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