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as the founding group of the Northern Territory Mission. The first foundation was on a newly granted reserve of
130 hectares at Rapid Creek, highly unsuitable because of its closeness to Palmerston, some eleven kilometres
away, a position too close to prevent the disintegration of the tribal culture of the Larakia and Woolna, the first
Aboriginal groups with whom the Jesuits came into contact. (The missiology and history of the four Jesuit stations
in the Northern Territory, based on the model of the famous Reductions of Paraguay, has been alluded to in the
entries on Anton Strele and Donald MacKillop).
O’Brien worked at Rapid Creek for four years, learning the language and establishing the farm whose later
produce was to be used to stock the stations on the Daly River. In 1885, a new reserve was granted on the Daly
River, with an eight-kilometre river frontage and extending west 30 kilometres to the Serpentine Lagoon. The
Jesuits were the first permanent white settlers on the west bank of the Daly, where the killing of four white
prospectors in September 1884 and the subsequent punitive killing raids by other whites had given the region a
frightening reputation. The Jesuits deemed, however, that total seclusion from the whites was necessary if they
were to succeed in their efforts to develop small colonies of Christian Aborigines. O’Brien was appointed founding
superior of this station and a parry of four Jesuits set off in September 1886 on a journey that took three weeks to
traverse the 240 kilometres, as they had to make their own track for the second half of the journey, and it was an
ordeal of exploring, unloading and reloading as they encountered gorges, and wagons that broke under the strain.
The second station, known officially as Holy Rosary, but popularly as Uniya, lasted from October 1886 until
July 1891, and like its predecessor at Rapid Creek, was doomed to failure, as nowhere on the reserve was there
land suitable for agricultural settlements, the fertile area being under water in the Wet and the high land being stone
or sand. Strele had not inspected the site before he agreed to the proposed reserve, and there was little knowledge
of the Daly at that time. The four men underwent intense privations and were plagued with boils, malaria and eye
infections; those who could see wielded the hammers and those who could not held the nails! They called their
station ‘Hungerberg’ as supplies frequently failed. Strele insisted that rice be sown as the staple crop, even though
O’Brien and others knew it was unsuitable; as crop after crop failed they resowed, out of obedience. Despite these
hardships, a certain amount was achieved with the Mollok (Mulluk Mulluk) people who gathered around the
station and began to work with the missionaries and allow their children to attend the school. From Uniya there
was established a further station at Serpentine Lagoon, but this also was an unsuitable site.
In December 1890, Donald MacKillop was made superior of the whole mission in succession to Father Strele,
and set about a total reorganisation, attempting to repair the eight years of maladministration. He closed the existing
three stations at Rapid Creek, Uniya and Serpentine Lagoon and concentrated the four priests and seven brothers
at the ‘new’ Uniya, on several hundred acres of suitable agricultural land, about thirty kilometres downstream on
the east bank. O’Brien was transferred to New Uniya where he worked on the Station until May 1898, when he
was transferred to Palmerston to succeed Father Strele as Administrator Apostolic of the Diocese of Port Victoria,
as the ecclesiastical district of the Northern Territory was termed then.
The role of an Administrator Apostolic is to tend to needs of an area that has not yet received a bishop, or
from which the bishop is absent for a prolonged period. O’Brien fulfilled this role, buying properties for future
churches, establishing a school in Palmerston and acting as itinerant parish priest for the Top End until 1902,
when he was transferred south by Jesuit superiors. He worked in parishes in Sevenhill and Norwood, taught at
St Aloysius’ College, Sydney from 1908 to 1912, and was then stationed in the parish at Sevenhill until his death
on 18 March 1925.
Father John O’Brien was a man of great strength, spiritual and physical, very jovial and popular. The Illustrated
Testimonial presented to him when he left the Territory contains the signatures of all the notables. Of the nineteen
Jesuits who worked under most rigorous conditions in the Territory, he was there the longest (twenty years,
seventeen of them in active missionary work) and he was one of the very few who emerged unscathed in health.
Diaries and records in the Jesuit Provincial Archives, Hawthorn, Victoria. G J O’Kelly, ‘The Jesuit Mission Stations in the Northern Territory,
1882–1899’, BA Thesis, 1967.
G J O’KELLY, Vol 1.
O’BRIEN, (THOMAS) ALLAN (1935– ), public servant, was born on 6 June 1935, the son of Mr and Mrs
J O’Brien. He graduated Bachelor of Engineering with Honours from the University of Sydney and Bachelor of
Laws with Honours from the Australian National University and was admitted to the New South Wales Bar in
- On 3 May 1957, he married Diana, daughter of Mr and Mrs S B Dickinson; they had four children.
O’Brien rose quickly through the ranks of the Commonwealth Public Service; by 1968, he had been promoted to
Assistant Secretary in the Department of Air and, in 1969, he became a First Assistant Secretary in the Department
of Defence. In 1971, he was appointed Deputy Administrator in the Northern Territory Administration, effectively
the most influential locally based public servant. That position had been newly created largely because of the need
to manage conflict between the two Assistant Administrators. Arriving in the Territory at a time of considerable
ferment on the subject of further constitutional development that had generated a hostile attitude towards senior
officialdom from the local political elite, O’Brien found it difficult to secure wide acceptance. Moreover, although
it was conceded that he was a competent administrator, his aloofness, his authoritarian disposition and his
undisguised ambition did little to endear him to either his subordinates or to the community. One close colleague
referred to O’Brien as ‘an unlovable bloke’.
When Labor came to federal office in December 1972 and decided to create a new Department for the Northern
Territory (DNT), O’Brien was made Secretary. The Public Service Board on the grounds of his comparative youth
and inexperience opposed his elevation but, apparently through the influence of Kep Enderby, the responsible