Before he was carted off to Townsville University Hospital in a helicopter , our Shipping Reporter said he had many offbeat stories to be written for this blog. During his time in hospital he has nearly filled a notebook with more ideas from talking to patients, staff , frequent listening to Radio National , browsing through an Australian and New Zealand encyclopedia and other books in the sub acute care unit collection .
In a surprise and very welcome telephone call from Melbourne, journalist, publisher,former ALP politician Pete Steedman suggested that if he and our waterfront roundsman were 30 years younger they could buy a defunct northern Murdoch paper for a $1 and shake up the nation . As the Shipping Reporter was not certain if his leg would be amputated and Pete can only see out of one eye,they did not seem like a pair of new dynamic media tycoons.
The Shipping Reporter nearly fell out of bed with surprise when he received the above card of a proboscis monkey, a Borneo swinger, wishing him a speedy recovery in one piece.The senders ,friends who spend much time in South East Asia, would not know the significance of such a big nosed critter to the reporter.
The late and great crusading editor James Frederick Bowditch ,inducted posthumously into the Australian Journalism Hall of Fame last year,had a prominent nose.
While fighting against the Japanese as a member of the Z Force Special Unit,Bowditch came across the monks; friendly locals with whom he worked renamed the primates "Bowditch monkeys."
Before the invasion of Tarakan,Bowditch paddled in with a Malay operative to reconnoitre,killed an enemy guard with a butt blow to the chin from his American carbine , but then mutilated him with knife to make out it had been a native attack, not a member of the invading Allied force.
That bloody act played on his mind in later years,led to heavy drinking.
Starting a newspaper career in Alice Springs, he went on to edit the Northern Territory News,hid Malay pearl divers and stayput Portuguese sailors, backed Aboriginal landrights, fought for underdogs,campaigned to stop the RAAF using Quail Island as a bombing range ,opposed the White Australia policy and wrote powerful editorials . He even found time to outrageously diagnose a nasty looking red rash in a thirsty Darwin vicar's groin. "Doctor Big Jim Bowditch" and famous nose at book launch below.
Years later , his notable nose featured in an unusual act when helping a former Darwin fireman, Peter Hood,do some concreting.Wrapped in plastic, the noble snozzle was pressed into the wet cement so that its outline was kept for posterity.
The Shipping Reporter said he seems to recall that a billygoat may have chased Bowditch during the concreting, but he is not sure.
