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of his more than 20 years on the bench and attention was drawn to it by J J Symes, long a practising lawyer in the
north.
When the Northern Territory was transferred to the Commonwealth in January 1911, Stretton, as one of those
longest resident, had the honour of hoisting the flag. Similarly, he read the commission confirming Gilruth’s
appointment as Administrator when the latter arrived in the Northern Territory in 1912.
His sporting interests were those pursued by ‘gentlemen’. He was an accurate shot and in the 1880s, before he
went to Borroloola, frequently headed the lists of results from the Palmerston Rifle Club. He was also a keen racing
man and in 1916 was a judge for the annual racing club meeting. In 1903, he was Vice President of the committee
that staged one of the first agricultural and horticultural shows, then to become an annual event.
Stretton died unexpectedly on 29 November 1919 aged 73 while at Oenpelli, where he was buried. At his death,
he had been a Territory resident for a week short of 50 years, a record then unmatched. He was to have returned to
Darwin to give evidence to the Ewing Royal Commission but the usual stores vessel was over two months late and
when it arrived he had been dead for six weeks. His family was later to claim that ‘lax’ communication between
Darwin and the coastal settlements had been the reason for his death as medical treatment had been unavailable.
During his years of residence in the Northern Territory, he was said to have enjoyed ‘splendid health’. Only on long
service leave in 1901 had he travelled out of the Territory.
He married Alice Anna, nee Arthur, in Palmerston on 31 March 1876 and 10 children were born of the marriage,
seven of whom survived him. He was predeceased by his wife, who died on 25 January 1897 at the age of 40 from
the effects of malaria. The shock of the devastating cyclone that hit Palmerston the month before was thought to
have contributed to her death. Stretton left an estate sworn in at 2 000 Pounds to his children.
D Lockwood, The Front Door, 1969; Age, 29 April 1920; Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 4 July 1885, 9 August 1885, 22 September 1887,
25 January 1897, 25 November 1897, November 1898, 22 February 1901, 4 September 1903, 30 October 1908, 14 July 1911, 21 July 1911,
6 May 1913, 12 June 1913, 28 May 1914, 1 June 1916, 6 July 1916, 10 January 1920; Observer, 18 August 1888, 15 September 1888; Register,
3 January 1911; South Australian Parliamentary Papers, Blue Books (various); Northern Territory Archives Service, NTRS 790-1749, 436,
437, F438, F440, E106/2/20; State Records of South Australia, GRS 1- 969/1885.
HELEN J WILSON, Vol 2.STUART, JOHN McDOUALL (1815–1866), arguably Australia’s greatest inland explorer, was born on
7 September 1815 at the small port of Dysart in Scotland. One of seven surviving children, Stuart was the son of
William Stuart, an ex-army captain of modest means, and his wife Mary, nee McDouall. The death of both parents
before his teens no doubt encouraged self-reliance in the young Stuart, while the civil engineering he later studied
at Edinburgh gave him the technical background for an explorer: surveying. Stuart’s iron constitution, set in a
misleadingly short, slight frame, was to be a further asset.
There is some evidence that Stuart, aged 23, became engaged to a woman who, he wrongly believed, betrayed
him; if so, it was the only instance of romantic attachment in his life. Perhaps recoiling from this lost love,
but certainly attracted by the greater opportunities in Australia, Stuart left Scotland late in 1838, arriving in
Adelaide in January 1839. The settlement was then barely two years old. Surveyors were in strong demand, and for
five years, Stuart worked in isolated survey camps, establishing a reputation as a skilled draughtsman. The life was
spartan, but Stuart adapted easily to the rigours—and joys—of the bush.
Stuart joined Charles Sturt’s Central Australian Expedition as its surveyor in August 1844. No inland sea was
discovered, but Stuart found his true calling amongst the interior’s remote wastes; Sturt commended his surveyor
as ‘a plucky little fellow’, while Stuart clearly accepted both the environments to be expected and the privations
to be endured in Central Australian exploration. He learned much from Sturt’s slow, heavily equipped expedition;
his own more successful expeditions were to rely entirely on lightly equipped horse parties capable of travelling
rapidly between scarce water supplies.
Following the Sturt expedition, Stuart lived briefly in Adelaide before moving to the Port Lincoln area, where he
worked mostly as a surveyor. Stuart was more comfortable in the bush than amongst Adelaide’s gentry (where his
partiality for whiskey was not always appreciated) and, as the limits of settlement moved out, Stuart did also.
In 1854, he left the Port Lincoln area, exploring, surveying and prospecting in the northern Flinders Ranges area
with William Finke, a man of significant wealth. Stuart’s precise activities between 1854 and 1858 are unknown,
but he was almost certainly engaged in exploring and surveying in the Flinders Ranges and beyond.
Edward Eyre’s discovery of South Australia’s salt lakes (1840), Sturt’s march to the Simpson Desert (1845),
and the disappearance of Leichhardt (1848) combined to dampen interest in inland exploration. However, the
mid-1850s saw a resurgence of South Australian interest in the interior, stimulated by A C Gregory’s successful
expedition (1855–56), the demand for more pastoral land, the hope of finding gold, and the colony’s desire to
build the proposed (but variously routed) overland telegraph. A number of government-financed, heavily equipped
expeditions left Adelaide in the late 1850s. However, they achieved little; on every front they were eclipsed by
Stuart’s privately financed, lightning dashes.
By now a superbly capable bushman, the years 1858–62 witnessed the culmination of Stuart’s career as an
explorer. During that time he spent thirty-eight out of fifty-five months travelling, riding over 20 000 kilometres,
he was often short of water, hungry and debilitated by scurvy.
Stuart’s first documented expedition was his survey of the country to the west and northwest of Lake Torrens.
Financed by Finke, Stuart left the Flinders Ranges in May 1858 with two men, covering over 2 000 kilometres
in less than three months; Eyre’s Lake Torrens ‘horseshoe’ theory was disproved, and Chambers Creek, the base
for Stuart’s future expeditions, was discovered. Stuart returned half-starved, but a proven explorer. The Royal
Geographical Society awarded him a gold watch, commending his ‘most rapid and daring journey’, and the South