Watch out , I was alerted last year , for a woman who approaches people and asks them to buy a bottle of methylated spirits from a certain shop which will not serve her, the inference being she drank the contents . The drinking of methylated spirits used to be prevalent in the Northern Territory when I covered Darwin courts more than 50 years ago .
By Peter Simon
In the back of the Darwin Magistrate's Court was a large old iron safe upon which gathering dust was an array of confiscated grog, including White Lady , a mixture of methylated spirits and powdered milk , the additive said to take the bite out of the drink , making it easier to down.
During the inquest into the death of Aborigine Nym Berry , shockingly crushed and mutilated when run over by a train near Berrimah , it was said White Lady had been consumed by a group near the railway line .
Berry's body had been spotted stretched out between the rails by the driver before the train ran over him , which raised the suspicion that he had been deliberately placed there. Wood vendor William Allcorn , who employed Berry , told Coroner Dodds, SM, "most natives mix Sunshine milk " with methylated spirits. He did not think Berry would go to sleep between the railway lines even if drunk .
Three Aboriginal witnesses said they had all been drinking White Lady , one denying he had hit Berry with his fist, rock or stone . Coroner Dodds told Police Prosecutor Alan Metcalfe it was obvious they were not getting the truth about the drinking session and how Berry came to be on the railway line .
One day a woman being led away to spend time in Fannie Bay Gaol grabbed a bottle containing White Lady and rum from the safe and had a quick swig. As she struggled with a constable, she said she needed a drink of water . White Lady drinkers had a distinctive, pungent smell about them, seemed to lick their lips a lot , were red eyed .
Murders which arose out of " grog " sessions included one in which a woman was stabbed in the stomach during a drunken orgy at a notorious Coconut Grove location , wild parties known to have gone on there over years , placed in a wheelbarrow , trundled up to a tree and placed on the ground , where she was found near death , saturated with blood .
Murders which arose out of " grog " sessions included one in which a woman was stabbed in the stomach during a drunken orgy at a notorious Coconut Grove location , wild parties known to have gone on there over years , placed in a wheelbarrow , trundled up to a tree and placed on the ground , where she was found near death , saturated with blood .
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While flying to Darwin last month I read a 1970 reprint of Judith Wright's poems in the Australian Poets series , published by Angus and Robertson .
Apart from numerous poems about birds ,18 in a quick count , one was unexpected ,entitled METHO DRINKER- the apparent setting a southern city park in winter , not the tropics , the male imbiber obviously a victim of White Lady, she described thus:
...His white and burning girl , his woman of fire , creeps to his heart and sets a fire there to melt away the flesh that hides the bone, to eat the nerve that tethers him in Time .
