Our waterfront roundsman spent the weekend relentlessly searching for nautical treasures, mermaids, assorted oddities and other collectables in Townsville during the weekend .
One item he was pleased to find at the Mundingburra State School monthly market, in a collection of postcards described as Oriental , was the above interior view of Darwin's Chinese Temple.
Our Shipping Reporter says he was actually present in Darwin in the l960s when the Chinese "Joss House " , which had been closed and looted during WWll , reopened in an impressive ceremony in which gods were installed along with new imported temple fittings.
Filled with great expectations, he bravely attended the Book Fair inside the Willows supermarket where eager bookies were lined up early in droves, some with shopping trollies , others with backpacks and assorted other containers.
He said the throng surged forward like the Spanish armada when it opened .
The vast array of books included many which appeared to be in mint condition, mainly novels .
However, our jostled man managed to snatch three non-fiction volumes about the Royal Navy's aircraft carrier Ark Royal which sank the Bismarck and was itself sunk by a German U-boat soon after ; the biography of rich, flamboyant , womaniser botanist Sir Joseph Banks , who sailed with Captain Cook ; the history of telecommunications across Australia , in which Darwin and the Northern Territory were well covered .
There were other temptations sighted in the melee , but the Shipping Reporter , mindful of a Townsville Bulletin report warning of a whooping cough outbreak , decided to make a strategic retreat from the crowd before being hit by a stray torpedo or a nasty virus .
On close examination of his buys at home he was surprised to discover that the Sir Joseph Banks book had once belonged to someone who had the same surname as the watery scribe . A missing link?
The well- illustrated telecommunications volume had previously belonged to a person with the same surname as that of a former Townsville resident who had a pre-loved coffin in his loungeroom , in which he used to cavort , a bit like Ray Martin .
Still keen to unearth more treasures , the Shipping Reporter went on an op shop trip and turned up the two volume Donald Bradman Albums and The History of the South Australian Cricket Association .
While no mermaids were found , he did spot a few more seahorse wall hangings at Mundingburra.
(Shipping, Townsville, Postcards .)
