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large property at Lake Dean, which his son Alf managed for a while. He was well known in the Territory for his
‘wheeling and dealing’ and one journalist commented in about 1938: ‘Anyone who wants to best Man Brown in
any business deal had better get up the week before...’
Brown was active in many local community organisations, including the Parochial Council of the Church of
England, the North Australia League and the Northern Territory Progress Association. He spoke out on a number of
occasions in favour of building the railway link with the south. He was also concerned about the quality of education
at the public school and helped to organise receptions for South Australian officials visiting the Territory.
Brown had a long connection with the Northern Territory Racing Club: he was first elected to the committee in
1888, became a life member in 1905, secretary in 1908, president in 1910 and had his own racehorses. Other sporting
clubs with which he was involved included cycling, cricket, athletics and rifle shooting. He had a large collection
of clocks, most of which were lost in the looting after Darwin was bombed in 1942.
Brown received private income all his life from the estate of his grandfather Emanuel Solomon. He married
Margaret, nee Landles, on 30 December 1888 at Palmerston but they eventually lived apart and he had a long
association with Darwin dressmaker Mrs Emma Foster. He suffered from high blood pressure and died on
30 July 1950 at Glenelg, South Australia, and was cremated at Centennial Park. He was tall, well built, always
well dressed and well groomed. He followed in his father’s footsteps in business, local government, mining and
community activities, without ever achieving the degree of popularity and respect his parent enjoyed. His generosity
did not extend to all his family and business associates. His wife pre-deceased him and two daughters and one son
survived him. His name is commemorated in Brown’s Mart, Darwin. There are several photographs of him in the
W V Brown family papers and in J Rich’s book Gum Leaf and Cow Hide.
J Rich, Gum Leaf and Cow Hide, 1986, Adelaide Advertiser, 10 December 1913; ‘Wealth galore, the wonderful north’, Northern Territory
Times, 6 November 1913; W V Brown family papers; Research material held by author.
JENNY RICH, Vol 1.BROWN, JOE (c1855–1928), was one of the best-known bush men in Central Australia in the early decades of
the twentieth century, yet little is known of his background. He was born near Port Augusta in South Australia,
and his brother Charlie owned Mt Willoughby Station, west of Oodnadatta, in the 1920s. Brown may have been a
partner with his brother.
There is every indication that he had a limited formal education and life-long bush education. He was a tall
man, of sturdy build, with wonderful eyesight. There has been confusion surrounding him since his death because
another man, J Brown (possibly also Joe Brown), perished near Tanami in 1909, and Aboriginal lore has at times
confused him with a famous Western Australian bushman, Sam Hazlett.
Joe Brown was knowledgeable about minerals and exceptional in his handling of horses and camels. He often
drove his animals together, although most people thought that they travelled better when separated. Although
he was capable of very hard work, he enjoyed the challenge of stealing horses—one that he couldn’t resist and
it assumed addictive proportions. He preferred horse stealing to cattle duffing because horses could be moved
quickly over long distances.
The first record of him is almost certainly of the J Brown who donated money to Constable Willshire for his
bail money in 1891. He knocked around the most remote parts of inland outback Australia for decades. In the
mid-1890s he travelled the Musgrave to Petermann ranges country through to Kalgoorlie to try his luck on the
Western Australian goldfields. It was probably during this time that he was invited by the Pitjantjatjara to the
second degree of manhood; he was one of three white men in Central Australia to have been ‘through the law’ by
the 1920s period.
The early 1900s found him lifting horses from the Wave Hill country, then in 1915–16 he and two mates
took a mob of stolen horses from the Musgrave Ranges through to Kalgoorlie. Walter Smith, one of his mates on
the trip, recalled Brown feeding crows salt meat, then following them to water. He also recalled the relish with
which Brown dined on dingo pups and any other bush tucker available. His ability to travel at night was uncanny.
A glimpse of the stars, particularly the Southern Cross, was more than enough for Brown. Yet on the couple of
occasions he attempted to use a compass he became hopelessly lost. He resorted to his bushman’s skills to relocate
himself.
Brown worked for a very brief time at Kalgoorlie, but subsequently returned to prospecting and horse stealing.
By the early 1920s he was stealing horses from the Wave Hill country and other stations in the Western Australian
border region and bringing them across the Tanami Desert. Most white people avoided this region, for it was
sand-plain and spinifex desert, where many prospectors had perished or been speared. However, Brown followed
the Aboriginal pads, noted Aboriginal smokes and the flights of birds and, if it became necessary, fed salt-meat to
the crows and took note of the direction in which they flew. In 1921 he discovered Lake Surprise but, with the bush
telegraph letting police know that horse stealing was almost epidemic wherever Brown travelled, he drifted away
like smoke down to spell with his brother at Wintinna. The police were able to track, but not catch, him. He had
travelled back and forth so often that bushmen talked of the J B Pad’ as a means of crossing the desert.
For a brief time he joined a geological party in the Musgrave Ranges. He was able to check on a mob of stolen
horses being cared for by an old Aboriginal. In 1924, with Walter Smith and an Aboriginal called Locky as mates,
he went dogging out in the Musgrave and Mann ranges. It was a successful trip, and some two hundred dingo scalps
were collected before they travelled through the Mount Margaret Range near Peake in northern South Australia.
After a little more dogging and prospecting they went to Oodnadatta to collect government scalp money.
By the mid-1920s Brown had become a legend, not so much for his horse stealing, something of a game for him,
but for his bushmanship. He knew the deserts west of the Overland Telegraph Line, to the Canning Stock Route in