An ABC report recently stated more than 2000 Australian journalist have lost their jobs since 2012, some now driving taxis. Apart from that, it seems a large number of veteran reporters have died or become infirm. During the year , this blogger received sad news about old journo mates in New Zealand and Australia who have met the final deadline , gone into homes or are exceedingly ill .
Somehow, the death of ace reporter Toni McRae a year ago had escaped my attention . When emails sent to her "pixstories " kept on bouncing back saying address was no longer valid , I sensed the worse . After coming home from a double mastectomy operation with a so called clean bill of health , Toni celebrated with her partner , Kiwi reporter Les Wilson , and was found dead the next morning . In her day, Toni was a multi media star , who worked in NZ , Sydney , Canberra , Darwin , and Queensland ; her exclusive story about the relationship between the leading anti Vietnam War figure and Treasurer Dr Jim Cairns and Junie Morosi had been a sensation ; Toni's autobiography , EXPOSE Scandals, Stars and Scoops, was reviewed in this blog and she had done much research into another book about Jack the Ripper, with an Australian connection.
Wondering how reporter Mike Driver , an old friend from the hilarious Cairns Post newspaper in the early 1960s , is getting along , a Google search revealed he had only recently died, and contact was made with his wife ,Natalie, in Canberra, herself a top journalist who once worked for the dynamic and controversial media publisher and journalist Maxwell Newton, founding editor of The Australian , later finance editor of the New York Post.She had an unusual interview for the job with Newton ... he was stretched out on a table, resting after putting out one of his many publications.
Mike was the son of a former Northern Territory Administrator , 1946-1951, Arthur Robert "Mick" Driver , a West Australian engineer , who had served in Darwin before the bombing , was later in charge of rebuilding the wharf over Neptuna , carrying depth charges and explosives , which blew up in a massive explosion in the first Japanese raid .
I had moved down from the Northern Territory News to the Cairns Post when I first made contact with Mike . Over the years we met up in various places and always reminisced and chuckled over the goings on in the Cairns Post, which included some "bastards " who had placed a large dead snake in Mike's car , which had frightened the daylights out of him .
At one stage Mike was a military PR in Butterworth. The last face to face contact with him was in Darwin in 2009 when he came up from Canberra with his wife to see two daughters off to military service overseas.
At the time we made an arrangement for him to provide me with details of his early life in Darwin, living in Government House , for the NT Police Museum and Historical Society publication, Citation , which I edited .
He subsequently sent me an account of how he , young son of the Administrator who was also the NT Police Commissioner, had been stopped by police on dusk , riding a bike with a rifle slung over his shoulder .
With him , also carrying a rifle and mounted on a bike , was Bas Wie who, aged 12, had stowed away in the wheel nacelle of a military Dakota in Kupang , Dutch Timor , and when the plane landed in Darwin a ground engineer placing locking pins in the undercarriage found him hanging in the struts . An account of the episode by journalist Douglas Lockwood won the 1000 pounds first prize in the London Evening News World's Strangest Story competition. There were calls for Bas to be sent back, but Administrator Driver said the boy could live in Government House while his future was being decided , which he did for five years .
Mike and Bas went out shooting wallabies with their rifles and were stopped by police coming back, asked for their names, address, both stating Government House. Mike said his father sent a car to the police station , and a verbal kick to the posterior was delivered when they were delivered to Government House .
Other exciting adventures he and Bas experienced included one of them taking shelter in a wartime pillbox , of which there were a number , while the other fired shots at it from a rifle. Not a game recommended for modern Darwin kids. Natalie Driver has souvenirs of those days, framed Darwin Government House menus drawn by cartoonist and illustrator Eric Jolliffe , creator of Saltbush Bill and Witchetty's Tribe .
Mike had once worked underground in the mines in Kalgoorlie and said an unnerving experience had been hearing the earth groan , talk. Underground workers tended to drink and swear a lot, he observed , no doubt due to the hard labour , but also because of the fact that the earth was moving about them , might collapse . --- (Peter Simon)
