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River to the Roper. The presence of the black trackers at Elsey was welcomed and they proved able assistants
in the years to come. Tracker ‘Roper Tommy’ served for forty years at Roper River and, in recognition of his
service, Stott succeeded in persuading the government to allow him to draw the old-age pension. He was the first
Aboriginal tracker to do so.
In 1885, when Aborigines at a camp near Port Essington murdered a Chinese crewman of a trepanging vessel,
Constable Stott proceeded to the scene in the cutter Larrakeyah and eventually tracked the culprit after weeks of
searching in wild, inhospitable country. In recognition of his devotion to duty, he was awarded a gold watch and
the sum of 10 Pounds and was also mentioned favourably in the Police Gazette whilst the minister commented on
his ‘great courage and sagacity’.
In September 1885, the Burrundie Local Court was established with Mounted Constable Donegan as bailiff.
This action removed the necessity of travel to Palmerston to have cases heard and the change in procedure was
welcomed by the hard-pressed police, who were no longer required to travel to Palmerston with their charges.
Stott served for a time at Southport as constable in charge of the police station and is reported to have established
the first police camp at Katherine. In April 1886, his application for transfer to the Mounted Police was approved
by the minister upon the recommendation of Police Commissioner Foelsche, who described him as a ‘good and
zealous officer’.
Stott reported, from Adelaide River in May 1888, incidents regarding the ejection of Chinese from Maude Creek
goldfields. There was much racial tension as miners were ‘putting the natives against the Chinese’ and he was
required to make frequent patrols into the troubled areas. The trouble extended to Roper River-area where a party
of Chinese was massacred by blacks soon after.
Government Resident Parsons wrote to the minister to ‘respectfully urge upon you the necessity of authorising
establishment of a police station at Roper and sending two extra constables’. This was accompanied by a petition
from residents of the Roper River district for police protection. Prior to this, in 1886, Parsons was not backward in
pointing out to the minister that ‘the Western Australian Government have sent with the Resident to the new port
of Cambridge Gulf, in addition to his staff, ... 11 constables and a Sergeant’. This followed a report that showed
that there were only twelve police in the whole of the Northern Territory. The petition was successful, however,
and resulted in the provision of two mounted constables (one of whom was Robert Stott) and one blacktracker in
September 1888.
The Roper River district, during the years Stott was stationed there, included sprawling cattle stations of up to
16 500 square kilometres with crudely built homesteads built of paperbark logs—isolated, and often the subject of
attacks by Aboriginal tribesmen determined to drive the white men from their land. Many of these were instigated
by Murrimicki, a fierce old warrior whose efforts to unite the local tribes resulted in a spate of killings and general
harassment of white people in an attempt to retain their tribal lands which stretched from the Wearyan to the Roper
River.
Six years’ hard service in the Territory took their toll and in November 1889 Stott applied for three months’ sick
leave with passage to and from Adelaide. The Government Resident supported his request and in February 1890,
he departed for Adelaide on Chinghi.
He was back in the Northern Territory in July when a report by Mounted Constable Martin of a skirmish
with an Aborigine at the river prompted him to request further assistance at the Roper. He pointed out that if one
constable was away on patrol it left the remaining man vulnerable to attack.
In 1897, Stott was promoted to First Class Constable and later transferred to Burrundie. An obituary in the
Northern Territory Times February 1901 describes the tragic death of his wife, Mary, who had arrived from ‘the
old country’ only fifteen months before. To further add to his grief, his baby daughter, Lily, died in March after
having lived for only five weeks.
At the age of 44, on April 21 1902, Constable Stott married Agnes Heaslop of Cooktown, Queensland and was
transferred to Borroloola upon the retirement of Trooper Cornelius Power. The couple had six children, Malcolm,
Cameron, Robert, Agnes, Malvern and Mavis.
In 1911, the family moved to Alice Springs where Stott was appointed Keeper of the newly built Stuart Town
Gaol and clerk and Bailiff of the local court.
Following the acquisition of the Territory by the Commonwealth government, Constable Stott resigned
on 31 December 1912 and reenlisted in the Northern Territory Mounted Police as Sergeant in Charge,
Alice Springs.
The people with whom he lived and worked held Stott in high regard. Alice Springs was notorious for its wild
element and he was credited with establishing law and order in the tough outback town. A resident of Alice Springs
at the time stated, ‘To see Robert Stott break up a ‘free-for-all’, not with a gun or truncheon, but with a riding crop,
was to witness an exhibition of physical courage rarely equalled. When he told anyone to get out of town, and stay
out, they went and stayed.’ His status was such that he became known as ‘the uncrowned King of Alice Springs’.
This caused an aristocratic eyelid to lift in 1927 when visitor Lord Stradbroke asked local children if they could
name their King and they replied without hesitation—‘Bob Stott’.
On 1 March 1927, the Northern Territory was split for administrative purposes into two sections, with the
20th parallel of latitude as the boundary between the Territory of North Australia and the Territory of Central
Australia. Each territory had its own Government Resident and its own police force. In recognition of his 46 years
of service, Sergeant Robert Stott was appointed Commissioner of Police, Centralian Police Force. He retired in
1928 and, whilst on final leave of absence, the man who had survived endless hardships and danger in the north
was struck by a train at Wayville, South Australia, and died soon after.
Stott Terrace, Alice Springs, and Mount Stott, northeast of the town, were named after him.