The Green Room in the distinctive Hotel Darwin, photographed above about 1958 , regarded as Australia's answer to Singapore's famous Raffles Hotel , demolished in l999, was the subject of a trip down memory lane on ABC radio recently .
By Peter Simon
Not only did I frequent the popular Green Room lounge , interviewing an extensive number of interesting people in the l950-60s in my capacity as a reporter on the Northern Territory News , but I also turned part of it blood red one jolly , well lubricated Christmas. The blood came from my nose after I had been biffed . In the ruckus,I threw a high ranking gendarme over my shoulder. Stuck away in the files is a Kodachrome of me with a swollen nose, black eye . Nuff said .
From time to time , I ventured into the Green Room , with its bamboo furniture and Pickled Parrot Bar , getting the latest information on the activities of the likeable American entrepreneur , Gus Trippe , who made live cattle shipments to the Philippines and Hong Kong . He also brought in building materials including cement as back loading .
At the hotel he introduced me to a "Mr Wong from Hong Kong " who had cattle interests in the Territory .
With great humour, the late and great editor of the NT News, Jim Bowditch, informed me how Greek millionaire Mick Paspalis , who owned the hotel , had cried on his shoulder about a deal with Trippe involving the import of building material. Somehow, it had gone wrong , and Paspalis had lost money , a rare occurrence for a man thought to have the midas touch .
Paspalis, relaying the sorry saga to Bowditch outside the hotel, complained that Trippe was inside the Green Room entertaining women with Mick's lost investment . Throwing in a chuckle, Bowditch added it was probably the first time Paspalis lost a buck .
During the ABC reminisce, a caller said a band called Brown Sugar had played in the Green Room , one of its musos , "Gorgeous " Georgie Hunter . This was news to me ; I knew George, with a mop of curly black hair , hence his nickname , had played the drums at the Parap Hotel . Hooker for the Wallabies rugby league side, he collapsed during a torrid wet season match from heat exhaustion and at the hospital it was said he presented like a person brought in from a desert so dehydrated was he . George also lost his distinctive locks under unusual circumstances .
The latest I heard of George was that he was fully hydrated , sporting hair , driving about Perth in a Rolls Royce.
The latest I heard of George was that he was fully hydrated , sporting hair , driving about Perth in a Rolls Royce.
One day, on the news beat,I strolled into the Green Room and noticed two men convulsing at the bar, nearly falling off their stools . From Melbourne , one in the hotel trade, if I remember correctly , they had returned from the Nourlangie Safari Camp run by "White Hunter" Alan Stewart .
They told me of the hilarious events which took place at the camp , which they said friends in Melbourne would probably not believe , including what happened to a near-sighted American big game hunter with special high powered rifles and a large house back home with an extensive trophy room , photographs of which he liked displaying.
Using a primitive dunny at the camp, "The Yank " pulled the chain on the overhead cistern and it did not work, no H2O. He kept on yanking the chain , without success. The White Hunter quickly ordered an Aborigine to grab a bucket of water , put a ladder up against the open-topped dunny , and fill the cistern . This was done promptly, some of the bucket content poured on top of the American , who emerged with water streaming down his face and glasses.
On a dark night , the American , perhaps making a run for the leaking dunny , became "nearly strangled" by a clothesline rope.
Setting out in a battered truck to do some buffalo shooting , they had not gone far when the White Hunter stopped the vehicle , announced he had forgotten to bring the tucker along . An Aborigine was ordered to run back longa camp and get the food . While the shooting party sat in the shade , the poor Aborigine , Nym?, hotfooted it back to base, then returned with a grotty looking sugarbag with a hunk of unappetising meat and damper inside .
All aboard . A bit further along , there was another stop. Left behind had also been the sharp knife/knives needed to butcher a buff . Nym trotted off back longa camp once more to get the cutlery . Not sure if Nym and other Aboriginals in the camp wore the Stewart tartan .
During the Northern Territory uranium boom many key players stayed at the Hotel Darwin and a rich mine was named after one of its barmaids,Lys Petou, who came to Australia as a hostess on an American airline. Born in Greece, educated in France , she had taken part in the Miss Australia contest and been crocodile shooting in North Queensland .
One of those gripped by the Territory uranium fever was none other than Charles Moses , head of the ABC , in a syndicate headed by author Frank Clune .(Mentioned previously in this blog in connection with New Zealand journalist and author, the late Ross Annabell, who wrote The Uranium Hunters and covered the Petrov Spy Affair at Darwin Airport).
I covered a Darwin court case in which a Czechoslovakian geologist and uranium expert who had been involved with Germans keen to crack the atom during WWll , later the Russians , had become mentally unbalanced , behaving bizarrely down the track , blocking off a road with a wall and jumping naked on the bonnet of a car . He also went wild in the Hotel Darwin .
For a short time , a one-eyed conman , who posed as the pilot of a new airline service from Darwin to Portuguese Timor, resided in the hotel until arrested and charged with obtaining money under false pretences .
Known as the Duchess of Darwin , the above song was composed by Cathy Miller after the building, said to have concrete cancer , was controversially demolished , despite strong protests and court action , to make way for a new development. Thus the fine building which survived the Japanese bombing and Cyclone Tracy , along with its Green Room, disappeared.
Retained was a Mitchell Street public bar and associated early airconditioned section , known as the Hot and Cold Bar in which the Darwin Press Club was formed . At the back of the aerated bar was a giant Paul Rigby mural that depicted a Pommie businessman in suit and bowler hat , with a young , curvaceous blonde on his arm , arriving in Darwin . During the stopover , she skis behind a stingray in a bikini , is ogled by rough looking Territorians in shorts and singlets. In the end , the apparent Sugar Daddy departed without her , boarding a plane with a carton of beer on his shoulder bearing the slogan , WING YOUR WAY WITH SFA .
