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Australian Government Service in June 1866, in the Survey Department. By December 1808, he had become a
second-class surveyor and was selected by Goyder, the South Australian Surveyor-General, to accompany his
expedition to Port Darwin to survey town and country sites at Palmerston. During the survey two members of the
party were attacked by Aborigines and one died. The survey was completed on 21 August 1869. Dominic Daly,
one of the surveyors wrote in his diary ‘all surveyors were agreed that they would never undergo the same trials
and dangers again for similar compensation’, which had been 20 per month.
In 1870, an Act was passed by the South Australian Parliament authorising the building of the Overland
Telegraph between Port Augusta and Darwin. Charles Todd, the South Australian Post-Master General, raised a
party of 15 officers and men to erect the central section of the telegraph line. This section was to be divided into A,
B, C, D and E sub-sections, each approximately 190 kilometres long. Of the five surveyors appointed to supervise
these sub-sections three, Harvey, McMinn and Knuckey, had been with Goyder’s Darwin expedition. Undaunted
by his Darwin experience, Mills accepted an appointment as second in command of C sub-section. Todd was later
to say ‘The successful carrying out of the Overland Telegraph Line was largely due to Mr Goyder, the experience
of the men he had trained being of great value.’
C sub-section men left Adelaide on 5 September 1870. J Beckwith was in charge. However, by 21 November
Beckwith’s health, which had been declining all the time since leaving Adelaide, was such that Todd decided he
was not fit enough to continue and wrote to Mills, then just 26, advising him of his appointment to Beckwith’s post,
with McMinn in overall charge of B and C sub-sections, and that ‘in a work of such magnitude and difficulty as
that before you, success depends on the example and tact of the officer immediately in charge of the men’.
The lives of the members of his party were largely in the hands of Mills who had no one to call on for immediate
help and who had ‘to watch over the health and morals of the party, to regularly suppress gambling and endeavour
as far as possible to promote all rational amusements’. The base camp for the central section was to be the junction
of the Hugh and Finke rivers.
Mills, with two other surveyors and a party of four, arrived at the base camp towards the end of January 1871.
Mills went on to find a waggon route through the MacDonnell Ranges as, until this was done to enable supplies
to be taken forward, the parties could not leave the base camp to which Mills returned on 1 March, and left again
on the seventh.
On 11 March 1871, in his own words, he ‘again arrived in the MacDonnell Range and was successful in finding
a pass about thirty miles east of Stuart’s Track with numerous waterholes and springs, the principal of which is
Alice Spring, which I had the honour of naming after Mrs Todd’. He named the pass Heavitree Gap after his school
in Devon. Despite later claims made for John Ross—who never himself made any such assertion—there is no
doubt that Mills was the discoverer of the Alice Springs.
After discovering Alice Springs, Mills pushed on. He named the Everard Plains after the minister controlling
the Northern Territory, Burt Creek, Forster’s Creek, Mount Forster, and Anthony’s Well after members of his
section and possibly Harry Creek after a young brother. He also named the Laira River after a river in Devon.
He named nothing after himself.
On 27 July 1871, Todd instructed Mills to complete his section and then go north to assist Harvey with E section,
and then go north again to assist with the northern section that was behind schedule. In December, a group of
Aborigines attacked Burt, Mills’s second-in-command, by throwing spears and lighting the grass, but the line was
completed on 22 August 1872. Mills was paid a bonus of 50 Pounds for his work as ‘Overseer and Surveyor’ plus
an additional 100 Pounds for getting C section completed on time.
On two occasions in 1873, Mills made unsuccessful applications for appointments in the public service.
He returned to the Northern Territory and mined the quartz reefs and alluvial land near Sandy Creek. He then
practised as a surveyor at Palmerston, the Shackle and Yam Creek.
Mills returned to Adelaide and practised as a surveyor until 1881. In 1881 and 1882, he was the manager of a
camel carrying company in the north of South Australia and the Northern Territory.
On 6 June 1881, with Charles M Short, a son of the then Bishop of Adelaide as second-in-command, and
five Afghan camel drivers, Mills left with a team of thirty camels from Beltana in South Australia, heading for
Northhampton in Western Australia, where he had been engaged to take charge of the transport section connected
with the construction of the telegraph line from Northhampton to Roebourne. He arrived on 25 November 1882,
the camels having been fourteen days without water on two occasions. This line was finished in October 1883.
Mills then practised as a surveyor in Adelaide and Western Australia, where he went prospecting at
Widgiemooltha in 1914. Mills died on 18 August 1916 and is buried there. His fellow surveyor on the Overland
Telegraph, R Knuckey, also died at Widgiemooltha. Mills is remembered in a street name in the Darwin suburb of
Rapid Creek.
W W Mills, articles in Adelaide Observer 5 & 12 January 1884; W W Mills, report to Todd, 12 December 1872, SAA 140/47; Letter from
Dominic Daly to his sister Harriet, 27 September 1869, SAA 984; M C Hartwig, ‘The Progress of White Settlement in the Alice Springs District
and its Effects upon the Aboriginal Inhabitants, 1860–1894’, unpublished PhD Thesis, Adelaide University, 1965; F J Gillen, Camp jottings,
22 April 1901; Diary of Surveyor-General Goyder, 5 February 1869; Charles Todd’s letter to Mills, 25 November, 1870 (SAA 140/23; MCNT
55/1907; Major-General G W Symes ‘The Penetration of the MacDonnell Ranges with respect to the discovery and naming of Alice Springs’,
RGSA SA Br, April 1957.
ELLIOTT WHITFIELD MILLS, Vol 1.MILNER, HELEN: see PHILLIPPS, HELEN