The greatest engineering problem facing Australia – the tyranny of distance – had a solution: the electric telegraph, and its champion was the sheep-farming state of South Australia. In two years, Charles Heavitree Todd, leading hundreds of men, constructed a telegraph line across the centre of the continent from Port Augusta to Port Darwin. At nearly 3,000 kilometres long and using 36,000 poles at ’20 to the mile’, it was a mammoth undertaking, but at last, in October 1872, Adelaide was linked to London. The Overland Telegraph Line crossed Aboriginal lands first seen by John McDouall Stuart just 10 years before and messages which previously took weeks to cross the country now took hours. Passing through eleven new repeater stations, built in the remotest parts of Australia, the line joined the vast global telegraph network, and a new era was ushered in. Each station held a staff of six and they became centres of white civilization and the cattle or sheep industry as the Aborigines were displaced. The unique stories of how men and women lived and/or died on the line range from heroic, through desperate, to tragic, but they remain an indelible part of Australia’s history.

The title words were the only directions Derek Pugh had to find Wurdeja Homeland Centre in the vast forests of central Arnhem Land, but find it he did and he founded and ran a school there for four years. Pugh’s story describes his love affair with the bush, the characters who live there and its wildlife. Working with Indigenous Australians in the most remote parts of the country has its share of challenges and successes but life as a visiting teacher in Arnhem Land is tremendously fulfilling.
Derek Pugh, an ex Kakadu ranger, a teacher, naturalist and bushman worked in several homelands schools and joined a lifestyle as old as time. His memoir is by turns reflective, tragic and hilarious and describes a life in remote Aboriginal Australia which gave him an insight into a traditional culture which has been witnessed by only a few outsiders.

Spending more than 20 years among the people and wildlife of the Top End of the Northern Territory, and accompanied by his ‘rough-tough hunting dog’ named Turkey, Derek Pugh revelled in the lifestyle and freedom of the bush. Told with respect and candour Turn Left at the Devil Tree is Pugh’s ‘slice of history’.

Life there was "frustrating at times, but always a challenge and Derek has recorded his experiences beautifully in this delightful book". Ted Egan AO

Northern Territory history is a lot of different things to different people. Most people know of the gold rush years, the bombing of the Top End during the war, extraordinary adventures of men and women in the cattle industry, and the overland telegraph line. But who knew the Territory had its own desperate gang of bushrangers riding the ranges from Mataranka to Halls Creek?
When Ned Kelly and Ben Hall were roaming through the bush down south, the Ragged Thirteen were raiding the cattle stations of the north. In my research on this gang of outlaws for a recent book, I travelled the trails they took in 1886 as they headed west to the gold fields of Halls Creek. From a picturesque tropical billabong just north of the must-see tourist destination of Mataranka Hot Springs, I drove a modern 4-wheel-drive, but the gang did it on horseback – using mostly stolen horses. They were young men from South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, New Zealand and even Scotland, with very few resources – hence their ‘ragged’ look. They had met on the trail and quickly became mates and they were out for a party at the expense of the bush stores and cattle-stations they passed on the way. They duffed cattle when they were hungry, held up wayside pubs or paid with dud cheques when thirsty, and raided cattle stations when their growing herd of horses needed shoes.
They were probably the only bushranger gang in the Northern Territory’s colourful history, and they are mostly forgotten, and this may be because they were not ‘bad’ enough. They were more larrikins than criminals because they never killed anyone, and probably never used their firearms in anger. At Victoria River Downs, for example, the leader, a cattleman named Tom Nugent, played cards with the acting-manager of the station and got him drunk, while the rest of the gang took the back wall off the station store and stole 5 hundredweight of horseshoes, and as much flour, sugar, tea, jam and tobacco as they could carry.
As a result of these crimes, some called them ‘Tea and Sugar Bushrangers,’ but they were also ‘brilliant horsemen, consummate bushmen, lovers of bush poetry and champions of the underdog’.
When the gang finally arrived in Halls Creek, their fame and reputation had arrived before them, but all they had to do to avoid the traps was to break up into anonymous ‘ragged twos’ or ‘ragged threes’ or perhaps bought a new shirt and had a haircut. Whatever they did, none of the thirteen were ever arrested.
After little or no success in the goldfields, some went on to illustrious careers in the cattle industry: Tom Nugent founded Banka Banka Station near Tennant Creek, and Bob Anderson founded Tobermory Station in Queensland, for example. Another, a big bloke named Sandy MacDonald, became a hotelier at the small mining town of Arltunga, east of Alice Springs. Many had families, and their descendants are spread across the continent.
I wrote The Ragged Thirteen: Territory Bushrangers because their story has been an almost forgotten part of the history of the Northern Territory and Kimberley. A century ago, stories told of their exploits abounded around campfires, but these days few people recall the Territory even had bushrangers. To uncover the real story of the Ragged Thirteen, I followed their 138-year-old trail across the rugged Top End. Their story wasn’t just history; it was an adventure.

