Three cars pulled up outside an old tin hut on the outskirts of Alice Springs on Australia Day 1964, the occupants intent on converting part of the hot building into an airconditioned room for its 79 year old resident, the one and only Miss Olive Pink, anthropologist and honorary curator of the Australian Arid Regions Native Flora Reserve. Since 1958 she had lived in the unlined hut which had provided provost guards’ sleeping accommodation in WW11 and measured 20ft by 60ft.
The heat inside the hut exhausted Miss Pink both mentally and physically ; she had been advised by a doctor to go south to a cooler clime.
From those vehicles disgorged four men led by local electrician Reg Harris , his young assistant, surname Mott, master carpenter Sidney Kinsman, and another trademan, Mr Townsend. They ordered Miss Pink outside and in five hours converted part of the hut into an airconditioned room 13ft long by 10ft wide by 7ft high, lined with caneite, into what she dubbed The Harris- Kinsman Iceberg, an iceberg being her idea of heaven.
It came complete with a small picnic electric cooler box , a bright fluorescent light and an entry door for the portiere. The first time she saw the room she said it looked like a beauty parlour. Once the airconditioning was turned on she felt a renewed person. Fiercely independent , she “fought " for a month to at least pay for 11 sheets of caneite and insisted the air conditioner was only on loan. The fluoro light was replaced with a globe because she found it too bright and the cooler box was returned as well .
She wrote that she would always remember Australia Day 1964 because of the two “Dinkum Aussies “ who came to the relief of a third generation Tasmanian “Aussie” when she was at the end of her tether.
About 10 years later , she wrote to Reg Harris saying she was going to return the air conditioner and would replace it with one of her own “ I am more that grateful for the loan of it but feel we all change as we grow older and I feel sure your main interests now are TOURISM and ROTARIANISM . I have no interest in either so, with grateful remembrances – will say farewell .”
The late Reg Harris told this writer he firmly believed Miss Pink brought on her death in 1975 by going into the beauty parlour and turning on the airconditioner during cold weather.
The heat inside the hut exhausted Miss Pink both mentally and physically ; she had been advised by a doctor to go south to a cooler clime.
From those vehicles disgorged four men led by local electrician Reg Harris , his young assistant, surname Mott, master carpenter Sidney Kinsman, and another trademan, Mr Townsend. They ordered Miss Pink outside and in five hours converted part of the hut into an airconditioned room 13ft long by 10ft wide by 7ft high, lined with caneite, into what she dubbed The Harris- Kinsman Iceberg, an iceberg being her idea of heaven.
It came complete with a small picnic electric cooler box , a bright fluorescent light and an entry door for the portiere. The first time she saw the room she said it looked like a beauty parlour. Once the airconditioning was turned on she felt a renewed person. Fiercely independent , she “fought " for a month to at least pay for 11 sheets of caneite and insisted the air conditioner was only on loan. The fluoro light was replaced with a globe because she found it too bright and the cooler box was returned as well .
She wrote that she would always remember Australia Day 1964 because of the two “Dinkum Aussies “ who came to the relief of a third generation Tasmanian “Aussie” when she was at the end of her tether.
About 10 years later , she wrote to Reg Harris saying she was going to return the air conditioner and would replace it with one of her own “ I am more that grateful for the loan of it but feel we all change as we grow older and I feel sure your main interests now are TOURISM and ROTARIANISM . I have no interest in either so, with grateful remembrances – will say farewell .”
The late Reg Harris told this writer he firmly believed Miss Pink brought on her death in 1975 by going into the beauty parlour and turning on the airconditioner during cold weather.
