By Peter Simon
It was a busy, exciting centre, the staff sworn to secrecy , with encoded messages flying backwards and forwards to the islands and London . She developed the skill to rapidly take down morse code , which enabled the decoding of a romantic message on an old postcard more than 60 years later.
Named Effie Scott , she explained it was the RAAF way to call everyone by their surname , so she became Scottie , which stuck for the rest of her life .
After the war , she returned to the tame routine back home with her parents in Adelaide . However , she was sent to Alice Springs to help her sister who was expecting a baby. It opened up a new and exciting chapter in life's journey, which included working on the Centralian Advocate newspaper , owned by colourful Charles " Pop" Chapman , who had made a fortune at The Granites goldfield in the l930s and lived in a house called The Pearly Gates , with his own swimming pool . At times he would answer the telephone, say it was The Pearly Gates , Saint Peter speaking .
During his goldmining days he transported valuable amounts of gold in jam tins ; a driller , he strongly believed oil would be found in Australia .
During his goldmining days he transported valuable amounts of gold in jam tins ; a driller , he strongly believed oil would be found in Australia .
 |
Recent view of Centralian Advocate, another pearl in the Murdoch empire .
|
At the age of 18, her eventual husband , Les Penhall , also had a dramatic change in his career-he moved from Adelaide to Darwin in late 1941 with the Native Affairs Branch. On Boxing Day he and fellow NAB officer Bill Harney , later an author and first keeper of Ayers Rock , Uluru , travelled by canoe to an Aboriginal settlement across the harbour . Not long after , February 19, he witnessed the Japanese attack on Darwin. From cover , bullets zipping about him , huge explosions heard , he watched as the USS Peary sank, still firing .
On instructions from police, Penhall helped load Department of Works files on a truck and travelled with it to Alice Springs . There he drew up a list of names of crewmembers from ships sunk in Darwin , many of them Chinese and Malays , who wore name tags , evacuated south in convoys .
On instructions from police, Penhall helped load Department of Works files on a truck and travelled with it to Alice Springs . There he drew up a list of names of crewmembers from ships sunk in Darwin , many of them Chinese and Malays , who wore name tags , evacuated south in convoys .
During his time in Alice , Les stayed in the Stuart Arms Hotel , where General Douglas MacArthur , his wife and son , who had fled the Philippines , came . The boy , about four, had " made a nuisance of himself " by riding about the hotel on a three-wheeler bike , running into people's legs and sideboards.
He then saw service on Horn Island in the Torres Strait as a signaller in the 74th Mobile Anti-Aircraft Searchlight Battery. The island was the furtherest north operational airfield , said to have been the second most bombed place after Darwin . After the war, still not demobbed , Les was flown back to Alice Springs and became a Patrol Officer and Protector of Aborigines . In 1947, he was stationed at the new Yuendumu Aboriginal settlement .
While Les and Scottie were on their honeymoon a driller struck water near Yuendumu and the supply became known as Penhall's Bore . Scottie thought it wonderful the Penhall name , on pastoral maps , had been immortalised by a bore .
While Les and Scottie were on their honeymoon a driller struck water near Yuendumu and the supply became known as Penhall's Bore . Scottie thought it wonderful the Penhall name , on pastoral maps , had been immortalised by a bore .
Les ,on the left , took part in the last police camel patrol in Central Australia searching for an Aboriginal man who fled after murdering a woman .The others in the party were Constables Tony Kelly and A. J. Millgate.
I had contact with Les from 1958 to the early l960s when I worked for the Northern Territory News in Darwin . In 2010 , Scottie and Les provided me with details of their lives for an article I wrote for the Northern Territory Police Museum and Historical Society newsletter, Citation . On learning of Scottie's skill at morse code, she able to take down 25 words a minute,Les less proficient , I dragged out a Welsh topographical post card I had collected on which there was a message in dots and dashes addressed to Dear Selma , from amorous Jack , who, it was revealed , told her she could expect six extra kisses from him . Kisses galore were displayed at the top of the Tuck's post card.
UPCOMING : The Penhall papers .
