Place Names Register Extract

Tokmakoff Road

Extract date: 14/06/2026

Name Tokmakoff
Type Designation Road
Place Id 8076
Place Type Road
Status Registered
Date Registered 3 August 1988
Locality / Suburb  
  Cossack
Local Government Area  
  Katherine Town Council
History/Origin Named after Alexander Tokmakoff and his wife Lya.

The Tokmakoffs held Agricultural Lease 167 on the banks of the Katherine River from 1933 until 1959 when it was sold to John Ramsey Donnellan.

Alexander Kuzmich Tokmakoff was born in Chita, Siberia, on 24 April 1895. He reportedly spent two years in China before arriving in Australia in the mid-late 1920s and by the early 1930s he had settled among a small community of Russians in Katherine. In 1936, while on a visit to his homeland, Alexander married a young Russian dentist, Lya Boohvestoff, in China. With the Second Sino-Japanese War imminent, the couple promptly left China for Alexander?s peanut farm in Katherine.

The couple headed to Darwin around the outbreak of World War II and Alexander worked as a tractor driver. By this time the couple had three young children: Erina (Irene) born in May 1937 in Katherine; Victor, born in July 1938 also in Katherine; and Peter born in August 1940 in Darwin. With the threat of the war reaching Australia, the family was evacuated to Adelaide in early 1942 where the couple?s youngest child, Veronica, was born in May 1942.

Alexander Tokmakoff died aged 76 on 26 November 1971 in Moscow, Russia.

See also Lya Road.

Register & Gazettal information

Date Gazettal Comment
03/08/1988 NTG31

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Department of Lands, Planning and Environment.
GPO Box 1680, Darwin NT 0801. Ph 08 8995 5333.
place.names@nt.gov.au

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