FISHY RESPONSE TO DARWIN FIND INVOLVES ROLF HARRIS AND A PIXIE

As the result of the Little Darwin post about ABC announcer, peace campaigner, and social historian , the late John Clements ,who produced a long play record ONCE AROUND THE SUN, being West Australian children reciting their own poetry, circa 1970, we received a surprising email from Perth.

The sender , a talented lady who may well write a book about her experiences in Darwin, with fascinating observations about wretched members of the media , said she had been brought up in Bayswater, a suburb next to Bassendean, where Clements had lived on a farm with his family. Until reading Little Darwin, she had never heard of Clements , and she doubted if anybody living in Bassendean today knew about the admirable fellow.

However, she added “everybody” knew entertainer Rolf Harris came from Bassendean .When she was a child , being driven past the Harris house , they would all chant that Rolf Harris lived there. In an unsolicited testimonial, our correspondent said the" best fish and chips shop in the world "–called THE OLD TROUT – is in Bassendean .

With the expert services of Darwin’s ProVideo , Little Darwin had the ONCE AROUND THE SUN LP converted to a disk so that we could listen to the poetry composed and spoken by Australian children nearly 50 years ago. What we heard was indicative of a more innocent time , despite mention of Hitler’s dream (a nightmare ) , and a boy predicted that with shows like Homicide it seemed TV was here to stay, perhaps indicating that the poetry may have been written in the late 1960s. The record , discovered in the Nightcliff Uniting Church Op Shop, made the claim that it was the world’s first recording of poetry written by young people and spoken by secondary and primary students.

NOTE: Rolf's talented Welsh aunt,Rhona Olive Harris, daughter of the chairman of the Royal Arts Society of Cardiff , disliked her first name and on the boat coming over to Australia was called "the Welsh pixie,"so she adopted Pixie. Then a printer’s error in the Sydney Morning Herald gave her name not as Pixie O. Harris , but Pixie O’Harris , and it was maintained . Pixie had a prolific output as an artist, illustrating newspapers, magazines and books, bookplates and sheet music covers. Another outlet was painting children’s hospital wards with fairy tale murals. In 1977 O’Harris was made patron of Sydney’s Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children . She also wrote and illustrated poetry and song books for children.

Not thought to be the work of Pixie O'Harris because she had moved to Sydney in the l920s,these are photos of Ward V for children at Perth Hospital,decorated for Christmas 1934.The ward was festooned with many cobwebs,butterflies,moths and insects. For the Walk into my Parlour, said the Spider to the Fly, there was a very large spider, left,which probably gave the kids nightmares, and Miss Muffet, apparently represented as a nurse, was sitting on her elaborate tuffet. The other snap features the old woman who lived in a shoe with cat silhouettes . These photographs are from the albums of "The Most Bomb Chased Australian Nurse of WW11," Marjorie Congreve,who worked at the hospital. The albums were discovered in an Adelaide antique shop by Peter Simon and will be the subject of further Little Darwin posts.