Jose Petrick

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Jose Petrick OAM (born 14 February 1924) is a historian and community advocate living in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. [1]

Contents

Early life

Jose Petrick (née Tizard) was born in England in 1924. She trained as a secretary then as a nurse. She came to Australia on a working holiday in 1950 and worked in Sydney, Hobart and Adelaide. [2]

Life in the Northern Territory

Eager to see a cattle station before she returned to England, Petrick came to the Northern Territory in 1951 to be a governess for three months on MacDonald Downs Station, 300 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs. She married Martyn Petrick from nearby Mt Swan Station in 1952 and had two children Suzette and Grant. In 1960, they moved to Neutral Junction Station near Barrow Creek, where Petrick ran the health centre in the community.

When Martyn died in 1974, Petrick moved to Alice Springs and became a journalist with the Centralian Advocate. She wrote weekly features identifying the town's 100 streets named after Central Australian pioneers. The Centralian Advocate then published the features in a booklet entitled Street Names tell History of Alice Springs and The Story of the Centralian Advocate Alice Springs first newspaper by Robert Watt.

As the town grew more streets were named after pioneers, Aboriginal words and flora. Petrick wrote four more editions of the street name book and included landmarks named after people. The fifth edition, with more than 600 entries, entitled, The History of Alice Springs through Landmarks and Street Names was first published in 2010. [2]

Later life

Petrick was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in January 2000, for the preservation and recording of the history of Alice Springs and for her voluntary work at the Old Timers Home. In June 2000, she carried the Olympic Torch in Alice Springs.

Petrick is a life member of the Alice Springs Running & Walking Club, the National Trust, NT and Heritage Alice Springs Inc. She is a member of Alice Springs Toastmaster's Club, the Probus Club of Stuart and U3A Alice Springs, Inc. [3]

The late Iain Campbell won the prestigious Portrait of a Senior Territorian Art Award in 2009 with his portrait of Petrick. [4]

Petrick has recently written her autobiography, which will be published by the Historical Society of the Northern Territory.

Petrick now has five grand children and three great grandchildren.

Works

Related Research Articles

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<i>Centralian Advocate</i>

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Sister Eileen Heath

Sister Eileen Heath was an Anglican Deaconess who worked as the superintendent of St. Mary's Hostel in Alice Springs from 1946 - 1955 and was a tireless campaigner for Aboriginal Welfare who took a stand against her own church in the 1940s.

Simon Rieff was one of the first miners to open up The Granites goldfield in the Northern Territory of Australia before moving to Alice Springs to become a property developer and business man.

Gloria Ouida Lee Chinese-Australian woman miner

Gloria Ouida Lee or Siew Yoke Kwan, also known as Gloria Purdy-Lee was a Chinese-Australian miner. She was the daughter of Alice Springs Chinese Market gardener Ah Hong and his indigenous Western Arrernte wife Ranjika. Lee travelled between Australia and China and experienced discrimination because of her mixed parentage. She is included in the archive collection of the Women's Museum of Australia, formerly known as the National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame. Her oral history is held at the National Library of Australia.

Ah Hong

Ah Hong was a Chinese market gardener who spent most of his life in Alice Springs, and was a well regarded figure in an era of considerable prejudice towards Chinese people in Australia.

Ronald Nevill Damian Miller known almost exclusively as Damian Miller was a pilot and pastoralist who spent much of his life in Alice Springs. Miller helped found Connellan Airways as well as Argadargada and Hamilton Downs Stations.

Harry Griffiths was a Reverend who worked for the Methodist Inland Mission in Alice Springs; Northern Territory and is best remembered for establishing Griffiths House as well as designing and opening the ANZAC Hill memorial.

Pearl Ruth Powell, née Price, formerly Bird, was an Australian memoirist. She was the co-writer of By Packhorse and Buggy (1996) alongside her daughter Eileen McRae. This memoir follows her life where she grew up at the Alice Springs Telegraph Station, the daughter of postmaster Fred Price and, following his early death life on various cattle stations throughout Central Australia.

References

  1. ↑ "José PETRICK". Women's Museum of Australia. Retrieved 9 March 2021.
  2. 1 2 "Petrick, Jose". Territory Stories. Northern Territory Library. hdl:10070/218085?mode=full . Retrieved 26 March 2017.
  3. ↑ O'Hanlon, Monika (14 February 2014). "Local icon Jose Petrick celebrates her 90th birthday". NT News. Retrieved 26 March 2017.
  4. ↑ "Prodigal artist son returns for exhibition". Naomi Valley Independent. 12 February 2015. Retrieved 26 March 2017.
  5. ↑ "Petrick, Jose". Trove. National Library of Australia. Retrieved 26 March 2017.
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