Darwin rebellion took place on 17 December 1918 when three or four hundred men led by the Australian Workers Union secretary, Harold Nelson, marched on Government House to demand that the NT Administrator, Dr John Gilruth, leave the territory and submit to investigation of his administration. Gilruth's unbending attitude to industrial issues had angered the unionists; nor was he helped by his own aloofness, too readily seen as arrogance, or by the parsimonious colonial policies of his federal masters which dashed the hopes generated among Territorians by the Commonwealth's 1911 acquisition of the NT.
Gilruth stood his ground and the rebellion ended in stalemate; but continuing agitation caused the government to recall him in February 1918. Eight months later, the threat of violence forced his three closest colleagues to leave Darwin. In November 1918 the Hughes ministry appointed a Tasmanian judge, Norman Ewing, to investigate the Gilruth regime.
Ewing accused Gilruth of improper conduct and of being temperamentally unfit to administer the NT. On the evidence, the first finding is dubious and the second well-merited. Territory political lore tends to equate the Darwin rebellion with Eureka and the Rum Rebellion. Frank Alcorta, Darwin Rebellion (1984) , gives a partisan view of the times.
Alan Powell
How to cite this entry: Alan Powell "Darwin rebellion" The Oxford Companion to Australian History. Ed. Graeme Davison, John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 17 December 2011
