A raid on the unsuspecting North Queensland sugar town of Ingham by a Little Darwin squad keen to feed the local turtles in the wetlands and search for books , ephemera and assorted oddities in local op shops and other places of interest resulted in a mixed bag .
Their finds , would you believe, included souvenir tea spoons which seem to be greater in number than cane toads in the North .
The spoons included two from New Zealand - Auckland Harbour Bridge and the inter- island ferry terminal port of Picton .The Auckland Bridge was expanded from four to eight lanes by adding designed and prefabricated in Japan parts in 1969 , resulting in the structures becoming known as the Nippon Clipons .
Several spoons were from Queensland -Mount Isa Mines and Roma . One spoon , for Port Arthur, Tasmania , highlighted Australia's convict history . Founded in 1830, it "housed"12,500 convicts before closing in l877.
During WW ll , the Day Dawn Hotel in Ingham was drunk dry by American troops passing through , which inspired local poet Dan Sheahan to write A Pub Without Beer. It was later turned into the popular song The Pub With No Beer by Gordon Parsons and sung by Slim Dusty .
The Day Dawn Hotel is now Lee's Hotel . Wonder if any of these spoons were pinched -souvenired- from that important historic watering hole over the years ?
One of the interesting books found in Ingham was A Woman of Independence , by Kirsty Sword Gusmao, which tells of her involvement in the struggle for East Timor independence .
Unforunately , our team could not feed the resident Krefft's short -necked turtles because there is now a ban on going down to the wetland edges , apparently to prevent a crocodile rising up and reducing your footwear to a tasty thong with no toes.
Locals reported it has been a poor sugarcane season and there is industrial strife at the mill . Surely Ingham is not a looming town with no sucre ?
(Spoons, Turtles ,Beer.)
