>> Go Back - page - >> List of Entriess
To further make the point Wells produced a model he had made of what should be done. The result was the original
plans were altered and the record shows that the present Stokes Hill wharf was build with continual changes, at
considerable cost and taking far longer than it ought to have done. Wells recounts that when the Department of
Works was asked why the Harbourmaster had not been consulted the reply was, ‘Well they knew all about the
work, they didn’t think the Harbourmaster had anything to do with it’. Among the changes that he managed to get
made was that all doors on the wharf sheds were locked from the inside with only one small door being locked
from outside. The original design had all doors individually locked from the outside. He had difficulty making the
works engineers understand that outside padlocks were easy to break into so that cargo could be stolen.
In about 1940, he had taken food to the Roper River Mission that had suffered a cyclone and was short of
supplies and then went to Yirrkala to evacuate a missionary, Reverend Chaseling, who had been accidentally
burned. Due to the bad weather they had to walk some distance and as Wells recounted he realised afterwards
they had walked over a considerable amount of what he later found out was bauxite. In 1949, he was instructed
to take the geologist, H B Owen, round to the Port Essington area to search for bauxite. That particular search
yielded nothing but Owen suggested to Wells and a crewman, Frederick J (Dutchy) Waalkes that ‘they could do
Australia a service by watching for bauxite during short visits along the Northern Territory coast’. A few months
later, they sent samples they collected from Marchinbar Island, in the Wessel group, to the Bureau of Mineral
Resources for analysis. The samples were good ones and Wells then recalled the red stony ground he had seen
near Yirrkala. It was 1952 before he visited that area again but he ‘remembered to fill his pockets with the red
pebbles’. On analysis, they showed a high percentage of alumina. It was these samples that led directly to the
development of the Gove deposit. At that time the Australian Aluminium Production Commission was advertising
a reward of up to one pound for each 500 tons of bauxite discovered. In 1955, Wells and Waalkes were offered
250 Pounds each as ‘an act of grace’. They rejected the offer as paltry. The offer was renewed in 1960 but again
refused. Eventually in 1965 after Wells appealed to the well-known politician, W C Wentworth, they were offered
2 500 Pounds each—and this was accepted.
In 1958, when the Chief Pearling Inspector retired in Canberra, Wells applied for the position. Tom Milner,
with a master’s certificate, had arrived on the scene in Darwin and Wells knew that with Darwin growing as it
was the better qualification would soon be required. He served in Canberra as Chief Pearling Inspector until his
retirement in 1963. One of his jobs was to issue licences, inspect and test the gear and inspect the shell. Wells
recalled meeting Nick Paspaley in the early years of his operation.
He married Marjorie Cartwright in Perth on 26 April 1930 and there were three children of the marriage,
two sons, Peter and Edward, and a daughter, Doreen. Peter, who was educated in Perth during the war, trained
as a surveyor and was Northern Territory Surveyor General between 1968 and 1992. Edward qualified as a civil
engineer and worked for a time in a supervisory capacity on the construction of Stokes Hill wharf before he left the
Territory. Doreen was secretary to Lazarus (Les) Liveris before she left with her parents for Canberra. Frederick
Wells died in Batemans Bay, New South Wales, on 3 November 1993 survived by his wife and three children.
Family records; Northern Territory Archives Service, oral history interview NTRS226 TS353; CTG Haultain, Watch Off Arnhem Land, 1971.
HELEN J WILSON, Vol 3.WELLS, THOMAS ALEXANDER (TOM, TOMMY) (1888–1954), clerk, court reporter, soldier, barrister and
judge, was born on 10 February 1888 at Wallacetown (Brucedale), near Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, the son
of Ezekiel Wells, a farmer and grazier, and his wife Rose Ann, nee Toland. He grew to be a tall, barrel-chested
man with a fair complexion, hazel eyes and dark brown hair. His robust physique matched his early prowess as an
amateur boxer and his image as a rugged dispenser of justice, often under makeshift conditions in remote parts of
the Northern Territory later in his career.
On 2 March 1910 Wells married Martha Mary Doris (Maisie), daughter of Francis Myers, journalist, and his
wife, Emily Rose Marion, nee Hoyte, at Saint David’s Presbyterian Church in the Sydney suburb of Ashfield.
At the time of the marriage Wells was a correspondence clerk living in Manly and in 1913 he joined the court
reporting staff of the New South Wales Supreme Court. When he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
in 1917, he was living in Mosman.
Wells served in the AIF with the Australian Artillery in Egypt, Britain and France. He was wounded and also
suffered from the effects of poison gas. He was discharged as a Corporal in September 1919.
He resumed his career as a court reporter and, having studied in his spare time, completed his Law degree at
the University of Sydney in 1924 and was admitted to the New South Wales bar on 31 July 1924. He built up a
general practice as a barrister.
The Commonwealth government decided in August 1933 to appoint a full time Judge of the Supreme Court
of the Northern Territory, an office made vacant by Judge Mallam’s retirement. On 21 August 1933 the Attorney
General, John Latham, announced Wells’s appointment to the Northern Territory’s most senior judicial post and
said the new judge would leave for Darwin on Marella on 9 September 1933 and take over from the Acting Judge,
W H Sharwood. Latham in his announcement, of this elevation to the bench of a lawyer of modest standing and
seniority in his profession, indicated that Wells would discharge the additional duties of presiding in the local
courts and drafting legislation for the consolidation of the laws of the Territory.
The new judge arrived in Darwin, unaccompanied by his family. His wife and three children did not join
him until November 1934. The legal fraternity welcomed him on the morning of 27 September 1933. Wells took
his place on the bench and made a gesture characteristic of his irreverence for formality and often idiosyncratic