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Pike in office against one of his magazines.
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At long last , journalist , author , historian , publisher and battler Glenville Pike has received national recognition through a feature article by Nicolas Rothwell in the Weekend Australian's Review magazine of June 27-28, which billed him as Yesterday's Hero .
By Peter Simon
Over the years, I spread the same message , in this blog and in several publications , even Citation, journal of the Northern Territory Police Museum and Historical Society . I knew Glenville in Darwin from the l950s when he lived, frugally, with his Kiwi mother, Effie, a writer and poet , and auntie, actually his mother's cousin, Dorothy.
He would come into the Northern Territory News office from time to time to sell his magazine, the North Australian Monthly, printed in Townsville by Willmett's , publication of which was originally bankrolled by journalist and author Jessie Litchfield who ran the Roberta Library in Darwin . With correspondents , poets and contributors across North Australia, including former mounted policemen , the magazine folded after 12 years when the Murdoch organisation started a similar publication in Darwin .
Northern Territory News editor Jim Bowditch once urged me to help" old Glenville" out by buying what I could from him because he said the trio lived like "church mice ." I wrote several articles for the North Australian Monthly and renewed contact with Glenville when I returned to Darwin in 1972.
Intending to leave Darwin and return to Machan's Beach, Cairns , he offered to sell me their five acre property down the Stuart Highway at the 23 mile . My wife took one look at the basic tin building-"shack"- with a wood burning stove and packed earth floor, flashed the no way Jose meaningful glare.
When Lord Snowdon, husband of Princess Margaret , was intending to visit the Territory to make a film , Glenville was lined up to be interviewed on camera.To prepare himself for the film , Glenville had much needed , expensive dental work carried out ...but Snowdon cancelled the venture .
Over the years, I helped Glenville out with photographs,photocopying , information and arranged for him to be paid for articles written for a government publication I edited . In turn , he provided me with photographs from his large photographic collection built up over decades , including one showing Darwin men marching off to World War l in a procession in which the Japanese flag flew . The family left Darwin after Cyclone Tracy for Machan's Beach , his mother dying soon after in Cairns . His "second mother", Auntie Dorothy, died in Mareeba Hospital in 1979 at the age of 91.
The next year ,Glenville, aged 55, married an American woman, Carolyne Kuri , whose previous husband had been a New York plastic surgeon who gave her a new Cadillac each birthday . The newlyweds lived on Cypress Park , a rural property out of Mareeba . I spoke to her over the telephone and she was delighted to talk to somebody who had known Glenville way back in Darwin.
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Pike at entrance to his Mareeba property.
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The marriage broke up and Glenville later married a jovial Chinese Malay-English woman , Helen Hasluck ,who had spent part of her early life in Singapore . My wife and I visited the couple at Mareeba and Glenville showed me about his office , woodwork ravaged by white ants , in which he kept a tin trunk containing all the books ( see graphic at top of post) he had written or had published for others .
When they went shopping in Mareeba , his wife headed to a place which served Chinese meals , while Glenville , who did not like Chinese, ate the staple Aussie meal, steak and eggs, at another eatery.
His wife became weak and unsteady on her feet, at times falling out of bed. Of slight build, Glenville was unable to pick her up and rang the Mareeba ambulance to come and put her back in bed . Pike illustrated books , Christmas cards and made paintings of the outback like the one below .
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Coming to Townsville for medical treatment , he was unsteady on his feet and stayed overnight with us on Magnetic Island , thoughtfully bringing with him a tin can so that he would not have to get up and go to the toilet during the night . Over the phone , he told me he had water on the brain and a hole had to be drilled in his head. He died in May 2011, aged 86, while still working on his record breaking regular column Around the Campfire by the Sundowner for the North Queensland Register .
