After being demoted for poor conduct, he resigned from this force and became a drover, leading the first herds of cattle into the region now known as the Northern Territory.
[8] Edmund later requested that the Queensland Government provide a position for his son in the Native Police and Wentworth was appointed as an Acting sub-Inspector in 1865.
[10] Wentworth D'arcy Uhr's first major duty in the Native Police was to provide an armed escort for the expedition of William Landsborough to the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1866.
[12] Returning to Burketown in June, Uhr was soon ordered to conduct a long distance pursuit to arrest several horse thieves, a journey which took him 1500 miles into north-west New South Wales.
[15] Dr Henry Challinor, one of the few Queensland politicians who was consistently opposed to the ruthless methods of the Native Police, led calls for an inquiry.
The first was 100 miles west of Burketown where in response to a boomerang being thrown at one of Cox's men, local Aboriginals were shot at, rounded up and forced to provide hostages.
After half an hour of "continuous rattle of rifle shots" where "each man took deliberate aim", the Aboriginal people targeted had "fearful proofs in the numbers of their comrades who writhed or lay forever motionless".
As there were magistrates posted at the Roper depot, Cox officially charged Uhr with assault in what was the first known court proceeding in that area of the Northern Territory.
William Bloomfield Douglas presided over the case and it was settled when Uhr agreed to an immediate dismissal from his position on the condition that Cox supplied him with provisions to head to the new gold diggings around Port Darwin.
[21] After taking his leave of Cox's droving party, Uhr became a gold prospector and became the first to lodge a claim at the Pine Creek goldfields in 1872.
By 1875, Uhr followed the gold rushes back to Northern Queensland and became a butcher at the Palmer River Goldfields selling fresh meat to the diggers.
Uhr later wrote an open letter demanding a large contingent of Native Police to be based on the Palmer River to destroy Aboriginal resistance in the area.
[25] Uhr resided around Palmerston and Pine Creek, establishing pubs, butchering businesses, pastoral runs and investing in mining leases.
Uhr left the Northern Territory in late 1888 and for the next several years he lived in the more southern states, droving in New South Wales and operating hotels in Sydney and Adelaide.