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He also erected the telegraph station and quarters at Daly Waters. During the years that the town of Burrundie
prospered, he built many of the buildings there, including the hospital that was afterwards moved to Pine Creek.
Initially he prospered but like many of his contemporaries assigned his estate in 1886. In June, he won a tender to
repair the grandstand at the racecourse at Borroloola. The ship that took him there sailed on 20 June 1886.
Ruthven then seems to have been away from Darwin for about a decade as the local press noted his return on
12 February 1897. Readers were reminded that he was ‘at one time host of the Terminus Hotel and a contractor
of some importance’. He had returned to Darwin under contract to the South Australian government to assist in
repairing the town after the cyclone in January. In September, he tendered for, but did not win, a fencing contract
for the Palmerston District Council. In 1898, during which he was a member of the Northern Territory Racing Club
committee, he had premises at the corner of Cavenagh and Bennett Street and for the next three years he repaired
shops in Cavenagh Street which he had leased though was not financially successful. In August 1902, he applied
for a return passage to Adelaide, which he had forfeited by staying on after his contract in 1897 expired, as he
was concerned that there were few prospects in the north. Despite his apparent anxiety, in October that year he
won a contract, in the sum of 150 Pounds, for the erection of an iron smelter shed at the Two Mile railway yards.
It was 18 metres by 13 metres and complete by 17 December 1902, the performance bonds posted by Luxton and
Adcock of 20 Pounds each not being required.
Although he did not build the first Christ Church, in 1903 Ruthven added a vestry to the rear in the same
stone as the church at a cost of 105 Pounds. In 1905 he advertised that he was a general carrier to a number of
Chinese storekeepers and by 1908 he described himself as an ‘undertaker’ as well as a carpenter. In March 1911,
Ruthven was the foreman builder when the Pine Creek hospital was under construction. The building itself had
been removed from Burrundie, along with the doctor’s residence. Tim O’Shea, later to be better known as a
publican at Katherine was a casual labourer on the project.
Ruthven held to his belief that the Territory had mining resources of considerable value, Sandy Creek being
his favourite place for fossicking though he never made his fortune. In 1910, he lived in Smith Street and in 1919,
he held Town Lease No 57 over lots 26, 27, and 28 in McMinn Street (now part of the Shell installation). In later
life, he became a Freemason and was installed as Tyler on 3 June 1915.
Henry Ruthven died in Darwin on 12 December 1921 at the age of 82 after a long illness through which
he maintained ‘a cheerful demeanour’. Neither his wife nor any of his children appear to have come north and
Catherine died in Adelaide on 13 March 1933 at the age of 83, three of her children having predeceased her.
Administrator’s Annual Report, 1912; Australian Archives, Canberra CRS A3 21/2510; North Australian, 13 February 1885, 6 March 1885;
Northern Standard 16 December 1921; Northern Territory Archives Service NTRS, 790: A7773/ 1893, 11809/1902; Northern Territory
Times and Gazette, 22 November 1884; 14 March 1885; 5 June 1886; 20 June 1886; 12 February 1897; 24 September 1897; 28 January 1898;
17 June 1898; 6 March 1903; 16 December 1910; 3 June 1915; South Australian Births Deaths and Marriage records; P Spillett, Christ Church
Darwin, 1966; A Welke & H J Wilson, ‘Darwin Central Area Heritage Study’, Report to the National Trust of Australia (Northern Territory),
1993; H J Wilson, ‘The Historic Heart of Darwin’, 1994.
HELEN J WILSON, Vol 3.
RRAYWALA: see RRAIWALA
RYAN, EDWARD (NED) (c1835–1893), stonemason and axeman, of Bowden, South Australia, and Palmerston,
Northern Territory, was born in about 1835 in Kilfeakle, County Tipperary, Ireland, the son of Jeremiah Ryan and
Alice, nee Dwyer. He arrived in Port Adelaide in 1857 as a free immigrant.
Ryan took up residence with his widowed mother, Alice, and two brothers, John and Jeremiah, at Bowden,
South Australia. Ned and John secured employment with the government survey department as labourers. Ned was
a member of the second government party sent to the first Palmerston established at Escape Cliffs under the
leadership of B T Finniss, arriving there in December 1865.
He accompanied John McKinlay on his abortive explorations of Arnhem Land during the Wet of 1866.
Ryan and his mate Ned Tuckwell, under the supervision of R H Edmunds, the second-in-command, constructed
a craft of saplings and horsehide, which was to carry them all to safety down the East Alligator River. He was
mentioned in dispatches when McKinlay returned to Adelaide. He returned to Adelaide when Escape Cliffs was
abandoned in December 1866.
With his brothers, he toiled on the southeast drainage scheme, which at that time attracted the personal attention
of the Surveyor-General of the colony, G W Goyder, and certainly brought them under his notice.
Ryan was personally selected by Goyder, along with his brothers, as members of the founding party of the
second Palmerston, which was to be established on Port Darwin. They departed from Port Adelaide in the barque
Moonta on 27 December 1868. He was employed as an axeman despite his trade skills. He was present in the
doctor’s tent when J W O Bennett died as a result of wounds inflicted by an Aboriginal spear.
Ryan remained in Palmerston with his brother Jeremiah (Jerry) and Ned Tuckwell after the main party
returned to Adelaide in September 1869. Thus, as the first Palmerstonians, they were to witness the greatest event
in the history of Port Darwin, the planting of the first pole to begin the Overland Telegraph Line to Adelaide.
The ceremony took place at 4 pm on 15 September 1870 before the whole populace, numbering then about
45 (excluding the working party).
Together with Tuckwell, the Ryans, exercising their various skills, constructed the first two government
residences, the second of which was distinguished by its resemblance to a ship; the roof had scuppers rather than
spouting to direct torrential downpours away from the building.