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UHR, WENTWORTH DARCY (1845–1907), overlander, was born at Wivenhoe, Queensland, in December 1845,
the son of Edmund Uhr.
At age 22, Uhr was a Sub-Inspector of Police on the Albert River, Carpentaria Section, having joined the
Queensland force in 1865. In the following year, he transferred to the Native Police and reached Burketown
in April 1866 with the first detachment of police. Landsborough, the Land Commissioner, who had explored
this country in 1861, arrived a week later. The town of 90 people was then in the grip of a fever which killed
forty people. Uhr survived. In 1866 he is said to have ridden from Burketown to the Bareoo, New South Wales,
in pursuit of thieves, 3 000 kilometres for the return journey. It took him three months.
He later left the Queensland police force—the date is uncertain—and took up droving. Uhr, the firebrand
bushman, became one of the pioneer figures as an overlander by participating in a remarkable journey from
west of Charters Towers to Darwin in 1872. Under contract to Matthew Dillon Cox, he took 400 bullocks via
Leichhardt’s route across the MacArthur and Roper rivers to Darwin, blazing a 2 500-kilometre trail that was
to become the main stock route between north Queensland and the Top End. The journey ended on a sour note;
Uhr and Cox had a disagreement that resulted in a legal battle over a breach of contract—the first major civil
dispute in the Northern Territory.
When gold was discovered near Pine Creek later in 1872, it was noted that ‘Uhr had made a claim in the area
and had unearthed ounces of gold’. Uhr used his Pine Creek earnings to buy cattle for movement to the Palmer
River goldfields in Queensland. He and C J Scrutton, another overlander, who had been with Jardine on Cape York,
set out with a big mob from Bowen Downs in Queensland. His movements during the next few years have not been
traced; but the later 1870s saw him cement his reputation as ‘a wild bushman, an expert horseman, utterly fearless
and a tough, rough and tumble fighter with fists and a stockwhip’.
For a time between 1883 and 1887 he worked for John Macartney’s Arnhem Land station, Arafura. He turned
up again in Darwin in 1884 where a charge laid against him of horse stealing was dismissed by Magistrate
J G Knight. Between 1886 and 1892, he appears to have driven stock to both the Palmer and Kimberley goldfields
and tried his hand at mining in these localities.
Evidently he tried other occupations too; Alfred Searcy remarks in Northern Seas that in 1888 on his way to
the MacArthur River in SS Active, he ran ‘into the Goyder River to land Darcy and his party of men to search for
cypress pine. Mr Uhr had also a cutter and two Malay seamen to attend to the camp when formed further up the
River. We returned 17 days afterward. We found Mr Uhr and the party—the natives had murdered the two Malay
seamen and the cutter was lost.’
It is not certain when Uhr moved to the Coolgardie–Kalgoorlie goldfields, but he seems to have arrived there
before 1894. He became one of the pioneers of the goldfields, prominent in local and political matters. At Coolgardie
in 1894, he established a meat supply and butchering business, later set up the firm of Butcher and Uhr Ltd and
was involved with pastoral interests in the northwest of the state. He served on the Coolgardie Town Council and
the Road Board, was prominent in the Race Club and presented the ‘Uhr Trophy’ to sporting bodies. Uhr died
at Coolgardie on 18 February 1907, survived by his wife Essie M Uhr—an infant son died on 27 January 1907.
Uhr’s name has been perpetuated in a Palmerston street—Uhr Court, and in Uhr Road on the Cox Peninsula. Point
Uhr, named by the geologist H W B Talbot, probably refers to him.
C Lack, Outpost of the Gulf Country, 1968; Pugh’s Almanac, 1869; A Searcy, Northern Seas, 1905; Cummins and Campbell Monthly, November
1953; Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 22 March 1884 and 5 April 1886.
V T O’BRIEN, Vol 1.
ULYATT, ALFRED CECIL BERESFORD (FRED) (1903–1975) and ULYATT, MARY nee O’SHEA (1910–
1976), pastoralists. Fred Ulyatt was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England on 10 April 1903, into the sternly
disciplined household of sea captain Frederick White Ulyatt and his Scottish wife, Annie, nee Rodney. He was the
sixth child in a brood of eight sons and one daughter. Captain Ulyatt provided a gentleman’s home with servants
to assist his beleaguered wife, who was mostly alone through their married years.
One by one, the lads left home to scatter throughout the world. Frederick, Marcus and Eric went to New
Zealand and commenced a building business. Marcus fought in the First World War and was killed on the Somme
in France early in his military career. Patrick became a journalist in London and eventually moved to Australia
where he was for a time motoring editor for the Sydney Morning Herald. Herbert too came to Australia and
Rowland became a Catholic priest working in Africa. Daughter Adelaide married a wealthy New Zealand property
developer, was widowed young and returned to live in England.
Fred’s father purchased a small farm for him near the family home and for a while, the young man was happy
to operate it. However, the depressed years after the First World War were not favourable to mixed farming so the
farm was sold at a loss and Fred was given the choice of travelling on the shipping line for which his father worked,
to either Canada or Australia. Australia it was, so the 19 year old worked his way as a deckhand under an assumed
name so that the crew would not know he was the Old Man’s son.
From Brisbane, where he disembarked, he made his way (through prior contacts) to Narine and Authoringa
Stations where he worked long enough to outfit himself with horses and gear, food and money to travel across
Queensland and into the Northern Territory.