George Woodroffe Goyder: Who was Goyder?

DEREK PUGH:

George Goyder was the surveyor general of South Australia. Quite a remarkable man. He was he was very short, very small man. He came from Scotland. He was an engineer and surveyor of phenomenal energy. And he got the nickname of 'Little Energy' in South Australia through the papers. And he was the man to get things done. He would, he would be a phenomenal Bushman. He had incredible skills and knowledge about how to survey things. He was pushed into the job by the newspaper and public opinion. He didn't want to go, his wife was ill. He had young children and basically there was nobody else. They called for 11 private tenders after the Escape Cliffs fiasco, and 11 — well, they called for tenders and 11 people applied, and Goyder couldn't choose between them. And he said, we don't know where this land is, we don't know anything about it, really. Apart from that, we've got to be done within the next two years, because their five year time limit, which they had from getting the investing investors come along was running very quickly out.

So the newspaper pushed him. It was called 'Goyder agitation', and everybody wanted him to go. He was the only man for the job. And finally he agreed. He, he did some very, very good negotiation, in the end, he got a very nice bonus for the job done. And did it under his terms. Within two months, he got his expedition together. A lot of the men already knew because they were worked for him, or they were already in teams. He got them all together. Nobody from outside, like land agents like there were in Escape Cliffs. It caused a lot of trouble out there. He just had these teams and he took them there on the Moonta, and they sailed in December, 1868, and arrived here in Darwin on the 5th of February, 1869, at quarter past three in the afternoon.