Jose Petrick

Jose Petrick OAM ( Tizard, born 14 February 1924) is a British-born Australian historian and community advocate living in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

Early life Petrick was born in England on 14 February 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.

Life in the Northern Territory 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. 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.

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

In 2017 Petrick published her autobiography Bournemouth, the bush and Beyond, which was published by the Historical Society of the Northern Territory.

In 2024 Petrick celebrated her 100th birthday in Alice Springs with a ballet performance. When asked what had changed the most over her lifetime she said "the computers and the mobile phones"; technologies she uses daily. Bournemouth, the bush and beyond (2017)