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In 1924 he lent 500 Pounds to his daughter Francesca who established, in her own name, a shop in Smith
Street to sell oriental goods. In partnership with her mother (known in Darwin as Nance), Francesca managed the
business, kept the books and made frequent buying trips to Singapore.
In 1930, when the position of clerk was abolished in the Darwin Post Office, Bleeser was retained as an
overpaid postal clerk until he retired the following year.
Following the Japanese raid on Darwin on 19 February 1942, civilians were evacuated south—Annie left by car
but Bleeser left in the back of a truck where he suffered much physical distress. The homes of the evacuees were
looted (mainly, it is said, by the Provost Corps). Florenz Bleeser’s herbarium and bush house of growing orchids
were destroyed, his valuable stamp collection rifled and the Aboriginal artefacts and message stick stolen. The loss
of his lifetime’s labour ‘broke his heart’. He died at his home at 91 Cambridge Terrace, Malvern, South Australia,
on 1 November 1942, at the age of 71, from encephalitis and acute pneumonia, after suffering endocarditis for
20 years. He was cremated at West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide.
Few specimens now remain of this dedicated naturalist’s work. C P Mountford wrote of him in May 1956:
‘Although Bleeser was forced by circumstances to live the humdrum life of a civil servant when he would have
made his greatest contribution in a science laboratory, he added, more than any other man, to the store of our
knowledge of the natural history around Darwin.’ Bleeser Street, Darwin, is named after him.
H L Clark, Echinoderms from Australia, 1929 & 1932; N Hall, Botanists of the Eucalypts, 1978; H S McKee, ‘The Bleeser Botanical Collection
from Northern Australia’, Contributions from the New South Wales National Herbarium, 3, 1963; Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative
Zoology at Harvard College, vol LV, 1938; J H Willis, Bleeser Specimens in the National Herbarium of Victoria; Advertiser, Adelaide,
2 November 1942, 18 May 1956; Northern Territory Times, 5 August 1930; Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, South Australia.
JEAN P FIELDING, Vol 1.BLITNER, GERALD (GERRY) also GIBUNGURRICH (c1920– ), ‘man of everything’, was born along the
Roper River in the early 1920s to Sarah, an Anula Aborigine, and Frederick Charles Blitner, a white pioneer who
came to the Territory about 1902. He was taken to the Roper Mission by his father and was later moved to the
Groote Eylandt Emerald River Church Missionary Society (CMS) Mission that had been established for ‘half-caste’
children. His schooling years were spent under the strict disciplinary conditions of learning and working at the
mission. The mission later changed its policy to concentrate on ‘full-blood’ Aborigines from Groote Eylandt and
by 1935 he was the only part-Aboriginal boy on the island.
During the 1930s he knew and at times worked with well-known trepangers, Fred Gray and Bill Harney out
of Groote Eylandt. In 1935 or 1936 he made the first of many visits to Thursday Island as a cabin boy. When he
eventually moved to the island in the 1950s he obtained his skipper’s certificate and was master of a number of
vessels operating around the Gulf of Carpentaria.
In 1939 he was asked to supervise the construction of an airstrip near Emerald River Mission that was intended
as an emergency strip in case of war. With the help of 80 Aboriginal men working mostly with hand tools alone,
the strip was completed at the end of 1941. During the Second World War Blitner served on Groote Eylandt
as a civilian assistant to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Among other duties, he was involved in the
deployment of ammunitions and shelters on Groote Eylandt. It was also his job to provide information to Darwin
from the Aboriginal ‘full-bloods’ about Japanese activity around the island.
Along with other serving Territorian Aborigines who had not been previously recognised for war service,
he was awarded a service medal during the 50th anniversary commemoration of the bombing of the Top End in
1992.
In the late 1940s he took up work with Fred Gray, by now the honorary Superintendent of Emerald River
Mission. Blitner had earlier assisted in building a road from the mission to Umbakumba to give the mission
access to the flying boat base. He also assisted in the construction of a dam which had a reticulation system for the
mission, and a powerhouse, both using material obtained primarily from the now abandoned base.
He was fortunate in that when his mother was at the Roper Mission she married the man that she was promised
to and Blitner learnt a lot about Aboriginal culture from his new Aboriginal father. By 1949 he saw himself as an
Aborigine who could not support the imposition of mission and government law over traditional Aboriginal law.
Using his education to good effect, he became prominent among his people furthering their cause in mission life.
In 1952 he was placed on the mission payroll and prior to leaving Groote Eylandt established a store there.
Intending to move to Darwin in 1957, Blitner initially went to Thursday Island, as there were no direct shipping
links from Groote Eylandt to Darwin. Staying longer than expected, he lived on the island for nine years working
as a skipper on a pilot launch, as a taxi driver, a builder, a fisherman and a crocodile shooter. By mid-1966 he
wanted to leave Thursday Island because he disagreed with the rigid domination that he believed the Director of
Aboriginal Affairs in Queensland, Pat Killoran, was imposing over the Torres Strait people.
Later that year, while skippering a vessel on a trip to Groote Eylandt, he was persuaded upon arrival at the
island to commence work for the GEMCO manganese mine. Blitner worked at the mine front until 1972 and
simultaneously ran a car hire business on the island that lasted for 20 years as well as a school bus service.
During the early 1970s the land rights movement gained momentum in the Northern Territory. In 1974, during
the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Land Rights, Justice Woodward held an open hearing at Angurugu on
Groote Eylandt. Blitner was present at the hearing and spent a couple of days talking directly with the judge,
formulating many of the concepts of what was to become the Aboriginal Land Rights legislation in the Northern
Territory.