Hundred of Douglas

The Hundred of Douglas was a hundred of Gladstone County in the Northern Territory of Australia.[1]

Hundred of Douglas
Northern Territory
Hundred of Douglas is located in Northern Territory
Hundred of Douglas
Hundred of Douglas
Location in Northern Territory
Coordinates14°44′06″S 134°31′44″E
Established9 January 1873[1]
Abolished1977[1]
Time zoneACST (UTC+9:30)
Location606 km (377 mi) from Darwin

It is located 606 km south of Darwin, at latitude 14° 38' S and longitude: 134° 30' E. It is on the Roper River in the bounded rural locality of Wilton, Northern Territory. The main towns of the Hundred are Urapunga and Roper Bar. The Hundred was designed to be roughly 10 miles by 10 miles in area.

History
Map showing the traditional lands of the Aboriginal tribes in the Roper River area of Northern Territory, Australia.

The traditional owners of the hundred were the Ngalakgan Aboriginal people,[2][3] one of the Gunwinyguan people who traditionally spoke the Ngalakgan language, although today many speak the Arnhem Kriol.[4] Around 650 million years a ago the area was devastated by a powerful meteor strike at nearby Strangways River.

The first European to the Hundred was Ludwig Leichhardt who crossed the Roper River at the Roper Bar in 1845, and in 1855 Augustus Charles Gregory passed to the south of the Hundred on his route to Gladstone, Queensland.

This Hundred was one of six in the County of Gladstone (located in the Roper River area) which was gazetted in 1873. It was named after Captain Bloomfield Douglas, who visited the Roper River in 1872 as Government Resident of the Northern Territory.

Although today the area is predominantly covered by the Limmen National Park, the Roper River at the time of the foundation of the hundred was experiencing a rapid expansion of economic activity, and great prospects for the river valley were anticipated by the government in Adelaide. Pastoral leases were being taken up, gold had been discovered at Pine Creek to the north and in 1872 a store deport for the Australian Overland Telegraph Line was established at Roper Bar being the furthest point up river that was navigable to ships.[5] The hundred was anticipated to be the seat of a prosperous port.

In the 1890s the area was a favourite stop over for drovers bringing cattle between Queensland and the Kimberley region, and it had a very wild reputation.[6]

In 1902 Jeannie Gunn moved to nearby Elsey Station and wrote of her experience in the area, in the novel We of the Never Never.[7]

The prosperous port, however, never eventuated and the Hundred lapsed with the passage in 1976 and subsequent assent of the Crown Lands Ordinace 1976 (No 1 of 1977) and the Crown Lands (Validation of Proclamations) Ordinance 1976 (No 2 of 1977).

References
  1. Hundred of Douglas Place Names Register Extract].
  2. Norman Barnett Tindale,Natives of Groote Eylandt and the west coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, Part I, Records of The South Australian Museum(1925) vol. 3, pages = 61–102.
  3. Norman Barnett Tindale, Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names ( Australian National University, 1974) ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6.
  4. "Kriol".
  5. Roper Bar, The Sydney Morning Herald. February 8, 2004.
  6. Roper Bar, The Sydney Morning Herald. February 8, 2004.
  7. Rutledge, Martha (2000). "Gunn, Jeannie (1870–1961)". Melbourne University Press. Retrieved 13 March 2007.
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