Cyclone Tracy demolished Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory when it struck during the night of Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning, 1974. Over almost ten hours the small, intense, but slow-moving weather system left a swathe of destruction across the entire town. Few buildings escaped.
Sixty-six people died, many of them on vessels which put to sea, while many hundreds were injured.
The destruction of essential services made a reduction in the population of about 40,000 imperative and what followed was the greatest peacetime evacuation of an Australian community with nearly 10,000 leaving by road and more than 20,000 evacuated by air.
Every survivor has a story and just over 50 of them have responded to the invitation to tell theirs, some for the first time, in their own words.
We admire them for their resilience and thank them for their contribution to this remarkable collection.

Derek Pugh brings the Darwin of the 1890s alive. (Hon Sally Thomas AC). In the 1890s, Darwin was in the doldrums. The town, then known as Palmerston, was succumbing to the worldwide depression with mining, pastoralism, and agriculture suffered from downturn, disease, and distance. The gold price plummeted and Redwater disease struck cattle - many pastoral operations closed. This is the story of South Australia’s Top End settlement in the last decade of the nineteenth century. It was a tough time, and the South Australian Government had had enough of their ‘white elephant’. When Palmerston blew away in the Great Hurricane of 1897, many called for the Territory’s return to the British Colonial Government.
But the Territory, as ever, was full of resilient and resourceful characters. Many appear in these pages: judges, railway gangers, bushmen, murderers, buffalo hunters, hoteliers, Chinese miners, Aboriginal station hands, explorers, cross-country cyclists, and more.
Territorians were, as Banjo Patterson described them, full of ‘booze, blow and blasphemy’ – but even he couldn’t wait to get back there.

DARWIN 1869: The Second Northern Territory Expedition.Buy Derek Pugh Books
George Woodroffe Goyder was the man for the job. The Adelaide media pushed and pushed and he finally agreed to lead the Second Northern Territory Expedition. Within 8 months, 1000 square miles of the Northern Territory of South Australia was surveyed and ready for the new colony of Palmerston. This is the story of Goyder's expedition, and the men who at last cut a city out of the bush, against tremendous odds, and at a furious speed.

In Darwin: End of an Era, Derek Pugh has completed his decade-by-decade history of the settlement of the Top End of the Northern Territory under the management of the South Australian government.
Then known as Palmerston, Darwin at the dawn of the 20th century was a remote and volatile frontier town considered a white elephant by its distant government. Cyclones raged, supplies were scarce, and the promised railway never came, but despite their struggles, many Territorians chose to stay, clinging to the boundless possibilities they believed in—if only the Commonwealth would take control and build the railway.
Northern Territory historian and educator Dr Derek Pugh brings to life the untamed years of this rugged outpost. Darwin: The End of an Era, explores the struggles of the town’s diverse inhabitants— European settlers, Chinese merchants, Indigenous Australians—against a backdrop of government neglect, racial tensions, and environmental challenges. Pugh captures the resilience and determination of those who called this rugged frontier home and, more than a history of a town, this is a tribute to those pioneers whose strength transformed Palmerston from a collection of tin shacks on a storm-lashed coast to the gateway to Australia’s north.

