Now a resident of Melbourne and not knowingly planning an immediate uprising against the government of The Garden State , journalist and author Kim Lockwood has provided this blog with exclusive details of a little known event in the history of the Northern Territory which involved an audacious plan to stage a midnight coup .
The daring takeover raid was planned after it was discovered that because of the first vote for the NT Legislative Assembly ,from election night 1974 until 6am the following morning the NT would be without a government . A group of lubricated reporters gathered at Kim's residence in Darwin and plotted to take over the Territory during the vacuum . Included in the power hungry mob was famous Darwin international ice hockey star and photographer Barry Ledwidge , later to star in a Vegemite film noir epic and become a daring solar powered car driver .
He and some other members of the group were Rocksitters -a cross section of enlightened locals , deep thinkers, who sat on a large seaside rock drinking, laughing , discussing the meaning of life , posing for tourists and visiting television teams , a surprising number of rockers suffered from haemorrhoids in later life.
En masse , the motley mob surged from the Lockwood residence to the commercial radio station and hammered on the door round about the witching hour , demanding to be admitted to announce the coup .
At first , they were rebuffed, told in no uncertain fashion to go away. However, the announcer rang the station manager, who agreed they would be given five minutes on air to announce the new regime . So for a very short time the NT was governed by a cabal of Gentlemen of the Press and their rock island mates.
