OUTBACK PEOPLE
The Canyon Kings
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| Jim Cotterill outside Jim's Place at Stuart's Well |
Story and photos Richard Shaw
At the base of one of Central Australia's most popular natural wonders,
Kings Canyon, a stone monument stands inconspicuously.
An inscription simply reads: In memory of Jack Cotterill, whose foresight
and effort made it possible for us all to visit this wonderful place.
For many Australians the Cotterill name is not synonymous with anything
in particular, but in the Red Centre this family is legendary.
Jack Cotterill, wife Elsie, and sons John and Jim, migrated from Britain
to Australia in the early 1950s, settled in Alice Springs and became pioneers
of Central Australia's tourist industry. Perhaps their greatest feat was
opening Kings Canyon to tourism in the early 1960s. These were the industry's
infant days, when few tourists ventured so far and vehicles barely survived
the heavily corrugated dirt tracks leading to Red Centre attractions.
Today, only Jim survives. He lives at Stuart's Well, 90km south of Alice,
a place where John MacDouall Stuart obtained water for his horses during
numerous expeditions in the 19th century. In the modern-day equivalent of
a watering hole, Jim runs a roadhouse - aptly named Jim's Place. Each year
countless travellers stop by this Stuart Highway landmark where Jim is always
happy to recount his family's story.
In his late fifties, his sandy-coloured hair is greying and a thick grey
beard accentuates his rounded face. Jim was only nine when his father decided
to leave behind the greyness of England's Midlands for the 'land of clear
skies and opportunity'. Just six months after arriving in Adelaide in 1952
Jack accepted a job in Alice Springs and the family took The Ghan up north.
This was quite ironic, Jim says, as shortly before leaving England older brother John had been showing the deserts surrounding Central Australia to his mother on a map. "That's one place we're never going to live," he vividly remembers her saying.
After only six months since leaving the lushness of England, Central Australia
seemed incredibly foreign and forbidding. "When we arrived, Mum was
in tears," Jim recalls. 
Full story: Issue 18, August/ September 2001
