James Fea and Jean Cooper \ Peter Fea and Christina Cooper \ Eleanor Wymms Fea \ William Miller Linklater

Alice Mary Linklater

Alice Mary was born in 1907 at O.T. Downs Station, Northern Territory.

Extracts from N.T.Dictionary of Biography Volume 2 by V.T.O'Brien

Alice Mary (Lulla) Miller (also Linklater) (1907-1974), house girl and children's nurse, was born in 1907, tghe daughter of William Linklater, known as Billy Miller, and an aboriginal woman, Hollowjacks Alice, at O.T.Downs Station, Northern Territory. As a young child at the Kahlin Compound in Darwin Alice Miller was cared for by Superintendent MacDonald and his wife Marian as a young house girl. The young MacDonald children could not pronounce her name Alice so she became 'Lulla' to them and later to the Lovegrove, Fawcett and Fitzer families and others who knew her. As a child she confronted Billy Miller in a Darwin street and asked him if he was her father. When she told him her mother's name and how old she was, he agreed he was. Later the little half caste girl used to greet him with a wave and yell 'Hello, Dad'. bringing his paternity into account.

Miller worked with the Styles girls, Lillian, Myrtle and Gertie, in 1921, living in Darwin's main sreet between Brown's Mart and the 'Tin Bank'. Later she looked after the young Lovegroves at Alice Springs and Katherine as policeman John Lovegrove, who had married Lillian Styles, was posted to various stations. In the late 1920s and 1930s she lo;oked after the young Fawcetts, children of Jim Fawcett and his wife Myrtle, one of the Styles sisters. After 1928 Miller 'greew up' the Fawcett children during the time that their father was Manager of Jolly and Company in Darwin. When the war clouds loomed in December 1941 and an evacuation was ordered from Darwin, Miller went down on Koolama to Perth, Western Australia, with Mrytle Fawcett and they were in Wyndham on the way there when Pearl Harbour was bombed on 7th December 1941. Miller worked at the Saint John of God Hospital in Perth.

Miller had a brother, George, but he also went under the name of his father, 'Billy Miller', and was managing O.T.Downs Station when he was killed after falling from a horse at about 40 years of age. She also had a cousin with whom she was friendly, Madge Williams (also Cooper).

Returning to the Northern Territory after the war, she continued her associations with the Fawcetts and their descendants. In 1961 she went to live at Oolloo Station near the Daly River as the children of Pam Rixon, neee Fawcett, grew up there. She enjoyed fishing and crabbing and was a keen shot with her .22 rifle. She loved living in outback locations and the billabongs of the Daly River were part of her life in the Top End as she 'gre up' two generations of Territorians. She was very fond of reading and sewing.

Alice Miller died in Perth on 25 March 1974 and many Territorians particularly the Fawcetts and the Lovegroves, gathered to pay their respects at her grave side near the Oolloo homestead. She was, for them, 'Lulla of the Fairy Tales'.