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He provided introductory vocabulary and sentences in both Mudburra and Jingulu: the first tape-recording of those
languages.
By the mid 1960s, Mijanu was a pensioner. During the period 1967–1971 Granton Harrison and
Rod V Liebeknecht from Adelaide contacted Long Tommy at Elliott, and employed him as a guide on their
prospecting trips along the 1928 railway survey line between Murranji and Cattle Creek. Their area of interest was
towards where the Kookaburra made its forced landing, which Mijanu knew first-hand as has been noted above.
It is notable that none of the searchers for the Kookaburra made use of Mijanu (or any other of Murray’s 1929
Aboriginal guides). One of Harrison’s photographs showing Mijanu is published in the Kookaburra book by Davis
and Smith, who do not mention that he is also in Berg’s 1929 photograph at the Kookaburra site.
At times from 1966 until his death, Mijanu worked at Elliott with linguist Neil Chadwick in his study of Jingulu
and other languages of the area.
On 29 July and 10 August 1977 historian Peter Read, whose subsequent book includes a portrait of
‘Tommy Tracker’, interviewed Mijanu and his account of what he may have justly considered his greatest tracking
achievement, finding the body near Larrimah with Constable Stott.
He died at his hut at the Top Camp at Elliott, and was buried in the Elliott cemetery on 15 June 1978. He was
survived by his elderly daughter Dolly Nangala (Julypungali), and his late son’s twin children, Terence Thompson
and Melissa Thompson.
Advertiser, 25 April 1936; Australian Archives, letter from Administrator to Secretary, Department of Territories, 21 December 1951, CRS F1
1949/408; R Brown & P Studdy-Clift, Darwin Dilemmas, 1992; N Chadwick, ‘Survey Materials’, 1973, ‘A Descriptive Study of the Djingili
language’, 1975; P Davis & D Smith, Kookaburra, 1980; K L Hale, Mutpurra and Tyingilu field notes, Elliott, 1959–60, AIATSIS Library,
MS 3034, Tape LA 4555; D Nash, ‘Aboriginal Knowledge of the Aeroplane Kookaburra’, Aboriginal History, 1982; Northern Territory
Government Gazette, no 19B, 13 May 1957; F Nottle, Diary of Kookaburra Recovery Trip, 1929; J & P Read. ‘A View of the Past’, 1979; P &
J Read, Long Time, Olden Time, 1992.
DAVID NASH, Vol 3.MILLER, ALICE MARY (LULLA) also LINKLATER (1907–1974), house girl and children’s nurse, was
born in 1907, the daughter of William Linklater, known as Billy Miller, and an Aboriginal woman, Hollowjacks
Alice, at OT Downs Station, Northern Territory. A legendary Territory bushman and author of the classic Gather
No Moss, an epic early pastoral story of the Territory, Linklater later related that his adopted name was given by
the Aboriginal group ‘Yonta Wonta’, whose members said he ‘bin die and jump up white fella’ and their version of
his name was ‘Billamilla’, which meant waterhole and that that place was his spiritual home. As a young child at
the Kahlin Compound in Darwin Alice Miller was cared for by Superintendent MacDonald and his wife Marian as
a young house girl. The young MacDonald children could not pronounce her name Alice so she became ‘Lulla’ to
them and later to the Lovegrove, Fawcett and Fitzer families and others who knew her. As a child, she confronted
Billy Miller in a Darwin street and asked him if he was her father. When she told him her mother’s name and how
old she was, he agreed he was. Later the little half-caste girl used to greet him with a wave and yell ‘Hello, Dad’,
bringing his paternity into account.
Miller worked with the Styles girls, Lillian, Myrtle and Gertie, in 1921, living in Darwin’s main street between
Brown’s Mart and the ‘Tin Bank’. Later she looked after the young Lovegroves at Alice Springs and Katherine
as policeman John Lovegrove, who had married Lillian Styles, was posted to various stations. In the late 1920s
and 1930s, she looked after the young Fawcetts, children of Jim Fawcett and his wife Myrtle, one of the Styles
sisters. After 1928, Miller ‘grew up’ the Fawcett children during the time that their father was Manager of Jolly and
Company in Darwin. When the war clouds loomed in December 1941 and an evacuation was ordered from Darwin,
Miller went down on Koolama to Perth, Western Australia, with Myrtle Fawcett and they were in Wyndham on the
way there when Pearl Harbour was bombed on 7 December 1941. Miller worked at the Saint John of God Hospital
in Perth.
Miller had a brother, George, but he also went under the name of his father, ‘Billy Miller’, and was managing
OT Downs Station when he was killed after falling from a horse at about 40 years of age. She also had a cousin
with whom she was friendly, Madge Williams (also Cooper).
Returning to the Northern Territory after the war, she continued her associations with the Fawcetts and
their descendants. In 1961 she went to live at Oolloo Station near the Daly River as the children of Pam Rixon,
nee Fawcett, grew up there. She enjoyed fishing and crabbing and was a keen shot with her .22 rifle. She loved
living in outback locations and the billabongs of the Daly River were part of her life in the Top End as she ‘grew
up’ two generations of Territorians. She was very fond of reading and sewing.
Alice Miller died in Perth on 25 March 1974 and many Territorians particularly the Fawcetts and the Lovegroves,
gathered to pay their respects at her graveside near the Ooloo homestead. She was, for them, ‘Lulla of the Fairy
Tales’.
B Miller, The Magic Snake, 1941; W Linklater & L Tapp, Gather No Moss, 1968; Certificate G Miller; personal papers, A M Miller;
correspondence, Rixon family, Oolloo.
V T O’BRIEN, Vol 2.MILLNER, JAMES STOKES (1830–1875), medical officer and Government Resident in the Northern Territory,
was born on 27 November 1830 at Wednesbury in Staffordshire. His father, Thomas Millner, who married Eleanor
Stokes in 1827, was a timber merchant. He owned the Phoenix Timber Yard, Ryder’s Green, West Bromwich,
Staffordshire. Millner had one brother, Thomas, who came to South Australia in 1857 with his wife and family,