This is a story of the start of South Australian colonisation of the Northern Territory. It is a story of greed, courage, exploration, murder, wasted efforts, life and death struggles, insubordination, incredible seamanship, and extraordinary bushmanship, amid government bungling and Aboriginal resistance.
Escape Cliffs was an attempt by South Australia to become the premier state of the country. It would open up a trading route across the country to Asia, and exploit the agricultural and mining opportunities of the interior. It would be at no cost to the state, as the land was sold, unsurveyed and unseen, to investors prior to the First Northern Territory Expedition even setting out. But then, as the saying goes, the fight really started…

​The settlement at Escape Cliffs was the fourth attempt to settle the north by Europeans. The first three, at Fort Dundas, Fort Wellington, and Port Essington, were military settlements designed to preclude other European nations from claiming a part of the north coast of Australia for their own colonies, and as a contact point for trade with the four hundred or so Macassan Prahus.
Escape Cliffs was different to the British military settlements, in that it was a part of an attempt by an Australian Colony, South Australia, to become the premier state of the country. The South Australian government, in competition with Queensland, had taken over the land to the north, calling it the Northern Territory of South Australia, in 1863. Events then moved remarkably quickly. The South Australians wanted to open a trading route across the country to Asia and exploit any agricultural and mining opportunities they could from the interior. They hoped to do this at no cost to themselves, and therefore sold the land, unseen and unsurveyed, prior to the First Northern Territory Expedition even setting out.
A part of the plan, which linked South Australia to the rest of the world with an overland telegraph line, would mean that the point of entry of news and business, for the whole of Australia, would be through Adelaide. Thus the colony had national significance, and was of great interest to the big states of New South Wales and Victoria, particularly.
There was much work to do, and no time was wasted. Within a few months, the forty members of the First Northern Territory Expedition were recruited and sent, in three ships, to survey and establish a city on the north coast. Led by a retired politician and ex-soldier, Colonel Boyle Finniss, and including a mostly poorly selected group of officers and men, it was funded by investors from Adelaide and London, and farewelled with optimism, but it was doomed to fail from the outset. Arguments between powerful personalities begun even before the ships were loaded, and they continued, more and more bitterly, even after reinforcements were sent later the same year.
The city was to be called ‘Palmerston’, as was its successor. Although it is now called, since 1911, Darwin. Darwin’s modern satellite city, some 20 kilometres south, is the third settlement to carry the name Palmerston.
The early military settlements along the north coast existed too early to be photographed, and in the 1860s photography was still in its infancy, particularly in remote areas. There were few cameras anywhere but, incredibly, two found their way to Escape Cliffs. The few surviving photographs from these cameras are remarkable because they were taken in the Northern Territory within a very few months of its declaration and takeover by South Australia. There is, therefore a photographic record of the Northern Territory’s entire colonial existence, and all the known photographs of the Escape Cliffs years are reproduced in this book.
Escape Cliffs, at the mouth of the huge Adelaide River, is remote and unreachable without a boat or a helicopter, so it’s not on any tourist itinerary, and few visitors climb up to the brick and metal remains of the first Northern Territory capital. As a result, its story is one that is rarely told, but those who wonder at the origin of the names of the Finniss, King and Howard Rivers, Litchfield National Park, Manton Dam, Fred’s Pass, Lake Bennett, and dozens of Darwin’s streets will find the answers here. They were named after real people, with aspirations and hopes for the future, who lived in extraordinary times. This book is about them and those times.

If you always sleep under a ceiling fan the moving air becomes necessary to get a good night’s sleep—at least in the build-up. I live in Darwin where the air gets so hot and humid, for two or three months every year, that anyone sleeping without a fan risks waking in a pool of sweat. If my fan is turned off, I’ll wake before it stops moving, so Mum sometimes gets me out of bed on time just by turning it off. I heard the click of the fan’s controller a few minutes ago and have been trying to ignore the still air to get a little more snoozing in. without much success. The switch is near the door, she didn’t even have to come in, but now I can hear her shouting down the hall.
“Hurry up, Ras, school starts in half an hour. Don’t forget to lock the door.” I hear her car start under the house and then she’s gone.
I groan, but I am awake now...

