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KAREN SMITH, Vol 1.SMITH, MILES STANIFORTH CATER (1869–1934), Acting Administrator of the Northern Territory and
Administrator of Papua, was born in Kingston, Victoria, on 25 February 1869, the son of William John Smith.
He was educated at St Arnaud Grammar School and the University of Melbourne. He was employed in Melbourne
at Goldsborough Mort in 1896 and later that year went to Kalgoorlie as manager of the Reuter Telegram Company.
In 1896, he was elected a councillor of the municipality and was appointed a Justice of the Peace, and then as
Mayor of Kalgoorlie in 1899–1900.
In 1901, he headed the poll in Western Australia when the first elections for the Commonwealth Senate took
place. Elected in March 1901, he was interested in tropical agriculture, touring the Pacific and New Guinea in 1903
and being recognised as an authority on the subject in the Senate, during debate on the Papua Bill. He retired from
the Senate in December 1906 and in the following year accepted a position in the Papuan government service as
Director of Agriculture and Mines. He acted as Administrator of Papua during the absence of Lieutenant Governor
Murray in 1911. His continuing interest in Papua led him to some exploration at Kikori, which was criticised for
its futility; but he was granted a Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society (Victoria) for a report delivered in
London in 1912, receiving also a Patron’s Gold Medal in 1923.
In 1916, he enlisted as a Private with the Australian Imperial Force, having failed to pass the officers’ school.
He sailed as a Sergeant with the 49th Battalion. He later became a Lieutenant in France and acted for the rest of
the war as a Battalion Intelligence Officer, being wounded and mentioned in dispatches. On his return to Australia,
he published Australian Campaigns in the Great War. He was then appointed Acting Administrator of the Northern
Territory ‘to smooth over the political turmoil arising over the administration of Dr Gilruth. He achieved some
‘smoothing over’ in the 1919 to 1921 period, introducing handbooks explaining the new direction of the policies
of the Commonwealth government. In 1921, he promised the granting of Northern Territory representation in the
Commonwealth Parliament, but the bill was defeated in the Senate. He then resigned, taking with him the local
nickname ‘Soapy Smith’. He then returned to New Guinea, serving as Administrator and Commissioner of Crown
Lands, Mines and Agriculture until he retired in 1930.
During this period, he married Miss Marjorie Mitchell, the daughter of an old family of Bunbury, Western
Australia, in 1928. When the family retired from Papua, they returned to Western Australia, to a farm at Boyup
Brook. He died on 14 January 1934, leaving a widow and four children.
Handbook on Papua, 1908; M S C Smith, Australian Campaigns in the Great War, 1919; Handbook NT, 1919; Smith Papers MS 1709, NLA;
West Australian, 15 January 1934; AA, Darwin, Series CRS A3—NT 21/1829.
V T O’BRIEN, Vol 1.SMITH, WALTER, also WATI YURITJA (‘Man of the Water Dreaming’) and WALTER, PURULA (1893–
1990), bush worker, was born at Arltunga goldfield, east of Alice Springs, in 1893, the first child of William (Bill)
Smith and his wife Topsy. Topsy was of Arabana descent, so in addition to English and the local Eastern Aranda
language, Walter became fluent in Arabana too. As there were no schools at Arltunga or Alice Springs, and as
Bill Smith could only spare limited time away from the mining, Walter only learnt the rudiments of reading and
writing. Informal education through observation, practice and commonsense was more significant to him.
Childhood experiences meant that he learnt a considerable amount about prospecting and mining, how to
ride a horse and muster stock, the basis of a blacksmith’s work, use of team horses with a waggon, and general
bushmanship. In about 1898 he witnessed the arrival of rabbits in the Arltunga area, and in 1905, at the age of
12 years, he rode some 4 000 kilometres with a tough old horseman on a horse-selling journey (with a bit of horse
duffing thrown in). Upon his return home to Arltunga Smith was told by his father that it was time he began some
real work! For the next few years, he learnt all there was to know about prospecting and mining, and the long hours
of hard work gave him a lean, sinewy strength.
When his father died in 1914, just prior to the birth of the 11th child for the family, it was left to Smith to be the
main supporter for his mother and the other children, all of whom were considerably younger. He obtained work
as a cameleer with Charlie Sadadeen, and found that he had an almost instinctive aptitude for the work. For the
better part of the next 20 years, he was involved in carrying the loading from Oodnadatta, South Australia, to Alice
Springs and as far north as Newcastle Waters, or from Hatches Creek wolfram field to Dajarra in Queensland.
However, he also took considerable time off during these years to involve himself in other enterprises, some of
them on the outer edge of the law.
No doubt, the famous bushman Joe Brown had heard that Smith just happened to be riding along in about 1913
when he caught up on a horse-stealing run across the southern Simpson Desert to Birdsville in Queensland. He and
Smith left in 1915 on a similar enterprise which took them to Oodnadatta along the ranges of the Northern Territory
and South Australia border and via the Rawlinson Range to the goldfields of Western Australia. The return travel
took them as far west as Marble Bar, Western Australia, before they turned back through the Halls Creek country
and the Tanami Desert.
Other travels, at various times, involved experiences with Aborigines. He was initiated in Pitjantjara country,
but also journeyed extensively in the Simpson Desert. He became a rainmaker, passing through the painful Arabana
rites as well as those of the Southern and Eastern Aranda peoples, and he became a noted ‘medicine man’.
He found no difficulty in accepting both his European and his Aboriginal background, and involved himself in
the distinctive aspects of each culture as well as the inter locking aspects. On occasions he was a drover, helping