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McLEOD, WILLIAM (?–?), businessman and publican, was one of the prospectors to initiate the Palmer River
goldfield, in the early 1870s. He arrived in Borroloola in 1884 in the vessel Lucy and Adelaide with alcohol and
general stores. It was his intention to set up in opposition to ‘Black Jack’ Reid. Unlike Reid, McLeod had paid
duty on his supplies, and was thus received genially by the customs officer, Alfred Searcy, who assisted McLeod
in getting his supplies up the MacArthur River into Borroloola.
McLeod faced no immediate competition from Reid, as Searcy seized Reid’s supplies, and he was returned to
Palmerston for sentencing. Although McLeod suffered some hardship—his store was held up on one occasion—
he continued to grow, and was very successful. Within two years, McLeod was advertising as McLeod, Hunt &
Company and he was the local agent for Burns, Philp and Company Ltd.
By April 1886, a year after setting up his store, MacLeod had built the McArthur River Hotel. Minutes of the
Annual Meeting of the Palmerston Licensing Bench show McLeod and Reid both applying for their respective
publican’s licences. It is probable that competition in that sphere between the two was quite fierce. McLeod sold
his hotel in 1887. He later died of malaria, and was buried on the MacArthur River.
J Whitaker, Borroloola, 1985.
JUDITH WHITAKER, Vol 1.
McMINN, GILBERT ROTHERDALE (1841–1924), surveyor, public servant and Government Resident in the
Northern Territory, was born in Newry, County Down, Ireland, and was one of the sons of Joseph McMinn, a bank
manager, who had married Martha, nee Hamill. When Joseph died in Ireland, his wife sailed to Australia with eight
children in Albatross, which docked at Port Adelaide in September 1850. There, Gilbert was educated and took up
surveying as a career.
A younger brother, William, joined the Northern Territory survey expedition under B T Finniss to Escape
Cliffs in 1864. He sailed on Henry Ellis as a chainman and Gilbert followed on South Australian as a labourer in
October. William was appointed as a surveyor in 1865, but, distressed at the steamy northern climate, he became
one of the unhappy group who secured a seven-metre boat, Forlorn Hope and set off for Western Australia. Gilbert
returned to Adelaide in 1866 when the survey party under Manton was recalled. Gilbert McMinn returned to the
north with Goyder’s expedition to Port Darwin in February 1809. Goyder made up six main parties to survey town
and rural sections. McMinn headed one, assisted by E M Smith, who later became Surveyor General of South
Australia. The bulk of McMinn’s surveys were affected in the Hundred of Strangways and Ayers, on the Elizabeth
River and west to Southport.
However, by 1870–71 he had become involved in the preparation for the construction of the Overland Telegraph
Line and was appointed by Todd to take charge of the central section of the line, between Marchant Springs
and Alice Well on the Hugh River. His work as a surveyor on the line in February 1871 led to his discovery of
Simpson’s Gap and through this, a practical route east of John McDouall Stuart’s course over the MacDonnell
Ranges at Brinkley’s Bluff. He completed his section of the work on 15 November and then, under instruction,
took over the next northern section from William Whitfield Mills by late December 1871.
McMinn played a major part in establishing one of the telegraph station buildings at the Alice Springs waterhole
before he left for Adelaide in July 1872, a month before the line was connected near Dunmarra. His diary relates
the day-by-day events of that work in 1871–72, including Mills’s naming of Heavitree Gap in commemoration of
Mills’s school at Heavitree, Devon.
In June 1873, McMinn became a senior surveyor in the Northern Territory and a supervisor of works at a
salary of 700 Pounds. He contributed to W Harcus’s book in 1876, South Australia—Its History, Resources and
Productions. McMinn married Anna Gore, daughter of Alfred Gore of Palmerston, on 28 November 1874. Their
son, Willie died on 10 March 1878 aged seven months. Anna McMinn died on 25 December 1880 and was buried
in Darwin with her infant child. McMinn later married Madge Fleetwood Marsh who also predeceased him. After
the departure of E W Price as Government Resident in 1883, McMinn acted in the position for fourteen months
until the arrival of J Langdon Parsons in May 1884. His quarterly reports were regarded as practical and succinct.
He was also responsible for tracing Stuart’s early exploration routes, including a tree marked by him in 1862 at
Point Stuart. Taking leave in 1884, he returned to be appointed Resident Magistrate and Customs Officer in 1886
at Borroloola. His diary again records, dramatically, the setting up of his post in a tent in the newly proclaimed
Town of Borroloola.
McMinn left the Territory in May 1888, went to Adelaide and by 1890 to Sydney, where he was appointed a
Justice of the Peace and carried out some work on drainage in 1894. He published a paper on it in the Agricultural
Gazette. In 1895, he worked in Adelaide for the Education Department and then moved on to Western Australia,
like many of his fellow surveyors, in search of new opportunity. He finally settled in 1907 in Melbourne and gave
a paper to the Hawthorn Literary Society on the Northern Territory. He lived at Hawthorn and later at St Kilda
with his daughter, Beulah, a nurse. Aged 83, McMinn died of a heart attack on 18 October 1924 and was buried
privately at the Box Hill Cemetery. One son from the first marriage and two daughters and two sons of the second
marriage survived him.
McMinn’s significant contribution to works in early Darwin was recognised by Goyder in McMinn Street and
McMinn’s Lagoon in the rural area south of Darwin. His family have given his early survey instruments to the
Northern Territory Department of Lands, successor to the body he originally headed in 1873.
W H Bagot, Some Nineteenth Century Adelaide Architects, 1958; Inst of Engineers (Aust) and Aust Post Office, The Centenary of the Adelaide–
Darwin Overland Telegraph Line, 1972; Adelaide Advertiser, 15, 16 February 1884; Adelaide Register, 8 August 1899; Argus, 21 October