Derek Pugh and The Sunshine Girls published Tammy Damulkurra with ASP in 1995. The book was written with and for Indigenous teenagers and remains a “landmark in Australian literature” for Indigenous students and of interest to all.

Tammy Damulhurra is a year 9 reader for the country of Kiribati.

Originally released in 1995 this second edition celebrates two decades of literacy education in remote communities in Australia.

Darwin is the only Australian pre-Federation capital young enough to be photographed from the beginning. These precious photographs are a celebration of the work of the surveyors establishing the city, then called 'Palmerston', 150 years ago.

'Darwin 1869: The First Year in Photographs' is an illustrated celebration of Darwin’s 150 year history.

The photographs of two men allow us to peer into the lives of our first settlers from the very first days of the settlement:

JOSEPH BROOKS arrived in Adelaide at the age of nine. He became a draftsman with the SA Department of Survey and Crown Lands in 1864 and was chosen by Goyder to join the Northern Territory Expedition when he was 21 years old. As well as draftsman, he was the official photographer for the expedition until he left the settlement in September with Goyder on the Gulnare. He used a stereographic camera that took two images which could be seen in 3D when used a viewer of paired
lenses. In later years he moved to New South Wales for a further career in surveying and then took up astronomy, travelling the Pacific Ocean to chase of solar eclipses. He died of Bright’s disease in 1918 in Woollahra, aged 70.

CAPTAIN SAMUEL WHITE SWEET was a keen amateur photographer and he was able to help Brooks take the official photographs, as well as take his own that he could then sell to the public back in Adelaide. As Brooks’s drafting duties became more time consuming, Sweet took over much of the role of ‘official’ photographer. Sweet’s photographs can usually be identified by a small anchor-shaped scratch etched onto the plate before printing.
Captain Sweet brought the Gulnare five times from Adelaide to Port Darwin, but in October 1821 she hit a reef near the Vernon Islands while carrying telegraph line equipment to the Roper River. She was able to limp back to Port Darwin, but Government Resident Douglas, who found her slow and unwieldy, was delighted to condemn the little ship. She was stripped of anything useful and left to rot on the beach below Fort Hill. Her masts were recycled, and were later strapped to the side of the Springbok to take south. Captain Sweet returned to Adelaide to captain the Wallaroo, carting coal for the Black Diamond Line, until she run aground in a storm in 1875. He then retired from the sea and opened a photography business off Rundell Street, Adelaide. He was one of South Australia’s most prominent documentary photographers through the 1870s to January 1886, until he collapsed and
died near Riverton, South Australia, apparently of sunstroke. He was survived by Elizabeth Tilly, with whom he had four daughters and five sons.
Since both Brooks and Sweet left the colony on September 28, there was no photographer in Palmerston until Sweet’s return at the end of January, 1870. All their images in these books were therefore made between February 5 and September 28, 1869. They are precious—Darwin is unusual in that it is the only pre-Federation Australian capital to have been photographed from the very beginning.

HANGED: EXECUTION IN THE TOP END
By Derek Pugh
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Northern Territory of Australia stood at the outer edge of the British Empire—vast, sparsely governed, and brutally unforgiving. Here, the machinery of law operated far from oversight, and capital punishment was carried out in conditions almost unimaginable elsewhere in the imperial world.
"Hanged: Execution in the Top End" is the first comprehensive history of judicial execution in Australia’s tropical frontier. Drawing on court records, prison files, official correspondence, and contemporary newspapers, historian Dr Derek Pugh reconstructs the cases of men condemned to death in a place where the authority of the state was fragile and the consequences final.
These were not theatrical executions designed for crowds or moral spectacle. They were quiet and functional — carried out in remote settlements where race, isolation, and administrative neglect shaped justice as much as statute law. Aboriginal prisoners, Chinese gold miners, and the socially marginal were disproportionately caught in a system struggling to impose order on an environment it barely controlled.
Written with forensic clarity and grounded in primary sources, this book challenges romantic myths of the Australian frontier. Instead, it reveals a legal world where punishment was swift, appeals were rare, and mercy was uncertain.
"Hanged" is essential reading for anyone interested in colonial justice, the history of punishment, and the realities of empire at its limits.