The bookish and colourful life of the Wild One of Australian politics who regrets having sold his rare and now highly valuable Vincent motorbike , which would help pay an expensive plumbing bill .
Good to hear that the large book collection of Melbourne identity Pete Steedman , named Politician of the Year when he was the ALP Member for Casey in the House of Representatives in the l980s , a university newspaper editor , journalist , publisher , political activist , commentator, is being catalogued . So far , early in the task, the count is a mere 3500 volumes . And this is just starting on one level which has l9 large floor to ceiling bookshelves .
There are eight bookshelves in his office .Then there is the downstairs part of the wide ranging collection, which includes more shelving , several compactus .
.Books, he says, are his security blanket . They have been since his post war childhood days when he got lost in books to escape the upheaval at home .
As can be expected , all kinds of interesting and forgotten books , magazines and ephemera is turning up in the cataloguing process . Some were bought from book dealers. There are inserts relating to authors ,events ; inscriptions of note, letters . First editions , numerous magazines , even copies of newspapers produced by Australian journalists out on strike .
There is a copy of his grandfather's account of landing at Gallipoli. A great grandfather of his had been a police sergeant at Ballarat -not during the Eureka Stockade , he hastily adds. There are numerous slim military volumes relating to the South West Pacific.
A copy of the banned novel Tropic of Cancer, by American Henry Miller ,is from the time when Steedman took a close interest in Australia's censorship and banning of books during his time as the editor of the l969 national publication, Broadside..
Apart from covering major issues of the day , Broadside featured the adventures in Canberra and America, of curvaceous Fabula , the PM's personal assistant, the plot based on inside information fed to Steedman from various sources , her exploits make the recent ABC report on the Canberra Bubble small, flat beer by comparison.
No doubt items connected with Steedman's lively time in London , running the office of the controversial Oz magazine while its Aussie owners were fighting off an obscenity charge in the Old Bailey ; stirring up the poor media coverage of the" Irish troubles" , politicians and developers will surface during the dusty cataloguing .
