FAMOUS WAR POET FIND LEADS TO UNEXPECTED CHUNDER STORY

Showing signs of having been through the  wars, the  above   1915  special  edition for  distribution   to  Armed  Forces of  the United States  of  The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, the British "golden Apollo "  consumed by  WWl , at  the age of  27,  has  come our way .    Published by  Dodd, Mead  and Company, New York , it seems to have been  produced  during  WWll ,  includes  a  1915  biographical note by Margaret Lavington , one tribute   from " W.S.C."-Winston Spencer  Churchill . 

A story of slavery and piracy .

 A surprise discovery in  the   current list of  titles  published  in Armed Services editions at  the back of the  128pp  volume , in the same format,  was  Yankee Woman , above ,  by Eric  Baume  , a New Zealander who became a prominent  Sydney journalist, war correspondent, presenter of the  Beauty and the Beast (he was the beast ) television  show , radio commentator -This I Believe , who spent much time in the  Australian Journalists' Club   playing  one armed  bandits .

 

There is   a great  journo legend   about   a prominent young Sydney journalist , later   a  star newspaper and TV  reporter in America, under the weather  at the time , who became  involved in an unseemly event with Baume in the  club. The story goes that  Baume, a heavy gambler ,  perhaps  wanting to answer the call of nature , after playing a machine  for  a long time, put  a  handkerchief  over the bandit  , indicating  tha t somebody  was  playing  it  and  would return .

 

However ,  the saga  goes that  the young journo removed the hanky  and began playing the machine . Impossible and disgusting as it may seem, it is said the  claim jumper hit  the jackpot - and  chundered  on  outraged  Baume's  shoes when he ran up to  reclaim  the  machine . Of  course, this  could  be fake news .

 Baume's 1967  biography , Larger Than Life , by Arthur Manning , traced the  life of a Jewish Auckland born boy   who  played  a large  part in Australian and  New Zealand journalism , sacked by Sir Frank Packer  along the  way . His outspoken  radio  shows , broadcast from Cairns to Perth , were similar to those today of Sydney  shock jock Alan Jones .  

An illustration on the book's dustjacket showed Baume  speaking to university students , such meetings  said  always to  be lively , in  which he pulled no punches  and the students retaliated  with noise, toilet paper and the inevitable placard ,"Hallelujah, I'm a Baume . "
 

Baume visited  North  Queensland   and  went out to the  Northern Territory  goldrush  at  The Granites  in the Depression, resulting in a book called Tragedy Track .

  Our Rupert Brooke  book  came  ashore on  Magnetic  Island .