Charles Bonney of Bonney Creek

Story by Peter Forrest

There's a story behind everything we see as we speed along the Stuart Highway. Every feature, every place name, can tell a tale of Aboriginal and European history in the Territory.
Bonney Creek, about 100 km down the track from Tennant Creek, is just one example. If you walk along the creek banks you'll soon find evidence of Aboriginal visitation which has obviously been happening for a long, long time.
John McDouall Stuart and his offsiders William Kekwick and Ben Head were the first white visitors, on 1 June 1860. On 2 March Stuart had left Chambers' Creek, near Lake Eyre in South Australia, on the first of his three journeys into what is now the Northern Territory. His objective at that stage was to reach either the grassland in the Victoria River district which had been described by explorer A.C. Gregory in 1856, or the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Stuart and his men had left Central Mount Stuart on 25 April 1860, attempting to strike north westerly from there to the Victoria River. However, they found themselves in scrubby and poorly watered country, and after three weeks they were forced to retreat to Central Mount Stuart.
The explorers were obliged to rest there for a week before setting out again, this time in a more northerly direction. Again they were confronted by dry and difficult country. On 1st June 1860 Stuart's luck changed when he reached Bonney Creek, brimful of water and teeming with fish.
"This is the finest creek for water that we have passed since leaving Chambers Creek" Stuart wrote. Stuart was tempted to follow the creek, believing it might lead him to the Victoria, but in the end he resolved to continue north and then to cross to the Gulf.
Stuart was back at the Bonney within five weeks. On 27 June 1860 he had decided to turn back from near Attack Creek, mainly because his horses and men were 'done up', but perhaps also because of a skirmish with Aborigines.
As every true Territorian knows, Stuart returned in 1861 and 1862, and finally reached the north coast on 24 July 1862. On each of these expeditions Bonney Creek was vital to him - its secure water supply was a goal at the end of the long dry stage from the previous water in the locality of what we now call Ti Tree.
Stuart's 1862 triumph led to the creation of the Northern Territory as a province of South Australia, to the development of the overland telegraph line, and to pastoral and other settlement. Again, Bonney Creek was important. Overland telegraph construction crews relied on its water, as did the first overlanders bringing livestock north for the new telegraph stations.
In 1879 Alfred Giles, in charge of 12,000 sheep bound for the new Springvale station near Katherine, found that the Bonney was dry when he arrived. He excavated a well so that he could water his sheep. By 1884 the Posts and Telegraph Department had either deepened and developed Giles' well, or had sunk their own new well close to Giles' site. In any case, Bonney Well was on the map to stay, as a reliable source of good water on a dry track. Then, in the 1930s, the well was replaced by a bore equipped with the windmill which can be seen today.
Bill Curtis, forebear of today's well known Tennant Creek identity David Curtis, was the first pastoralist to settle in the area when took up grazing country along Bonney Creek in 1914. He called his station Ulyecka, then Greenwood. In 1939 Greenwood was absorbed into McLaren Creek when that station was established by Fred Harris.
But why do well call it Bonney Creek? On 1 June 1860 Stuart wrote "I have named it Bonney Creek, after Charles Bonney Esq., late Commissioner for Crown Lands for South Australia."
It was highly appropriate that Bonney Creek was to prove of such special significance to the Territory's early overlanders, because Charles Bonney had been one of the first men to show how livestock could be moved long distances to new districts as Australia was opened up to white settlement. I am sure that Alfred Giles and many others knew Bonney's story, and paid a silent tribute when they drank at the creek named after him.
Bonney was born in England in 1813, but came to Australia as soon as he turned 21. For two years he worked as a judge's clerk, but in 1836 he joined a friend in establishing a new station near Albury. From there, in 1837 he was one of the first to take stock overland into what is now Victoria, Then, in 1838, he was the very first to take stock overland from NSW to the new settlement Adelaide, then just over a year old.
Thus Bonney was arguably the first Australian 'overlander'. The term was colourfully defined in the Edinburgh Magazine for 1847 - "The men recognised in Australia by this title are such as make it their calling to convey stock from the settled districts to new territory. They are a migratory class ... they are always changing, and always dissatisfied. When a new country is opened the overlander is in the very heyday of spirit, for he knows it will be a fortune to him.
"He purchases flocks and herds ... and starts for the distant territory. In personal appearance the overlanders are rough, dirty, half shaved, and ill-attired. The stranger would look down upon them ... how surprised would he be to learn that these men could tell down their 20,000 pounds; that they claim kindred with the nobility of Britain; ... and are versed in the literature of all ages. Most of them dress shabbily in an old and threadbare shooting jacket, dirty straw hat, and long spurs, and they carry for the most part a heavy hunting whip without a thong.
"The toils they undergo, the perils they must surmount, and the enterprising nature of their plans, while they cause the less enterprising colonist to quail before them, have at the same time an air of wild adventure which throws a powerful charm over the occupation of overlander. Theirs is in fact the life of pastoral speculation, the poetry of life in the bush."
In 1838 Bonney was probably welcomed into Adelaide with less poetic words. Citizens of the new town desperately needed fresh livestock ñ for rations, and to stock new country. Previously, stock had to be imported to the new colony by sea. Numbers were necessarily limited, losses were high, and landed costs were prohibitive. So, Bonney's demonstration that big mobs could be brought overland was literally a breakthrough which helped assure the future of the infant settlement.
Bonney fell on hard times in the great depression of the 1840s, and in 1842 he took a job as magistrate and Commissioner of Crown Lands in South Australia. In 1857 he won election to the colony's first House of Assembly, and was given the Lands portfolio in the first responsible ministry.
Bonney held various political and public service offices until he retired in 1880. He died in Sydney in 1897. There are three places in South Australia named after him, but Territorians, like Stuart, feel that there is something special about Bonney Creek.
Peter Forrest is a Darwin based historian, writer, and consultant. He is well known for his radio and newspaper features about the Territory's history. He has been particularly interested in the Barkly region, and in 1978 he negotiated the transfer of the historic Bonney Well to the National Trust of Australia (N.T.).