travelled to the races in Alice Springs via the Tanami. He met some prospectors who
spoke of the mine that was later called ‘The Granites’ and visited Tennant Creek that he though might be an up and
coming town. He returned to Tennant Creek about 1930 and founded the Lone star mine along with Bob McLeish
and George Boland but ultimately it was not successful. In 1934, Jim decided to move permanently to Tennant
Creek so the family had to pack up and go. Charlotte packed all her precious things in a wooden chest made
without nails that had been brought to Australia from Scotland by her paternal grandfather. She left her goods with
the stock and station agent in Wyndham to be sent on when she settled in a home in Tennant Creek and never saw
any of them again.
Charlotte and the three girls left Wyndham on a ship for Darwin on 5 December 1933. Jim met them in Darwin
and then went on ahead to Tennant. Charlotte and the girls travelled by train to Birdum, then waited for a passing
truck, and finally reached Alice Springs on 19 January 1934. The road was a series of potholes and travelling was
‘awful’. They stayed at Helen Springs station that was owned by the Bohnings. There was only one man living at
the station and when the family arrived, he was so shy he took his horse and left. Charlotte washed all the clothes
at the station, as well as their own things, and hung them out. Goats ate the legs of Shirley and Betty’s pyjamas
(first shortie pyjamas!). Another truck took them to Banka and Jim came up from Tennant Creek and took them to
spend the night at the Lone Star. The family spent one night at the Lone Star sleeping under the stars on a ‘scotch
feather bed’—a canvas sheet over uprooted spinifex!
Jim and his son Jimmy built a corrugated iron house and fly wired it. It was on the east side of Paterson Street,
on lot 49, just south of the Tennant Creek hotel. It had one bedroom, the front verandah was fly-wired, and when at
home the children slept there. The house had a wood stove—no electricity of course. Water was a major problem
and 100 gallons per week were bought, brought in from nearby wells by truck. The water was used repeatedly.
Washing and bathing, cleaning the cement floors and then finally poured around the yard to keep the dust down.
The continual dust flowing into the house nearly drove Charlotte mad. She swept the yard continually and son
Jimmy said that tree roots that were three inches underground gradually appeared and ended up three inches above
ground. Charlotte is one of only two women in the first Northern Territory electoral roll that included Tennant
Creek residents (1934).
Jim and Jimmy then built the first Goldfields Hotel of angle iron but, when it was finished, he was unable to get
a licence. Alec Scott at the Tennant Creek hotel, on behalf of the brewery objected. He sold the hotel and bought