This “strange, isolated, waterlogged community of about 5000 souls divided from the rest of Australia by distance and the annual monsoonal deluge, they were also divided profoundly from each other by race, class, language and culture”, he would write later in life.

Much of his life’s work would focus on trying to bridge those divides.

John Waters, founder of the NT Labor party, lawyer, and father, died April 4 2019, aged 74.

Born in Elliston on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula in 1944 to schoolteacher father Ken and mother Thelma, John made the move north when Ken - who would go on to serve on Darwin council as alderman and mayor — took up a posting at Darwin Higher Primary.

The school site on Wood St still carries the name given to it by John and his mates — Frogs Hollow.

A Territory childhood of shooting, camping and fishing came to an end when he was sent back to South Australia where he would finish his secondary school and go on to study arts and law.

It was at Adelaide University that John met his wife Alicia and began his lifelong involvement with the law and with the Labor party.

John joined the party as an 18-year-old and continued his involvement with the party after returning to Darwin.

More than a decade before self-government, there was then no NT Labor branch — the Darwin chapter was a sub-branch of the Port Augusta arm.

It wasn’t until after John’s next Darwin homecoming in the early 70s, after he and Alicia had spent several years living and working in London, that a Territory branch would be born.

He stood three times for the party in the now-abolished federal seat of the Northern Territory - losing to Sam Calder in 1974 and 1977 and to Grant Tambling by a slim margin in 1980. Tilts at NT seats of Leanyer and Fannie Bay were also unsuccessful.

Those years were also spent building his legal career and his family. John teamed up with friends Geoff James and Alan O’Neil to establish the firm Waters, James & O’Neil.

Daughter Mirren was born in 1973. Son Fletcher followed in 1974, just weeks before Cyclone Tracy leveled Darwin.

A trip to Adelaide to introduce the new baby to family meant the Waters family was saved from the storm which destroyed their home on East Point Rd.

John arrived back in Darwin on December 28, to help the shattered city rebuild.

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While John never made it to parliament himself, he was a valued mentor to those who did.

Former NT senator Trish Crossin was one of those he helped to guide.

In her eulogy of him, Ms Crossin described her former mentor as “a warrior of the Left – an idealist rather than a pragmatist, uncompromising and principled in his beliefs and passionate in his advocacy”.

“John was the very epitome of The True Believer,” she said.

“Through good times and bad - and there were many of those for Territory Labor over the years - he was there; working selflessly, contributing time, money, effort and legal skills.”

Longtime Member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon described him as one of Labor’s “leading lights”.

“I well recall the many vibrant interactions in the branch and saw John spar with many, rarely ceding his position,” Mr Snowdon wrote in a tribute to his friend.

As a lawyer, John was involved in some of the Territory’s highest profile legal battles, including the Romeo case, in which the then-teenager Nadia Romeo sued the NT Government for negligence after she plummeted 6.5m from the Dripstone Cliffs. John, then a solicitor-advocate, took the case all the way to the High Court of Australia.

He defended the Territory’s worst mass-murderer, Douglas Crabbe, who killed five people and seriously injured 16 others when he drove his Mack truck into a crowded bar at the base of Uluru.

John and Alicia’s youngest son Mitchell was born in 1984, the year of Crabbe’s first trial.

Crabbe’s appeal would establish the legal precedent for recklessness in relation to murder.

In October 1990, John joined the independent bar and established James Muirhead Chambers with Steve Southwood and Jon Tippett. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1998.

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The later years of John’s life were spent idyllically, indulging his passions for photography, food, travel and family.

He served on the board of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and divided his time between Darwin and Italy.

While Darwin sweated through the Wet, John would relish the time to read and write in a 300-year-old barn in the Umbrian countryside he and Alicia restored.

John is survived by his partner Kathleen, his daughter Mirren, sons Fletcher and Mitchell and grandchildren Felix, Isaac and Clementine.