The lively online newspaper, Magnetic Times, has posted an exclusive story detailing the free and easy life the mother of Julian Assange , of Wikileaks fame, led on Magnetic Island. Island historian , Zanita Davies , discovered the island link in the Magnetic Island History and Craft Centre’s “Can We Help You ” visitors’ book. What follows is an extract from the Magnetic Times website.
From September 28, 2009, Ms Assange writes: My name is Assange. I have lived on the Island three times. 1971 as a single mum with a young baby. I rented an island cottage for $12 per week in Picnic Bay. It is still here. It had a green concrete floor and floor to ceiling wooden louvres and a central “cyclone” pole bolted into the floor. It survived Althea. I lived in a bikini, “going native” with my baby and other mums on the island. I used to catch a white cowie shell I found
(sic) .
From September 28, 2009, Ms Assange writes: My name is Assange. I have lived on the Island three times. 1971 as a single mum with a young baby. I rented an island cottage for $12 per week in Picnic Bay. It is still here. It had a green concrete floor and floor to ceiling wooden louvres and a central “cyclone” pole bolted into the floor. It survived Althea. I lived in a bikini, “going native” with my baby and other mums on the island. I used to catch a white cowie shell I found
(sic) .
Old Pat, an elderly gentleman who leased Nobby's Headland for $500 for 10 years and lived in a broken down stone house would have us up for tea once a week. He was a chef before retiring and always wore a safari jacket. Great for filling up on the mainland of all manner of delicious goodies for us.
Back again in 1976 with new husband. Lived in Horseshoe Bay on an old abandoned pineapple farm. Slashed way to front door with machete. Shot a taipan in the water tank and on son’s bed. Had to suspend fruit from ceiling to protect from possums.Back again in 1982 with another little child. Lived in a flat on esplanade in Picnic Bay.
Back again as a grandmother with long term boyfriend - still in love with island - only staying 2 weeks.
Back again as a grandmother with long term boyfriend - still in love with island - only staying 2 weeks.
Back again? The article in the New Yorker, titled, No Secrets, by Raffi Khatchadourian, includes the following paragraph with Julian Assange referring to his times on Magnetic. Assange was born in 1971, in the city of Townsville, on Australia’s northeastern coast, but it is probably more accurate to say that he was born into a blur of domestic locomotion. Shortly after his first birthday, his mother—I will call her Claire—married a theatre director, and the two collaborated on small productions. They moved often, living near Byron Bay, a beachfront community in New South Wales, and on Magnetic Island, a tiny pile of rock that Captain Cook believed had magnetic properties that distorted his compass readings. They were tough-minded nonconformists. (At seventeen, Claire had burned her schoolbooks and left home on a motorcycle.)
Their house on Magnetic Island burned to the ground, and rifle cartridges that Claire had kept for shooting snakes exploded like fireworks. “Most of this period of my childhood was pretty Tom Sawyer,” Assange told me. “I had my own horse. I built my own raft. I went fishing. I was going down mine shafts and tunnels.”
FOOTNOTE: Little Darwin was impressed by the fact that Ms Davies and her husband, Gary, a collector of British humorous postcards , have a footscraper bought at the fabulous auction of contents at Anlaby , the old South Australian Dutton dynasty homestead last in the family possession of the late author , Professor Geoffrey Dutton .
