June Opitz obituary

The Guardian

23-04-2025

My aunt June Opitz, who has died aged 100, spent 50 years in the Northern Territory outback of Australia, first setting up a store and motel that became part of the Kakadu national park, and then at Charles Darwin University, where she finished a PhD aged 84 before returning to her native UK.
It was in 1958 that June became a 'ten pound Pom', sailing from Tilbury Docks. She worked her way across the country before taking a job at the remote Nourlangie safari camp, 300 miles east of Darwin. There, June met Tom Opitz, a crocodile hunter who called her Judy, a name she adopted throughout her time in Australia. They married in 1963, then set up the Cooinda Trading Post and Motel. In 1980 they returned the site to the traditional owners, and it was eventually absorbed into the newly proclaimed Kakadu national park, now a world heritage site.
June was born in London, the fourth of six children of Irene (nee Molesworth) and Charles Rowley, an army captain, and initially lived in Tonbridge Wells, Kent. A brother, Charles, died when he was two.
In 1935, her father died, and the family moved to London, where June attended Glendower school in South Kensington. When she was 16 years old, her mother married Frank Ash, an ex-army captain and friend of June's father. With the onset of the second world war, Glendower was closed and June was sent to stay with friends in Winchester. There, her studies suffered, and she left school without qualifications.
After studying shorthand and typing at a commercial college, June joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) aged 18. She was posted to RAF Bourn in Cambridgeshire with 105 Squadron, where she transported the Mosquito aircrew to and from the dispersal points for flights as well as driving ambulances to crash sites.
Demobbed in 1946, June auditioned for a production of the musical Annie Get Your Gun, and was taken on as a chorus girl. However she got to play Annie on its opening night at the Empire, Liverpool, when the show's star, Barbara Shotter, and her understudy both fell ill.
More acting and other jobs followed, but June yearned to see more of the world. In 1957 she set off overland by bus for India, with a view to getting a boat to Australia. She made it through Europe, Turkey and Persia but became ill with hepatitis so returned to England, sailing to Australia the following year.
Tom died in 1982, and she did a series of access courses that led to a degree in archaeology and anthropology at the Northern Territory University (now Charles Darwin University), followed by her doctorate. She published her autobiography, An English Rose in Kakadu, in 2009.
In 2012 June returned to the UK to live in Cambridge with her sister, before moving into a retirement home in Cambourne, near RAF Bourn.
She remained an honorary fellow at Charles Darwin University. A letter from the university to mark her 100th birthday noted her contribution to widening understanding of the Kakadu national park.
She is survived by seven nephews and nieces.