Stories
E.J. Connellan’s story
Edward John Connellan was born in 1912 in Victoria, the eldest of seven children. Connellan’s parents owned a farming and grazing property named Araluen at East Laen near Donald. Connellan’s parents moved to the Riverina, but Connellan boarded at Xavier College in Melbourne. He worked as a school teacher and began a correspondence degree with Melbourne University, but his primary aim was to take up land in a pastoral development. His first business ventures were unsuccessful but he gained a private pilot’s license in 1936. He travelled to Canberra where he made the acquaintance of the Minister responsible for the Northern Territory, John McEwan.
With the financial backing of friends and pastoralists from the western district, Connellan embarked upon two aerial surveys of the Northern Territory in 1938 to assess the potential for pastoral development, as well as to determine what role aviation could play in the region’s future. He met McEwan in the Territory, who was also visiting, and they discussed the viability of an air mail service in the Territory. Connellan received a federal government subsidy for the mail run and the contract for the Royal Flying Doctor Service to operate in Alice Springs. He arrived back in Alice Springs from Melbourne on 4 July 1938 with the intention to trial the scheme for three years. The Flying Doctor Contract required an aircraft capable of carrying a stretcher patient and medical attendants, which for a time Connellan could provide. The first flight to Hermannsburg took place on 10 July 1939. Despite the intervention of the war, Connellan was able to hold the business together, and on 23 July 1943 registered the business name, Connellan Airways.
In August 1940, Connellan married Evelyn Bell. The couple had three children, but their eldest daughter, Cynthia, died in 1942 after living only a single day. Her grave is in the cemetery next to the old Town Aerodrome. Two sons were born, Roger in 1944 and Christopher in 1948. The Connellans rented a flat in town next to Underdown’s hotel for most of the first decade of their married life until a homestead was built near the hangar at the Town Aerodrome.
In 1944 Connellan, together with Alice Springs storekeeper ES Lackman and solicitor Dick Ward, convened a public meeting in Alice Springs to establish the Northern Territory Development League. The Commonwealth Chifley government consulted the League for its view on Territory self government, but generally it was not active much after this time.
Aviation did not halt Connellan’s ambition to go onto the land. He applied for an agricultural lease for the area immediately to the west of the hangar, with the aim of developing a citrus orchard. The lease was granted in February 1944. Ultimately, Connellan’s property covered agricultural leases 423 and 430 and included citrus trees, a plant nursery and he ran goats as well. In 1945 he and Fred O’Keefe acquired a pastoral lease which he was to develop as Narwietooma. Following the death of the O’Keefe brothers during the war, Connellan acquired the whole lease but could not start work on the property until much later as wartime restrictions remained in force until 1947. Connellan moved to Narwietooma in 1955 and took over management of the property. He became a long time and active member of the Executive of the Centralian Pastoralists’ Association and was President in 1950 and 1951. He continued actively in this area and published a small pamphlet in 1965 Drought Management and Pasture Protection in Central Australia.
Connellan, although deeply interested in politics and friend to many influential people in government and outside, did not actively associate himself with any party. For a brief period between the end of 1965 and 1967, Connellan was a federal appointee to the Northern Territory Legislative Council as one of its non-official nominees. He was accused of a conflict of interest over his support from government and the subsidy he had received to establish the airline. He became disillusioned with his role on the Legislative Council and increasingly busy with the work of maintaining the airline.
On 5 January 1977, Eddie Connellan’s eldest son Roger, who was well on the way to becoming Connair General Manager, was killed when a suicide pilot deliberately flew his plane into the roof of the Connellan building at the Alice Springs Airport. Roger Connellan, and two engineers Mark Chittoni and Ron Dymock were immediately killed. A girl working in the engineering office, Liana Nappi, was very badly burned and died five days later at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Two of the engineers, Tony Byrnes and Kym Hansen, also suffered very serious burns but eventually recovered and George Taylor sustained minor burns. Although the tragedy took place at the Alice Springs Airport, there is a memorial to Roger Connellan near the Hangar on the Araluen Cultural Precinct.
Connellan devoted his life to the development of the Northern Territory, and in particular its aviation, tourism and pastoral industries. During his lifetime he received many honours: a Queen’s Coronation Medal in 1953, OBE in 1957, the Oswald Watt Trophy for outstanding contribution to general aviation in 1965, CBE in 1978 and AO in 1981. He survived the death of his son, and saw his airline Connair disbanded but nonetheless completed his autobiography Failure of Triumph before his death in 1983. He is remembered as a far-seeing man and terribly committed to the Territory.
