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cheerful grin would decline any assistance. But they found water, almost at the end of their tether—a brackish
black pool, fouled by rotting leaves, but life sustaining; and they safely rejoined Marie.
In the following year, Morey organised a land and sea patrol to the Gulf of Carpentaria to apprehend members
of the Balamumu. He was to lead the patrol to the police station at Roper Bar. With him would be Mounted
Constables Jack Mahony, Albert Stewart McColl and Victor Charles Hall. The latter two officers were to proceed
by the Groote Eylandt Mission lugger Holly and rendezvous with Morey’s and Mahony’s horse patrol at the mouth
of the Koolatong River on the Gulf at a pre-arranged date.
Hall and McColl transferred at Groote to the launch Hope, a most unsuitable craft for the wild waters of the Gulf.
They found the engine dismantled and the hull stove in. Missionaries Port and Perriman hurried to make the craft
seaworthy, but five weeks elapsed before the officers, with trackers Menikman, Roper Tommy—an outstanding
tracker and man, and considered so by both black and white—Dick and an islander, Reuben, embarked for the
mainland. With a sou’ Easter gale blowing, the crew were forced to heave to for more than two weeks. By the time
they rendezvoused with the mounted patrol on the mainland, they found them to be in a half starved condition.
The combined police parties boarded the launch and headed for Isle Woodah. Penetration of the thick jungles
of the interior was delayed until the morrow when, tragically, McColl was speared through the chest as he pursued
a lubra into a prepared ambush, dying within seconds. Meanwhile Mahoney, in another confrontation, had a spear
tear the puggaree of his hat and, out of ammunition, was saved by the arrival of Morey and Hall. They remustered
on the beach where McColl failed to answer the recall signal. An armed search was made for him until 10 o’clock
that night, when, exhausted, a retreat was made to the beach and sentries posted. They found McColl’s body the
next morning—2 August 1933—in a very small clearing within the jungle. Hall repeated the burial service while
his fellow officers and trackers kept wary watch.
All of Morey’s patrols were conducted in a bushmanlike and humane manner. They were neither equipped
(there was but one rifle, though each officer had a revolver) nor were they under orders to fight a defensive or
offensive action. The party retreated to the mainland where Morey wrote a telegram to be conveyed by Hall in the
launch to Groote Eylandt for transmission to headquarters in Darwin. When the horse patrol arrived at Roper Bar,
they were ordered to mount a peacekeeping force at the mission on Groote Eylandt, where an Aboriginal attack
was expected.
The end of the year found this contingent of the Mounted still guarding the mission and so, for the second time
in a year, Morey and Mahoney missed their chance of ‘getting their man’.
Morey then went down to the Barkly Tableland country and Lake Nash where he was to be officer-in-charge for
some four years. Here he met his bride-to-be, Kathleen Reilly, of Camooweal. They were married in that bustling
cattle town on 20 April 1935.
The outbreak of the Pacific war found them established at Newcastle Waters police station where Kathleen had
her hands more than full coping with two young Moreys and terrific volumes of military and road construction
telegraphic traffic, night and day. The police force soon released Morey for army service. Kathleen, daughter arid
son went to Adelaide to be with Morey’s mother, and their third and last child, another daughter, was born there
nine days after Darwin was first blitzed.
Morey was sent to Officers’ Training School, Tallarook, Victoria. Soon he was back in the Territory, only to be
first posted to Mount Isa and, later, to Rockhampton, Queensland. The unit was disbanded there and he joined the
2nd Pack Transport Regiment where there were 1100 Queensland horses to be broken. He was back in his element.
Just before embarkation, a signal ordered Lieutenant Morey to Darwin forthwith, to supervise the formation of an
Aboriginal Pioneer Regiment. Disappointed at not remaining with his company and going overseas, Morey was
entrained to Mount Isa and thence by army transport to Darwin, only to find himself Darwin’s acting Town Major.
He was able to save some of the Territory’s mining records and the land survey datum peg (the peg from which all
Territory surveying was initiated) from destruction.
Demobilised in 1945, Morey returned to the Northern Territory police and in November of that year was
ensconced at the police station, Pine Creek, with his family. In 1947, he attained 20 years’ service with the force
(including war service); but looming promotion threatened to take him away from the bush service that he loved.
He resigned, taking up a buffalo-shooting block on Nourlangie Creek and the Wildman River block in the hopes of
making his fortune by shooting buffalo and crocodiles for their hides and skins. But 1948 saw a worldwide slump
in prices for both. E J Connellan approached him about accommodating guests and taking them out on shooting
safaris for a fortnight a time. Morey, a shy man, agreed rather reluctantly. Connellan Airways flew the guests in
and picked them up. An airstrip was levelled and Connellan’s famous Silver Ghost Rolls Royce possibly became
the first ‘safari’ vehicle in the Territory, and Wildman the first ‘safari station’.
In 1949, Morey sold Wildman to Connellan, with all equipment, and managed the Darwin Club for 12 months.
At this time (October 1950) he was offered the management of Beswick Station, and he and his family had a happy
six years there. In December 1956 he assumed the management of Coolibah Station, near Timber Creek, his old
haunt of 25 years ago. Because of the isolation and the need for a Justice of the Peace in that remote area, he at
last accepted that office.
He wrote many articles on Territory characters. All his writings had historical significance. His 200-page
manuscript of the Nemarluk and Arnhem Land foot, horse and sea patrols was not, however, published. Some
of his short stories appeared in the North Australian Monthly magazine, edited by Glenville Pike in the 1950s.
More appeared in the Territory Digest.
In 1957, he suffered a kick from a horse in the lower leg. When the leg began to lose feeling, he sought medical
advice. After months with no appreciable improvement, he was advised to go south and seek specialist treatment.
The limb was worrying and so, late in 1958, he and Kathleen semi-retired to Adelaide. He wore a brace on that leg