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STEVENS, HILDEBRAND WILLIAM HAVELOCK (1852–1942), law clerk, telegraphist, public servant,
pastoralist and businessman, was born at Torpoint on the shores of Plymouth Harbour, England, in 1852, the son
of a Royal Navy officer with whom his mother eloped. Her father was also a Royal Navy officer and her mother
a sister of Major General Sir Henry Havelock of Indian Mutiny fame. Young Stevens was the eldest of six sons
and five daughters. He was educated at various Royal Navy and Blue Coat schools in England and at Bonn in
Germany, paid for by his aunt, Lady Havelock. At the end of his schooling, he was sent to Malta to rejoin his
family where his father was Governor of the Naval Prison. Initially he was articled to an uncle then practising law
in Malta but an opportunity to join the newly formed British Australian Telegraph Company was quickly seized.
With a brother, Frederick Percy, he returned to London to be trained in telegraphic communication. They joined
the cable layer SS Hibernia and arrived in Palmerston on 26 October 1871.
In 1874, Stevens and his brother transferred to Singapore where his brother soon resigned and went to Sydney.
The following year he was transferred to Hong Kong, but after a few months Stevens, at his request, was returned
to Singapore where he resigned and went to Sydney. Soon afterwards, he travelled north again and joined a
government surveying party based at the Roper River. During the next several years, he was to see much of
the Top End. For a short time, he became a public servant and in 1880 acted as Government Secretary during
E W Price’s term as Government Resident.
Thereafter early in 1881 he became Manager of the Territory pastoral interests of C B Fisher and was credited
as ‘the first man to make practical use of the Adelaide, Daly and Victoria Rivers for the purposes of navigation.’
Ernestine Hill claimed that Fleetwing, under Stevens’s command, was the third vessel to enter the Victoria River
after HMS Beagle and Augustus Gregory’s Tom Tough.
In November 1881, Fisher and Lyons purchased Glencoe Station from Travers and Gibson and Stevens worked
hard as Manager to improve their holdings, which included the newly formed Marrakai, managed by Darcy Uhr
under Stevens’s direction. Cattle were also moved into the area of the Daly and Victoria Rivers; in October 1887
79 pedigreed Herefords were imported. He also took up land in the Beatrice Hills area, which Stevens considered
would have been successful with coffee but increasing pressure for ‘white Australia’ destroyed the concept. Fisher
was mortgaged to the hilt to Goldsborough Mort and Company and when he got into difficulties in 1886, they
took over his properties and kept Stevens on as Manager. By then, he had developed quite a reputation for being a
shrewd and energetic man. In January 1888 he was described by one of Goldsborough Mort’s pastoral inspectors
(along with Lindsay Crawford) then managing Victoria River Downs) as having ‘energy and ability as we seldom
meet.’
Stevens was long associated with the waterways of the north. Among many innovations, initially on behalf
of Fisher and Lyons, and later Goldsborough Mort, he chartered vessels, among them Cygnet, to carry mail and
stores to the coastal ports and the Victoria River. By August 1885, this had been operating for over 12 months and
was greatly appreciated by others, including members of the Durack family, who were pioneering in the vicinity.
Another vessel in the trade was the steamer Victoria which was built in Hong Kong in 1885 and which was, it was
reported, the first overseas built vessel to be registered in Palmerston. It ‘served me well for 12 years’, Stevens
commented. In 1888, he formed a company, which included Crawford, Sachse, Wood and E O Robinson to
run the steamer Adelaide with H C Edwards as Master. The ship cost about 4 000 Pounds and was financed by
Goldsborough Mort. The agreement with them was that 6 250 Pounds in paid up shares in the new company would
be issued and Stevens was to be paid 1 000 Pounds per annum for five years.
To Stevens must go the credit for the introduction of the first export live cattle trade from Port Darwin. In 1885,
he organised a trial shipment of live cattle to Hong Kong, Sourabaya and Singapore. He leased a water frontage on
the Frances Bay side of Stokes Hill and erected a yard and jetty at considerable expense in order to get the cattle
on board a lighter. When the ‘railway jetty is erected, these tentative, tedious and also expensive expedients will
be unnecessary’, wrote Government Resident Parsons. The building of the railway, commenced in 1886, caused
something of an upheaval in the town. Houses were built for the railway contractors that interfered with existing
access to the port area. The cattle yards and the temporary wharf were disregarded in the building program,
although it must be said that the government had told Stevens that this lease would only be temporary.
Having convinced Goldsborough Mort that there was a ready market for live cattle in the adjacent Asian
countries the company funded the building of the steamer Darwin for the trade in 1891. This ship was built to
comply with the requirements of the tender called by the South Australian government in April 1891, so with a
government contract, she made 59 voyages to Singapore calling at Batavia on the way with some 12 000 head and
managed to pay her way. The mortality rate of the animals was very low and the prospects for the long term were
excellent until disaster struck in 1896 in the form of redwater fever. Not only were quarantine restrictions imposed
by the Dutch and Straits authorities but they were imposed first by the South Australian government in one of its
typically short-sighted actions, despite the fact that they were paying a subsidy for the trade. This service was never
restored during the South Australian administration but by 1903, by which time Stevens was based in Singapore,
several ships were carrying chilled and frozen carcasses from Palmerston to Singapore and there sold from the
Singapore Cold Storage Company which he then managed.
In 1897, with the live cattle export trade in ruins, Stevens tendered for the coastal mail contract using the steamer
Kookaburra that he owned. The successful tender required four trips a year to Borroloola and the Roper for which
the price was 4 000 Pounds plus Port Darwin to Wyndham every eight weeks at 125 Pounds per trip. The contract
ran for four years from 1 April 1897. For reasons that suited Goldsborough Mort, all Stevens’s enterprises, including
management of SS Darwin and the mail contracts, were operated in his own name, though the funds came from
Goldsborough Mort. In their agreement with him Stevens was precluded from operating any competing business.