The society's enthusiastic and very knowledgeable secretary and public officer, June Tomlinson, explained the story behind the keys . After the destruction of the city by Cyclone Tracy in l974 , the Health Department deposited its records in a police station cell for safe keeping , a key provided for entry . On hearing the police station was going to be demolished , June arranged for the complete set of keys to be donated to the society . If only those keys could talk . They could tell tales about many colourful citizens accommodated in the slammer at government expense.
By Peter Simon
When Allan Stewart, known as The Great White Hunter, who ran the Nourlangie Safari Camp , was locked up over a southern legal matter , friends in the nearby Victoria Hotel gathered outside his cell and sang the Fannie Bay Blues . Fannie Bay was Darwin's tin-walled prison ; mine host at the hotel , Richard Fong , kindly arranged for beer to be slipped in under cover with Stewart's meals.
The crusading editor of the Northern Territory News , "Big Jim " Bowditch , heard the cell door clang shut behind him on several occasions.
And the newspaper's tipsy cleaner , Donald Charles Duncan , known as Drunken Duncan ,who made news when he fell into the harbour one night and drifted back and forth in the shark and crocodile infested waters , was often locked up . An Englishman, he once told a magistrate the reason why he came to Australia was that his father called him in one day , said they already had a village idiot, so he had better go to the antipodes-Western Australia .
UPCOMING : More unusual stories from the Genealogical Society's unique collection.
