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M J Kerr, The Surveyors: The Story of the Founding of Darwin, 1971; Clement Young’s Journal, SAPP 80/1866; HRA.
JOHN HARRIS, Vol 1.
MIRANDA (?–?) was an elder of the Larakia people at the time of Goyder’s survey at Port Darwin in 1869 and the
subsequent European settlement of Palmerston in 1870. Palmerston was sited on Larakia land and modern Darwin
occupies virtually all of that relatively small territory.
Miranda and his people are said to have welcomed the settlers with songs. Miranda was soon dubbed
‘King Miranda’ and was the spokesman for his people in early dealings between them and the white settlers.
In 1873 William Wildey described Miranda as ‘much respected by his subjects’, the Larakia. They were, according
to Wildey, ‘most happy and contented’, ‘rigidly correct in their behaviour’ and ‘knew not the taste of alcoholic
liquor’.
Nine years later, the more racist William Sowden, after the South Australian parliamentary visit to Darwin,
scoffed at Wildey’s impressions of the Larakia. To Sowden and so many like him they were considered little better
than animals. Sowden made King Miranda a figure of ridicule. It is true, however, that Wildey met Miranda not
long after European settlement while Sowden met him well over a decade later. Those years of exploitation and
degradation of the Larakia by the whites had had disastrous effects and by 1882, they were suffering dreadfully
from venereal and other imported diseases. Miranda and his people were championed, however, by the Jesuit
missionaries at St Joseph’s, Rapid Creek, between 1882 and 1890. The Jesuits were publicly scathing about
Sowden and other visitors who from limited knowledge spoke so derisively about the Larakia, but even the Jesuits
gave up the battle against ‘unscrupulous and lustful’ whites and moved their mission to the Daly River.
King Miranda and the friendly Larakia were not to know that when they welcomed the whites with a song,
it could mark the end of all their singing. In all those years of change which Miranda could not have foreseen, the
Larakia never harmed a white person, nor were any massacres perpetrated against them, yet European diseases and
traumatic social disruption, the price of their friendly acceptance of the invaders, came just as close to destroying
them.
In 1979, the Larakia gained title to Kulaluk, a tiny strip of beach and swamp on Darwin’s northern foreshore.
In an ultimate irony, however, their most sacred place, Goondal, is forbidden to them, enclosed behind the fences
of the army barracks that bears their name—Larrakeyah.
W J Sowden, The Northern Territory As It Is, 1982; W G Wildey, Australasia and the Oceanic Region, 1876; G J O’Kelly, ‘The Jesuit Mission
Stations in the Northern Territory, 1882–1899’, BA (Hons) Thesis, 1967.
JOHN HARRIS, Vol 1.
MIRY: see MIRA
MITCHELL, SAMUEL JAMES (1852–1926), politician and judge, was born on 11 May 1852, at Mount Barker,
South Australia, the son of John and Lydia Mitchell. He was educated at Mitton’s Academy in Adelaide before
working at Mount Gambier, Melrose and thence at Port Augusta, where he became an auctioneer, a district
councillor and later mayor for two years.
Returning to Adelaide as a draper, he married Eliza Ann Gardiner at Trinity Church in North Adelaide in
September 1875. He then pursued his long-term wish to become a lawyer and was articled to H E Downer,
later graduating at the University of Adelaide in 1889. Admitted to the Bar, he practised with P Nesbit QC and
R Ingleby QC and became one of Adelaide’s leading barristers. He was first president of the South Australian
Electric Telegraph Association.
Mitchell turned to politics in 1900, stood unsuccessfully in that year, but in 1901 won the House of Assembly
seat for the Northern Territory at a by-election. He was re-elected in 1902 and 1906, being a persistent advocate
of transcontinental railway construction between Adelaide and Darwin. From June 1909, he became Attorney
General in the A H Peake ministry for six months. Mitchell resigned from Parliament in January 1910, when
the Federal transfer of the Territory was imminent and became Government Resident and Judge in Darwin, as
C E Herbert had been before him, but he first travelled to India and Southeast Asia. As the new Government
Resident in Darwin, he tried to revive the Northern Territory economy, by introducing a public works program
and encouraging mining investment and prospecting. His efforts to awaken further government interest in favour
of this great and neglected constituency were highly regarded by local Territorians at that time. With his legal
background, he was well placed to effect the transfer of control to the Commonwealth in the transitional period
and remained as Acting Administrator under the Federal system until the appointment of Dr J A Gilruth in 1912,
a system which could not, however, guarantee independence of his judicial office.
Mitchell returned to South Australia as a stipendiary magistrate, firstly at Port Pirie, later in Adelaide, at the
Police Court. He was then promoted to Commissioner in Insolvency, a title altered to Judge in 1926. He became
ill during a police bribery case in 1926, died of pneumonia on 3 October 1926 and was buried at North Road
Cemetery. His wife, son and two daughters survived him. Dame Roma Mitchell, Australia’s first woman judge and
Queen’s Counsel, was a granddaughter of Judge S J Mitchell.
H T Burgess, The Cyclopaedia of South Australia, 1907; J J Pascoe, History of Adelaide and Vicinity, 1901; Public Service Review, SA,
February 1918; Adelaide Advertiser and Adelaide Register, 4 October 1926; Government Residents’ Reports, SAA.
V T O’BRIEN, Vol 1.