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An escapee from an Indonesian prison who had been serving time for drug smuggling , pilot Donald Tait was forced down by an RAAF Hercules plane near Katherine , NT , with more than $3million worth of drugs aboard in 1978. Bowditch became involved in the aftermath in a most unusual way.
As
previously stated, journalist Gene Janes had written numerous war novels.
One of these had been about
the night Australian Z Force landed . He was
surprised to learn that it had been made into a film , the rights to
the book having been bought
from the Horwitz Group Books
Pty Ltd, of Sydney, by John
McCallum Productions . McCallum was the husband of
the stage performer Googie Withers . Janes had received a letter and an ex gratia payment for $200 from the
publisher. He returned the cheque and claimed copyright. An official of the Australian Writers’ Guild labelled the $200
not only insulting but immoral, $10,000 being the average for film rights.
Bowditch and other journalists wrote about the situation and
legal representations were made .
The outcome was a settlement of $10,000, half going to legal fees. The joy over the win was short lived.
Janes became involved in an
altercation with a Greek neighbour who was making a noise panel beating a
car while Gene was cutting up meat for a Chinese dish . The Greek was stabbed
and Janes was sent to prison .
Bowditch visited Janes during his
imprisonment .
The Northern Territory
News ran a number of stories claiming there were deficiencies in the prison facilities and services. Janes , in prison at the same time as Tait- also revealed as a bigamist and fraudster who had been in Canada and the US- suggested he write his life
story. It
was revealed in the Northern Territory Legislative
Assembly that stories about
Tait had been smuggled out of
prison, one inside a book . Bowditch , it was claimed , had helped smuggled
out these reports .[It is not known if any of these reports had been wrapped about a part of the Bowditch anatomy,as it had been in the form of a letter he brought out from prison on a previous occasion which was delivered to a woman .]
The
close relationship between Bowditch and Janes
continued. For
a time
the two journalists operated out of the Janes’ residence. A considerable
amount of liquor was consumed
and production of the business newsletter became sporadic.
Subscribers received a number of bogus
excuses for non production of
the newsletter - one being a death in the
family. Once, while the
newsletter was being compiled at the
The Star newspaper office, where it was printed ,
Bowditch took to an unfortunate
restaurant man who used to deliver, gratis ,
tasty tucker to the
establishment on Friday afternoons. In the fracas petitions were knocked over . Customers
at the counter were shocked to see the place seemingly disintegrate .
One
day Gene’s wife came home to find Bowditch
standing over her husband, who
had recently had an eye operation, saying he could easily kill him . Mrs Janes
tried to ease the situation by making a cup of coffee and handing around a plate
of tarts. After asking if she believed in God or the Queen ,
Bowditch sent the tarts flying
when she replied in the
affirmative .
She was eventually
able to get Bowditch to go home
. Later on, Jim phoned and asked if
Gene was alright as he feared
that he had hurt him . Despite being
told that he had not touched her
husband, Bowditch rang back several more
times asking about Gene’s well being . Exasperated , she took the phone off the hook. Police then arrived at the front door and said
they had been sent by Mr Bowditch to
make sure that her husband was alright .
Then Jim’s daughter, Ngaire,
arrived saying she had been sent by her father because he feared he
had done something terrible to
Gene. Bowditch clearly needed help but kept on going . NEXT: Hard to believe development.
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