Spanish Flu in the Territory

A century ago an influenza (‘flu’) pandemic swept the world, killing 50-100 million people globally, including more than 13,000 Australians. Many more people died from the influenza pandemic in 1918-19 globally than died during the First World War that immediately preceded it (18 million). 

That form of the influenza virus is believed to have originated among American soldiers, who spread it to Europe, where it mutated into a more deadly strain. Although a global pandemic infecting possibly 25–30 per cent of the world’s population, it became known as the ‘Spanish Flu’ because Spain was one of few developed countries to openly report on the pandemic. 
 

Influenza was first noted in Australia in 1820, as was reported in the Sydney Almanack of 1834. While influenza epidemics commonly occur each winter, there have been a number of pandemics in Australia’s history. These include 1890 (‘Russian Flu’), 1957 (‘Asian Flu’), 1968 (‘Hong Kong Flu’) and 2009 (‘Swine Flu’). The most devastating was the ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic of 1918–19.

Australia, while initially protected by distance, was heavily impacted. A day after marine quarantine measures were introduced in October 1918, the first case was recorded on a ship landing in Darwin. The disease tested the ability of the new federation to deliver a consistent response across the states, and emergency legislation was passed to give greater powers to the federal Central Health Committee.  

In 1919, 40% of Sydney’s population caught the disease and 4,000 residents died. Officially, 12,000 people died nationally but it is likely that the true figure was significantly higher.
 

Darwin authorities recorded Australia’s first cases on 18 October 1918 among passengers disembarking the Burns Philp steamer SS Mataram from Singapore. The Mataram continued south in quarantine with a number of severe cases on board. 

Over the following six months, 323 vessels were intercepted nationally, 174 of which carried the infection. Of the 81,510 people who were tested, approximately 1 in 80 were infected.

Those who had disembarked from the Mataram were placed in the quarantine station on Darwin Harbour’s Channel Island. By these means the Territory was spared until 13 November 1919 when the SS Governor Musgrave arrived from Western Australia. At that stage vessels from interstate were not being tested and it soon emerged that several people on the boat had the disease, which was quickly passed on to the Darwin port workers who loaded the ship with coal.
 

The epidemic’s impact elsewhere in the Territory was not reported in the press, but was nevertheless devastating. People moved freely over the Territory’s land borders and there was little authorities could do to halt the disease’s arrival. From Alice Springs southwards, Arrernte people were stricken. In the town itself, 56 Indigenous people died in a fortnight. 

According to anthropologist TGH Strehlow, the Lower Arrernte people around Charlotte Waters were ‘almost completely wiped out’ by the pandemic. The cultural ramifications were immense. In 1960 Strehlow recorded the loss entailed by the death of a man called Aywertarenye, who had died during the pandemic while relatively young. His life cut short, he had been unable to pass much of his knowledge of the Arrernte Irreyekwerr (wild onion) ceremony to his brothers.

Western Arrernte leader Gustav Malbunka (1909—1989) remembered ‘the sickness came like a fog and settled on the land and everyone started getting sickness’. Afterwards, survivors painted warnings to deter visitors from entering an estate in which many people had been killed by disease. 

In the north of South Australia, dismal scenes of people suffering and dying outdoors without medical attention were reported. It is likely that the disease spread along the Ghan rail-line and camel routes there. Many Indigenous people died at the Oodnadatta and Marree railheads. In some Indigenous communities interstate, the mortality rate approached 50 per cent.
 

By December 1919, there were about 130 cases detected in Darwin. By this time the disease had escaped into the savannah country of the Top End. Once there, it was passed between the many Indigenous people doing seasonal work at remote mines, buffalo shooting camps and pastoral stations as well as others still living traditionally on country. Despite efforts by authorities to supply medicines and food across the ‘country districts’, deaths were reported at Hayes Creek, Pine Creek and Mount Bonnie.

After a number of Maranunggu people died at Brock’s Creek tin mine, the survivors left for their country around the Daly River. The Northern Territory Times and Gazette reported that ‘if the stories told by the natives themselves can be relied on, a good many blacks are dying in the bush away from white men's camps’.  

Commenting in 1932 on groups further south, anthropologist Herbert Basedow noted ‘The tribes were terror-stricken and usually the moment a person sickened there was a general stampede, and the whole camp fled far into the bush’. 
The numbers of Indigenous people affected or killed by the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-19 will never be known. 
 

While highly contagious, fortunately this strain of the flu was relatively mild. Government Medical Health Officer Dr H. Leighton-Jones had 600 patients under his care but reported only six deaths among elderly ‘Asiatics’. Recognising the vulnerability of the Indigenous population, authorities placed all the people they deemed to be Indigenous in the Kahlin Compound.

Of the 365 people supplied with food and medicine there, 300 caught the disease and eight died, being ‘principally […] the very old and unhealthy, who offered little resistance to the infection’. From these figures it appears that the Indigenous mortality rate would have been approximately 2.5 times that of the broader population. 

The ability of Territory authorities to respond to the pandemic was understandable, given that influenza and other disease had beaten all previous efforts of colonists to settle in the north since as early as 1839. At the time of the Spanish Influenza outbreak, the acting Administrator of the NT, Miles Stanniforth Smith congratulated modern medicine for helping to achieve what had recently been regarded as an impossibility: the successful colonization of the tropics by “white people”. 
 

The disease entered Darwin via workers on the Darwin port. As wharfies were well-known drinkers, it is perhaps unsurprising that the influenza outbreak in Darwin was soon concentrated around the Terminus Hotel, which stood near the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ in front of the current City of Darwin offices.

As the Northern Territory Times and Gazette reported, victims at the Terminus included 'the manager, the housekeeper, both waitresses, the waiter, the second cook, and all the barmen. Boarders have been pressed into service to perform household duties and to act as nurses for the sufferers, though this latter duty has since been rendered unnecessary by the arrival of a trained nurse from the hospital'.

In May 1919, a large number of young men sailed from Brisbane on the SS Victoria to work the annual ‘killing season’ at Vestey’s meatworks on Bullocky Point. Before the ship could dock however, a number tested positive for the influenza virus. With the ship stuck offshore in the harbour, debate erupted as to whether it should be sent back to Queensland.

Some locals argued that not only were there enough local men to work at the meatworks, but that the government Medical Officer Doctor Leighton-Jones might spread the infection should he visit the patients on board.

In December 1919, authorities closed the makeshift hospital at Vestey’s Meatworks in Darwin and Chief Health Officer Dr Leighton-Jones declared that the outbreak was ‘well under control’. The loss of life had been minimal in Darwin, more severe across the Top End and disastrous in the Centre. The ability of authorities to accurately record deaths was most limited where fatalities were almost certainly highest: among remote Indigenous people. 

The apparent discrepancy between Central Australian and Top End fatalities during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19 has never been explained. It may be that the variety of Influenza that caused so many deaths in the Centre was a different strain to that which arrived in Darwin by boat. Or possibly the Larrakia and other saltwater people of the Top End had developed greater resistance to introduced disease through their engagement with Macassans, colonists and other travellers during the preceding centuries. 

Since the ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic of 1918-19, other disease outbreaks have occurred in the Territory, such as outbreaks of ‘Hong Kong flu’ (1968) and ‘Swine Flu’ (2009). As with the ‘Spanish Flu’ and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, authorities have harnessed the Territory’s isolation and low population to our advantage. Still, large numbers of Territorians have passed due to introduced disease in the past and are mourned to the current day.