It is hard to believe Darwin's Victoria Hotel, which opened in 1890 and accommodated pioneering aviators who flew into the gateway of Australia, is now closed .
It was dubbed the aviators' home away from home and played a large part in the city's polygot life. Its publicans included two prominent ,enterprising women and the Fong Lim family. It survived cyclones and the Japanese bombing in WWll .
An unusual event started outside the Victoria Hotel when American magician and film actor, John Calvert, blindfolded , with police approval , drove down the main street to the Town Hall to promote a show he was putting on to raise funds.
Calvert had sailed the luxury yacht Sea Fox , above , down from Singapore in l959. One of the passengers was a chain-smoking chimpanzee he claimed had been Jimmy the Chimp in a Tarzan movie.
When the Sea Fox set out for Sydney where Calvert was to put on a magic show it got into difficulties, began to sink off Arnhem Land, and RAAF planes were called in from Darwin and even Townsville to find it, the navy coming to the rescue .
Jimmy the Chimp ended up in Taronga Zoo, Sydney .
A visiting American gourmet experienced buffalo meat in the Vic for the first time which had been specially cooked for him by Richard Fong . A local character known as the Oyster King claimed in court he had been donged by Fong .
Many journalists and authors wet their whistles in the Vic, including the great crusading editor of the Northern Territory News" Big Jim" Bowditch who hid stayput Portuguese sailors and Malay divers from police and was himself arrested from time to time . Jack White , the man who found the Rum Jungle uranium deposits, frequented the hotel .
Another imbiber with a derogatory nickname was said to have stalled the getwaway car in a failed London bankrobbery.
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| The Vic Hotel in the l970s was thriving ,closed 2014. |
(Hotel. Darwin. Tarzan.)
