>> Go Back - page - >> List of Entriess
He had faith in Australia’s future, and regarded its Northern Territory as a region of particular significance, being
the gateway to her eastern trade routes and a future field for rich agriculture. He had high hopes for Port Essington,
visited it three times, and urged Governor Gipps to retain the settlement there. To shorten the time of the voyage
from London to Sydney, he advocated a regular steamship service between Singapore and Sydney, with a coaling
depot at Port Essington. Recognising that its climate was unsuitable for European labourers, he suggested that
the ‘Christian natives of Amboyna’ could fill the need. He also favoured the development of railways to exploit
Australia’s wealth. Sydney, he believed, needed a proper public transport system—a rail link with Parramatta
extending to the rich farming communities around Richmond and Windsor, and another to freight coal and grain
from the Illawarra in the south. Other links he suggested should run from Newcastle to Maitland and Patrick’s
Plains in New South Wales, from Hobart to Launceston, from Melbourne to Geelong and from Adelaide to
Port Adelaide and Holdfast Bay.
Stokes was married twice—first in Sydney in 1841 to Fanny Jane Marlay, daughter of the Barrack Master,
Major E S G Marlay, and second, in 1856 in London to Louisa French, daughter of R Partridge, and widow of
Henry John Garratt. The first marriage produced a daughter, the second a son. No descendant survives.
In 1847 Stokes, then a Post Captain, fitted out the steam paddle surveying ship Acheron and undertook a
four-year survey of the coasts of New Zealand. In 1854, the Duke of Newcastle offered him command of the
North Australian Exploring Expedition but he declined the offer, as the Admiralty would not sanction the time
spent as part of his service record. A C Gregory led that expedition. Stokes was elected a councillor of the Royal
Geographical Society in 1856, and in 1877 was promoted to the rank of Admiral, retired.
He died at Scotchwell—the house where he was born—on 11 June 1885 from a disease of the pylorus and
is buried a few yards from the church in which he was baptised. Inscribed on his marble tomb are the words,
‘They that go down to the sea in ships ... these men see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep.’
T & W Boone, Discoveries in Australia, vols 1 and 2, 1846; L S Dawson, Memoirs of Hydrography, 1885; W R O’Byrne, Naval Biographical
Dictionary, 1849; Dictionary of National Biography, vol 18, 1909; ‘On steam communication with the southern colonies’, RGSJ, vol 26;
Notes on the coasts of Australia’, Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science, vol 2, 1846; Obituary, Times, 13 June 1885; Stokes Papers, National
Maritime Museum.
MARSDEN HORDERN, Vol 1.STOKES, JOHN WILLIAM (JACK) (1910–1995), public servant and policeman, was born on 1 February 1910
in Melbourne. He was the only son and the youngest child of John William Stokes and his wife Therese Wilhelmina,
nee Dargatz. His mother was born in 1871 in Stolp, Pomerania (then in Germany, now in Poland), the family
coming to Australia in 1885–86, where they established themselves as farmers in the Locksley district of Victoria.
His father was born in 1855 in North Carolina, United States of America, which he left at the age of 14 to escape
the privations following the Civil War. After a successful career with the Calcutta police in India, he arrived in
Melbourne in the early 1890s with his first wife. Following her death without issue in 1894, he married John’s
mother in 1895. They had four natural and one adopted daughters prior to their son’s birth.
Jack (so called to distinguish him from his father) was educated at St Matthew’s Primary School in Brunswick,
and at the Christian Brothers College in North Melbourne. His father was an inspector in the Victorian Police.
He was 60 when Jack was born and lived another 14 years. His death in 1924 forced his son to leave school and
find work to support himself and his mother.
His first job was as a ‘boy labourer’ with the Victorian Railways but, realising there was no future in it, he was
spurred to study at night school, eventually becoming a clerical officer. He obtained his Leaving Certificate from
the University of Melbourne in 1934. During the Depression, he was required to transfer to the State Taxation
Office where he languished in boredom until an advertisement for recruits to the Northern Territory police caught
his eye.
He was accepted following an interview in Canberra and, at the age of 26, boarded a ship to Darwin, starting to
patrol the streets the day after his arrival on 8 January 1937. Training was acquired whilst on-the-job.
On 27 August 1937, he was informed that he was being posted to Elcho Island, off Arnhem Land, under
secondment to the Aboriginal Branch of the Northern Territory Administration. He was to deter Japanese pearlers
visiting for fresh water from prostituting the Aboriginal women. He left Darwin on 6 October. Although his diary
records that he was to be there ‘for three months’, he was there a year, receiving provisions on the monthly supply
vessel. He left there on 24 September 1938.
As the lone policeman in an extensive remote area, he travelled widely with the local Aboriginals observing
their country and culture, helping to resolve disputes and administering first aid. He established an elaborate
camp at the site of a freshwater spring near the beach that is now the thriving town of Galiwinku. Journalist Colin
Bednall, who visited the camp on the monthly supply vessel, described it as a ‘veritable wonder-home’ with
gardens and sheds around the main tent. An airstrip was cleared with Aboriginal labour just before his departure.
Tall and standing straight as a ramrod, he commanded respect wherever he went. He was a staunch Catholic
and was noted for his concern for the welfare of Aboriginals within his custody, always treating them fairly.
His final report from Elcho Island was commended by the then Chief Protector of Aborigines, and 40 years later,
his fairness and honesty were remembered affectionately by locals such as David Burramurra. In 1982 when
his family published his diaries Stokes reflected that they appeared to show that he had arrived in Darwin in 1937
‘immature, brash and a prig’. He added that he thought that his time at Elcho Island brought him to maturity.
After leaving Elcho Island, Jack worked in Darwin until a doctor confirmed that his spine had been broken on
31 August 1937 in a riding accident. He had carried it with him for 18 months. He travelled south for treatment on