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Her Territory-born daughter, Eleanor, died of cancer in 1910, leaving her husband, Tom Styles, to look after
their four daughters and a son. The Styles girls all married in the Territory and by 1988 this branch of the family
had produced five generations of Territory-born residents.
At about the time of the Commonwealth takeover of the Territory in 1911, Eliza fought an uphill battle to
receive the pension, having to argue her case several times because she owned her own home. With the help of the
local minister, she won her case.
She was soon embarked on another campaign for help, using her pioneer status as leverage. In 1912, she took
her first trip out of the Territory when she went to visit her son and family in Sydney. She told the government that
as she was the oldest female resident of Darwin she was entitled to assistance with the fare. The Northern Territory
Administrator of the day, John Gilruth, helped to organise a public subscription to pay her fare down, but she still
needed the fare back and appealed directly to the federal government in Melbourne. Her persistence paid off in a
second-class passage back to Darwin.
In supporting her case, the Northern Territory Times paid tribute to the fact that she had been in the Territory for
43 years and yet was ‘as healthy and sturdy looking an old lady for her years as could be found in any part of the
Commonwealth. This is something of a record and is calculated to raise doubts respecting the absolute correctness
of the theory that white women cannot live continuously in this climate and retain normal health. Add to the above
that Mrs Tuckwell has reared a fairly large family here and has quite a flock of sturdy Northern Territory-born
grandchildren and it will be seen that she is a good example of the type of hardy pioneer that is essential to the
settlement and progress of every new country... Mrs Tuckwell has been a toiler from the day she landed here,
under all the disadvantages and discomforts so prevalent in the earlier days of settlement and has often been hard
put to make both ends meet. The Territory requires many settlers of the type of Mrs Tuckwell if it is to progress.’
In August 1921, Eliza ‘Granny’ Tuckwell died at her home in Darwin not long after recording memories of her
long life in Australia. Appropriately, Tuckwell Court, a Darwin centre for pensioners, is named in honour of Eliza
and Ned Tuckwell, true Territory pioneers.
Northern Standard, August 1921; Northern Territory Times, August 1921 and various other issues; Geneological records.
BARBARA JAMES, Vol 1.TUFFIN, EILEEN ROSEMARY: see JONES, EILEEN ROSEMARYTUIT, LEONARD ROY (LEN) (1911–1976), driver, businessman, coach operator was born in 1911 at Prospect,
South Australia, the son of Clarence Tuit and his wife Olive, nee Smith. In 1939, he married Pearl Arthur, nee Brandt,
whose son Malcolm, by a previous marriage, was adopted by Tuit. Tuit’s first wife had died in Adelaide in 1937
after a long illness.
Tuit went to the Northern Territory in 1935 and got a job with pioneer transport operator D R Baldock driving
trucks carrying perishable freight between Alice Springs and Tennant Creek. In 1938, he purchased a Ford V 8
truck and began carting general freight with it to the Granites and Tanami goldfields and various other places.
During the Second World War, he was kept busy carting supplies to the Hatches Creek and Wauchope wolfram
fields and he won a contract to transport fuel from Birdum to Tennant Creek. When Darwin was bombed in 1942,
many evacuees arriving by train at Larrimah were happy to ride on the back of his truck as far as Alice Springs!
Immediately after the war, he won the Alice Springs to Tennant Creek to Birdum mail contract and as was
customary at the time he made it a combined mail and passenger run. The vehicle he used at first was an International
K 5 pulling an ex-Army semi-trailer to which had been fitted bench seats, a canvas canopy, and a ladder for the
convenience of passengers climbing up to the trailer deck.
As passenger traffic increased Tuit bought a more powerful prime mover, (also an International), and had it
fitted with a diesel engine. The semi-trailer portion of this later combination was a stepped deck type with a much
lower deck height for passengers than that of the previous vehicle. The centre section (or well deck) between the
axles was equipped with bench seats and had doors fitted with detachable Perspex curtains. The raised area above
the prime mover turntable and above the rear axle of the trailer portion accommodated luggage, parcels and mails.
It was known locally as ‘the butterbox.’
Tuit also had a freight service at this time and it was handled by a conventional semi-trailer combination.
In 1949, Tuit upgraded his passenger service with a 26-seat coach, and a year later, he purchased the Tennant
Creek to Mount Isa operation of Cavanagh’s Motor Services. He integrated it with his scheduled Alice Springs to
Darwin mail run which he increased to twice weekly.
In 1952, Tuit announced that he and his strongest competitor on the Darwin service, Bond’s Tours, had
amalgamated under the name of Alice Springs-Darwin Motor Service. But the ‘marriage’ lasted less than two years;
in December 1954 Tuit’s and Bond’s parted company and Alice Springs–Darwin Motor Service was dissolved,
putting each operator in competition with the other once more.
Tuit continued to operate his freight service while he developed the passenger business. In 1949, he played a
leading role in the formation of the Territory Transport Association and acquired a shareholding in the association’s
business arm, Co-Ord, which contracted to the Commonwealth Railways to haul freight between the railheads
at Alice Springs and Larrimah in coordination with trains on the Central Australia and North Australia Railway
services.
But in 1955, he decided to sell his freight service and his shares in Co-ord and concentrate on passenger
transport, both scheduled and excursion. The proceeds of the sale of his Co-Ord interest went toward the purchase
of a modern Foden 33 seat coach, built in Sydney, for the Alice Springs to Darwin timetabled service. It pulled a