Due to a Townsville City Council roadside collection , a shed was searched and a forgotten box labelled DAMAGED BOOKS was found at the back of a shelf . Well taped , it contained books collected over the years in New Zealand , Adelaide and Darwin , which had fallen victim to bookworm and borer. They had been sprayed , isolated in the shed to prevent them infecting other books in the house .
On opening , it proved to be a repulsive Pandora's box . It seethed with live cochroaches , which caused my wife to do an Irish jig in fright . Faster than anybody in the OK Corral shoot out, she whipped out the insect spray and drilled the roaches , at times squealing . Each book was spread out on the lawn , sprayed , examined .
A rarity is the notebook kept by the son of a Port Adelaide mayor who became a naval diver . It contains entries relating to him arriving in America and diving on the wreck of the French ocean liner SS Normandie which caught fire and sank in New York at Pier 88 while being converted into a troopship in 1942. It includes the names of hotels in which he stayed in America and an Australian address : N129 Sister C. J. McRae, S.S.Q Section 15, R.A.A.F, Richmond, N. S. W.
Another badly wormed U.S. Government Printing Office notebook contains diary like pencil entries of daily shipboard activities during the war in San Francisco and Wilmington , taking on ammunition, gun drill , repairing guns , breaking out and repairing diving gear , examining ship's bottom and cutting off damaged keel ; bailing water due to a leak . There is mention of Cairns and Darwin in l944 .
Another badly wormed U.S. Government Printing Office notebook contains diary like pencil entries of daily shipboard activities during the war in San Francisco and Wilmington , taking on ammunition, gun drill , repairing guns , breaking out and repairing diving gear , examining ship's bottom and cutting off damaged keel ; bailing water due to a leak . There is mention of Cairns and Darwin in l944 .
One of the oddities is Drifting Wreckage , by W. Lockhart Morton , of Adelaide, with a preface by Reverend J. Wilbur Chapman, D.D., of New York , believed to have belonged to Clem Hawke , a minister of religion , father of former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke ; Nortons Summit is an Adelaide suburb , where his father lived at one stage . The book has interesting accounts of church activity in Australia .
Battered early New Zealand books will be drawn to the attention of a researcher who recently wrote a definitive article on Maori women guides . Another of his interests is Steele Rudd so he should be interested in a grotty 1911 copy of The Dashwoods, a sequel to Rudd's On An Australian Farm, illustrated by Claude Marquet. As he is also a cricket tragic , he will be entranced by the 1900 broken and soiled A Cricketer on Cricket by W. J. Ford , which contains much Australian content , including the Australian eleven of 1899.
You don't see many copies of the 1923 Australasian Advertisers' Manual and Newspaper Directory (minus its nibbled and soiled cover ) .
The WWll War Service Record book in the top photograph is a profusely illustrated account of Victorian Education Department staff who fought and died in the conflict , with interesting biographical details .
