On New Year's Eve in 1962, after more than a typical lifetime's tragedy and perseverance, Bill Harney died from a heart attack in Queensland.

In his typewriter sat a page of text ending with the words: "I must have rest."

It was the final known work by a prolific raconteur, known better as Bilarni to the many who heard his stories about life, culture and loss in the Northern Territory.

"At different times, he was regarded as Australia's greatest ever yarn-spinner," Dr Matthew Stephen, oral historian with the NT Archives, told 105.7 ABC Darwin.

It was quite a feat, particularly from such humble roots.

Bill Harney wrote or co-wrote 12 books, some published by others after his death, and many magazine articles.

"For somebody who obviously had no formal education, he obviously enjoyed literature, reading and became a writer in his own right," Mr Stephen said.

"I don't know how someone who doesn't have a formal education gets in their mind that they want to be a writer.

"It's quite amazing how his career unfolded, beginning as a young boy in Queensland."

Born in 1895 to a poor family in central Queensland's Charters Towers, by the age of 12 Harney had already left home to work on cattle stations and boundary ride rabbit-proof fences.

In 1915, facing unemployment, he enlisted to fight in World War I.

He came back in 1919 from the Great War broke, shattered and disillusioned about all facets of the slaughter — to the extent that, for some time afterwards, he hid his veteran status.

"I'd never crack on that I'd been to the war. I was somehow or another ashamed of the war," he said in oral performances recorded many years later.

"I rode 800 miles to Borroloola on a horse to forget about it."

Legend forms in the Northern Territory

Once in the Northern Territory's Gulf of Carpentaria region, Bilarni made a meagre living on cattle stations and by mustering, until he was caught with 2,000 stolen cattle and sent to jail for six months.

"This had a silver lining," Mr Stephen said.

According to legend, Bilarni taught himself to read while locked up in the remote jail, which was somehow privy to an Edwardian library.

After prison, he went back to droving, fencing and sea cucumber fishing in the Gulf region, and in 1927 married and eventually had several children with an Aboriginal woman, Linda Beattie.

However, the next period was filled with trying times, including ostracisation by white society due to his inter-racial marriage, hardship during the Depression, and then finally the deaths of both his wife and daughter from tuberculosis.

Bill Harney on Goulburn Island interviewing an Aboriginal girl about a spearing in the district ca. 1940s. ( Photographer unknown )

He then joined the government's Native Affairs Branch as a patrol officer in the Gove region in 1940, and it is here that Mr Stephen noticed a difference in Bilarni's patrol reports compared to those of others.

"They were not only informative but entertaining in the sense that he was a very good writer," Mr Stephen said.

The experience also broadened Bilarni's understanding of remote life in the Territory and, after he retired to a beach shack in Darwin to contemplate, write books, and fish, he started to become sought out by anthropologists.

"He developed this reputation as quite the expert with Aboriginal people," Mr Stephen said.

"He had this great fascination and rapport with Aboriginal people that was quite important.

"He developed this love of poetry and I think there was a connection of the stories coming from Aboriginal people and his writing and love of poetry.

"It came quite easy to him. Collaborations [on books with anthropologists] might have made the writing easier."

Bill Harney explaining Uluru cave paintings to members of the all-women's tourist group, the 'Petticoat Safari', in 1957. ( Keith Barlow )

By the mid-50s, Bilarni had transformed into the prolific storyteller that he probably had always been at heart, and was being aired to wide audiences by the ABC in Australia and broadcasters during his late life travels to Britain.

He was finally invited to be "Keeper of the Rock" at Uluru in 1957 for the ranger position that saw him, at the time, become one of the Territory's most famous living legends — rivalled only by his artist mate, Albert Namatjira.

But after extensive drought at Uluru, Bilarni retired to Queensland in 1962 with a typewriter and died less than a year later.

"It is sad in my mind that he was taken a little young before he could enjoy his second retirement," Mr Stephen said.

Hear extracts from Bill Harney's stories in this 105.7 ABC Darwin conversation with Dr Stephen and Rebecca McLaren.

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