An Untamed Territory: Darwin to Pine Creek 1913
Elsie Masson took a job as Governess in Darwin in 1913, and travelled with her friend Baldwin Spencer to Pine Creek, engaging in early trips in a motor car, train and lugger, into the Interior. It is a remarkable woman's story of life then, a domestic life with the Chinese and Aboriginal elements of any Territory household. Published only once, in 1915, yet designated a classic.
"The author takes a quaint view of the Territory as a still "untamed" savage, resisting passively all attempts at civilization. It was "wounded" by the Overland Telegraph, by the firm establishment of Darwin, and by the 'little railway, ' and it may succumb at last under the Commonwealth attack. But those who visit it still have a strange experience. They journey 60 years into the past, into the old Australia of the early days before the gold rush, an Australia which has long passed away in the south, but which still lingers in the wild, intractable Northern Territory. They find a strange mixture of white civilization with a strong flavour of tropical Asia, and the savage condition of the Stone Age aborigine. It is only five days from the fertile and teeming Java; only 10 from Hongkong-which is nearer than Sydney Twice a week a train runs to Pine Creek. Once a fortnight a train covers the nearly 700 miles from Adelaide to Oodnadatta..." - Adelaide Observer, 1915
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