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Ray Sharpe, a seasoned newspaper photographer from Sydney , being upstaged by a snap happy monkey when he was working for the Northern Territory News. The inquisitive monkey was aboard a yacht which sailed into Darwin. It pulled his hair, examined his ears and stuck fingers up his nose. Ray said you have not lived until a monkey has stuck a finger up your nostril. With respect , nothing compared to the mad monkey business with which he became involved in respect of the public service .
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In May l975 Bowditch supported an application by journalist Gene Janes for a Literature Board grant
to write a book about Cyclone Tracy
. The
application was also backed
by the novelist Ruth Park , D’Arcy Niland’s widow, who said
she had known Janes’s fiction and fact pieces for l5 years. She had
admired his firm, craftsman-like grasp of
style and form. Janes, was a
classic example of a fine writer sidetracked by personal responsibilities into too much journalism. Park wrote he
had a terse originality and an intuitive feeling for Australian character .
The Calvert Publishing Company of
Sydney attested Janes had been one of its
most popular authors who wrote
commissioned stories with army, navy and airforce settings. He had
also written a detective series and a number of romance and mystery stories. His books had been translated into
several languages. Unfortunately, he did not receive a grant.
By Peter Simon
(The
2004 collectors’ book on Australian
pulp fiction , published by the National Library of Australia, ran the cover of
Death in a Nudist Camp by Gene Janes. Author Toni Johnson-Woods , a lecturer at Queensland
University wrote that little was known of
Janes except that he was a prolific
writer ; the book included another
action cover of the war thriller Incident on Shaggy Ridge by Owen
Gibson, another Janes’s pen-name.)
The sacking of the
Whitlam Government involved Bowditch
in the re-election campaign . The Whitlam appointed
NT Administrator , Jim’s old friend, Jock Nelson , resigned his position and announced he would contest the NT
seat in the federal election . At the request of ALP secretary, John Waters, Gough
Whitlam had asked Nelson to once more stand for the Territory
seat.
Bowditch rallied to
Nelson’s cause. As part of his
efforts Bowditch conducted
a lengthy interview with Nelson
on air . He also
wrote a front page story about Nelson for the ALP election paper , The
Territory Times . At the
election Nelson failed to unseat
the incumbent , Sam Calder .
It is no great revelation to say that journalists often find it hard to work in the public service. The absurdities experienced by the Information and Public Relations Branch in Darwin , mainly staffed by ex newspaper journalists , at times rivalled the British TV comedy series Yes Minister.
TROPICAL YES MINISTER
It is no great revelation to say that journalists often find it hard to work in the public service. The absurdities experienced by the Information and Public Relations Branch in Darwin , mainly staffed by ex newspaper journalists , at times rivalled the British TV comedy series Yes Minister.
Due to departures and various departmental changes, there was a
time when the Information and PR Branch journalistic staff consisted of this writer
and Bowditch. Bowditch was on a B-grade
journalist pay and was
mainly responsible for production
of the Rural Magazine , a quarterly for the Animal Industry and Agriculture Branch.
As acting head of the
Information and PR Branch and
Press Officer I kept
a file headed FIERY MEMOS
which provided interesting
reading and also clear signs
of incipient Mango Madness. Before Bowditch
came aboard , the Branch engaged
its first photographer, the colourful
ex-Sydney newspaper
cameraman Ray Sharpe, who had been to Vietnam , and ran
into some wee problems . Firstly , there was no photographic gear
and no darkroom for him . Rather than
wait for things to happen going through the dreaded system, the branch improvised.
A bit of probing
revealed that there were
something like 100 cameras held in various departments of the NT
government and not one of them ,
at first , could be made available to the
photographer. Eventually, a camera in an underwater housing
was borrowed from Fisheries. It was ideal
for taking happy snaps of the
Mandorah Monster, Darwin's answer to the Loch Ness Monster, at home.
DEAD KINGFISHER RESURRECTION
Early in the piece ,
Sharpe and I
did a trip to Alice Springs in a
brand new four wheel drive vehicle
fitted out as a paddy wagon which was to
be handed over to the police.
Whenever the vehicle came to a town some people would do a double take and disappear. Detectives Simon and Sharpe looking for a missing darkroom . At the crystal clear springs
at Mataranka Homestead skinny Sharpe , clad in droopy black underpants ,
snorkelled and pacticed with the underwater camera. Seized by
creative inspiration , he
suggested we should return
to where he had seen a
dead kingfisher next to the road , attach it to the end of a stick , and bring it back to the springs
to get the action picture of the year. His brilliant idea
was that I would
jab the unfortunate kingfisher in
and out of the water while he captured
great photographs of a
seemingly live bird diving in for fish .
Sharpe’s interest in this proposal
came to an end when a big
breasted German tourist , Brunnhilde-like , only wearing
panties, stepped out of a Khombi van and dived
into the pool right in front of him . Like a drowned rat, his snorkel
and goggles having slipped down around his neck, he surfaced , gasping , and
announced that “the bird”-not the kingfisher- had no gear on.
Memos continued without
result. However, it was drawn to our attention that in a new building
there were no less than
seven large unused darkrooms.
What ! Off went another fiery memo . In yet another bizarre
twist , the darkroom shared with
AIS was closed when it was discovered that the building in
which it was located encroached on
adjoining property . Almost overnight, the AIS was allocated
one of the spacious unused
darkrooms. Another darkroom was made available for the Australian Government Printing Service.
EXPLETIVES NOT DELETED
At this stage , the Darwin Reconstruction Commission , working on plans for the
rebuilding of Darwin after the cyclone , was using the
Information and PR Branch enlarger
and other equipment in a
makeshift darkroom which was about the size of
a broom cupboard. All this
despite the fact that Darwin was awash
with modern government owned darkrooms which seemed more closely guarded than Fort Knox. Even the DRC
could not get one of the
rooms and were told there was a problem of gaining access after hours
to the office block . This was a
weird excuse as a
number of people regularly entered the building with their own keys after hours.
Lewd and expletive laden theories were
advanced as to what
went on in these mysterious,
impenetrable darkrooms in the witching
hours.
When a public servant
responsible for handling
applications for office space was
forcefully questioned about the
darkrooms, he said there was nothing in writing indicating the
Branch wanted a darkroom . This
stunning statement resulted in further
unseemly language. Another excuse advanced for
not making a darkroom available
was that there was no money for partitioning .
But , it was pointed out , the
darkroom complex did not require
any partitioning . Oh. Even if it
did, the Information and PR Branch
would quickly find the
means, even steal the material needed to convert it into a genuine darkroom.
Then I was advised to
ring a public servant in Brisbane who
would pass back to Darwin my
request for a darkroom!!! The recipient
of the Brisbane request would be
the very person in Darwin who knew
the Branch wanted a darkroom
. In the public service way of doing things, this was not instantly recognised as an insane
and farcical situation.
In yet another fiery
memo, I wrote about the
“incredible shenanigans”
experienced by the Information and PR Branch to get its own darkroom. When Bowditch joined the staff and was
shown the darkroom memo file
he laughed so much he had to dab his eyes with a hanky and wipe away tears . He advised me to watch my blood pressure. NEXT: Reprimanded by the public service.
