Former Territory politician Roger Steele is writing his memoirs. As a young boy, Roger lobbed in Darwin from Tasmania in l948 with his father who was in the army. After decades working as a cow puncher and stock inspector , Steele sold insurance and got into politics. As Member for Elsey and Ludmilla he held several ministerial posts. With his love of the bush, its ballads and its many characters , some salt of the earth, one in particular an evil old bugger, it should be a great read.
It is to be hoped he includes colourful and humorous insights into Territory politics . Alas, much of what has been written about Territory politics has been dreary, dull and academic , which is unfortunate because there is a rich lode to be mined.
If Roger is looking for graphics for his book, Little Darwin might be able to dig out a scurrilous poster from our mouldy files which sported pics of our then political leaders urging voters to get rid of certain PESTS in the Territory , identified as Perron, Everingham , Steele and Tuxworth , the first letter of each conveniently spelling PEST . It is understood the p erson responsible for the poster , stuck up all over Darwin, later rushed about and pulled them down after receipt of legal advice. It was a fishy situation in more ways than one and could be the subject of a whole chapter in the book .
Incidently, when we Googled Roger Steele up came a person with more than 600,000 listings . It was , however, for a Kiwi book publisher of the same name. If the Territory's Roger Steele sells as many copies of his book as the publisher has listings, he'll be able to buy Elsey Station with the royalties.
