For eight years (1931–1939) he served as an assistant minister at the Presbyterian mission at Port George IV (Kunmunya) in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
[1] Despite a physical disability from a bullet wound to his hand, which resulted in his losing a thumb and finger, he managed to be enlisted in the army and worked in a transport division in northern Australia until his discharge in 1944.
[1] In 1947 he was hired to work, on the basis of his extensive experience with aboriginal communities, as a patrol officer attached to the Woomera Test Range.
As Britain began to undertake weapons testing and experiments on the atomic bomb at Emu Field and Maralinga, MacDougall was delegated to shift people out of the affected area down to the Yalata.
Edwards cites as a suitable, complimentary epitaph for MacDougall a hostile put-down made by a scientist involved in the atomic arms testing.