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William Armit was a Belgian-Australian naturalist, soldier, policeman, journalist, and government agent. He arrived in Australia at 18 and within a few years had joined the Queensland Native Police and married. Eventually trouble found him and he was dismissed twice, once for drunkenness, and finally for embezzlement. Claiming a frame-up, he pleaded his case in the press and eventually was hired in 1883 as a journalist correspondent to New Guinea, accompanying a scientific expedition which ended badly due to disease. He cobbled a living together the next decade as a journalist and naturalist, and in 1893 became a customs agent in New Guinea and then a magistrate there in 1899, until his death in 1901. His family was reportedly rather impoverished, losing everything to a flood in 1875, and several of his many children died in infancy during the 1870s and 1880s. Armit's reputation is tarnished by his apparent eagerness to join raids against indigenous people, resulting in many deaths. |
