The Darwin-based managing director and shareholder in the Northern Territory News , freelance journalist Bob Freeden, drove to Alice Springs in a black Riley car during May l952 and spoke to Jim Bowditch, there being mention of him and the vehicle in a brief paragraph in the Centralian Advocate . The two became close friends and Freeden would play a key part in the appointment of Bowditch as editor of the NT News.
A tall man , Freeden , pictured above at the entrance of the Rum Jungle uranium mine , had been born in Germany , his family having fled from Nazi persecution of Jews just before the outbreak of the war. The family settled in Western Australia and Bob studied geology before taking a job with MacRobertson-Miller Airlines. In his twenties, he was made Darwin manager of MMA .
Bush pilots often returned from the outback with offbeat stories . Freeden began to send these stories to newspapers in the south . Within a short time he was stringing for many newspapers outside the Herald and Weekly Times group represented in Darwin by Douglas Lockwood. Eventually Freeden resigned from MMA to concentrate on journalism and became involved with Eric White and Don Whitington in the News venture.
Freeden quickly realised that southern newspapers had a voracious appetite for exotic stories from Darwin and the Northern Territory, so he gave them what they wanted. This involved beating up some stories , even inventing them. Reports about crocodiles , buffaloes and kangaroos in the main street of Darwin were lapped up by the newspapers. Doug Lockwood became livid when asked by his paper to provide matching stories for Freeden’s creative pieces. One of Freeden’s beat ups had a crocodile marauding through Cashman’s store in Darwin’s main street. Lockwood would indignantly state that a story was false , and his southern head office would be disappointed . However, when Lockwood was absent from Darwin, Freeden sometimes covered for him and sent stories down south. Freeden had an accent and often told Bowditch over a glass of beer , “ There is no noows (news ) in the twoof ( truth) .”
A WILD CROCODILE HUNT
A true experience with a crocodile filled Freeden with fear. While doing a trip on the patrol vessel Kuru , Freeden went to Maningreda in Arnhem Land . There he asked Native Affairs officer Jack Doolan, later Member for Victoria River in the NT Legislative Assembly , to take him out on a night croc shooting trip . Doolan agreed and thought he would put on a bit of a show for Freeden .
In a canoe with little freeboard and paddled by an old Aborigine , Charlie Mungan , they ventured into the mangroves. Seeing what he thought was a small crocodile because its eyes were close together, Doolan waited until they were alongside before he fired a shot. However, it turned out to be a much larger crocodile with small beady eyes , and it went berserk . Charlie tried to kill the crocodile with wild swings from an axe and in the process nearly scalped the other two passengers . The canoe tipped and dipped, Freeden hung on grimly . Finally, Charlie was able to kill the croc with a blow between the eyes. Freeden was petrified and insisted on getting out of the canoe and walked back to the camp through the mangroves, arriving there coated in mud and badly scratched.
While the new NT News was feeling its way, the Sydney directors were already planning another newspaper in the Queensland mining town of Mt Isa. Don Whitington was not so keen about starting another paper , but Eric White had spoken to Mt Isa Mines Limited’s chairman, George Fisher , and received encouragement from him for the project. An adventurous New Zealand journalist and author , Ross Annabell , then became involved in the Mount Isa plans , and would subsequently have many dealings with Bowditch . NEXT : Bowditch in dramatic court case.
