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a colourful and controversial figure, descriptions of him range from ‘paragon of blackguards’ (Surveyor-General
William Light 1839) to ‘the father of horticulture in South Australia’ (Loyan 1883, Blacker 1911).
Young George Stevenson, his eldest son, began his public life on a quieter note. As 23 year old articled clerk,
he married Jeanie Miller Davidson, daughter of a Highercombe farmer, Thomas Davidson, on 17 March 1863.
Robert Haining, Minister of the Church of Scotland, conducted the ceremony at the bride’s home. From the
marriage, there were three children, John, George and Lucy. The family lived at The Parade, Norwood, and
Stevenson became a solicitor in the firm of Stevenson and Dearman, Waymouth Street, Adelaide.
The village of Norwood, fast becoming a suburb of Adelaide, formed part of the electorate of East Torrens and
Stevenson became one of the two co-members sent to the South Australian House of Assembly after the election of
14 December 1871. The first session of the new Parliament opened on 19 January 1872 and on 4 March Stevenson
found himself Attorney General.
To become Attorney General at the age of 32 was a remarkable achievement. To be selected so soon after entering
Parliament by so shrewd a politician as Premier Henry Ayers indicates that Stevenson had already been identified
as a young man with a future. In South Australia, the attorney-generalship was frequently the stepping-stone to
judicial rank. While making no bones about his newness to politics, Stevenson won many admirers by his obvious
legal knowledge and the clarity of his speeches. He also voted according to his conscience rather than political
expediency and this won him friends such as the Member for Mount Barker, who ‘thought the House fortunate in
having an attorney general bold enough to show his own colours (hear, hear), a far better course than attempting
by a different line of conduct to bolster up a weak government’. Veteran politician Thomas Reynolds pronounced
himself ‘perfectly satisfied’ with Stevenson as Attorney General.
It was an exciting time in the history of South Australia and its Northern Territory. The Overland Telegraph
Line from Adelaide to Port Darwin was nearing completion; education was a contentious issue, whether it was
about the role of the state in a free, compulsory and secular system or the need for a university to cater for higher
education. Stevenson joined the debates and on the question of spending a further 100 000 Pounds o complete the
Overland Telegraph Line, his position was clear: the government ‘had committed themselves to complete the work
and must do it whatever the cost’.
Stevenson served as Attorney General until 22 July 1873, when a new ministry was sworn in, but he continued
to represent East Torrens until the election of 10 February 1875. After that, he vanished from public life and South
Australia, leaving the colony early in 1876 under interesting circumstances to live in Sydney under an assumed
name. There he pursued a career as a journalist, becoming assistant editor of the Australian Star until his death
from pneumonia at Petersham on 27 August 1893. He was buried at the Church of England Cemetery, Waverley
and the death certificate, giving his name as William George Stevenson, contains several major errors.
Geographical features which commemorate his name and his support for the telegraph expeditions are
Stevenson’s Peak, Northern Territory, a prominent mountain (named by William Gosse on 9 August 1873) situated
to the west of the Olgas and Ayers Rock, and Stevenson’s Creek, in the north-west of South Australia near the
Northern Territory border, named by Ernest Giles on 28 September 1873. The Stevenson River, South Australia,
may have been named by John McDouall Stuart in honour of the late George Stevenson rather than his young
son; his diary of 30 March 1860 refers only to ‘my friend Mr Stevenson’.
Observer, Adelaide, 2 September 1893; Australian Star, 27 August 1893; Bulletin, 9 September 1893; SAPD, 1872–75.
IAN STEVENSON, Vol 1.STOKES, ALFRED (1873–1930), miner, fitter and labourer, was born at Hill End, New South Wales, in 1873
and spent his boyhood in Sydney, where his father was employed at the General Post Office. He came to the north
during the building of the Palmerston to Pine Creek railway in 1889. While still a youth, W K Griffiths employed
him, later to become a Northern Territory representative in the South Australian parliament but who at the time was
pursuing mining interests. Stokes first worked for Griffiths at the Grove Hill battery that was then being erected.
In the ensuing years, he assisted in the erection of other batteries and gold mining plants in the Brocks Creek,
Pine Creek and Mount Diamond areas. In the early years of the 20th century, when gold production had fallen off
he was employed by the government as a driller in charge of a shift on diamond drilling plants on various old mines
between West Arm and Pine Creek.
He spent some years in Pine Creek and while there was an active member of the cricket club. In Pine Creek,
on 11 April 1904, he married Mary Mollett, then a widow, who for a short time early that year held the licence
of the Club Hotel at Pine Creek. There were no children of the marriage, the report of which was in the press but
which was not registered.
In 1914, he went to Maranboy as leading fitter in the erection of the government battery then being installed
there after which he was involved in the erection of the government battery at Hayes Creek. While there, he
met John Davies, a prospector, and together they took up the leases of the Golden Dyke mine at the Shackle.
Here Stokes erected a 10 head battery. It was later said of him that he was always at home among machinery.
About 1918 Stokes moved to Darwin and obtained work as a fitter at Vestey’s meatworks. He joined the
Australian Engineering Union and during the next few years, along with most other workingmen at the time,
expressed his displeasure at decisions taken by the Northern Territory administration and Administrator Gilruth.
He continued to work at various jobs in Darwin and several days before his death was with a team painting the
Residency.