Old tape cassettes stored away in various locations and almost forgotten were pulled out as part of the cull of the century to see if they still contained haunting audible voices from the past with the help of a new made in China radio cassette recorder . The B side of the first tape looked at carried the scribbled date May 7, 1981 , with the names A. Dibley and Mrs Beinssen .
By Peter Simon
This was one made when researching the life of Australian author Xavier Herbert who wrote the nation's l938 sesquicentenary award winning novel, Capricornia , about the Northern Territory. He later wrote Soldiers' Women and the epic Poor Fellow My Country .
The cassette was inserted in the player, there was some crackling , a pause ... a man's voice was heard. It was Arthur Westrup Dibley a former prominent ABC announcer , who had been closely associated with Xavier and his wife, Sadie , well aware of the struggle to get Capricornia published through the controversial Australian literary figure , Percy Reginald "Inky" Stephensen .
Dibley , the son of the Paling's Music Store managing director , had graduated from Sydney University with a BA and once worked in Stephensen's cash strapped publishing house as an unpaid proofreader.
In the tape he described how he had been on duty at the ABC the night in 1938 when the news broke that Capricornia had been declared the winner . Shocked and delighted by the news, he had immediately sent a telegram to Sadie , in Darwin, where despondent Xavier had returned , part walking overland from Sydney, to get the book frustration out of his head , leaving the manuscript with Dibley .
At that stage , the tape faded, so the player was stopped , the cassette ejected and examined . Much to my surprise , ants galore, in two sizes , most very small , were seen coming out of the cassette . They were actually inside the cassette in large numbers as if they had nested in there.
Then followed hours of intermittent shaking , tapping and brushing the cassette , dislodging scores of ants in the process . A magnifying glass revealed ants running about inside the sealed area , a larger ant (below) was photographed nearby .
The next day , ants, not many , were shaken out. Inserted in the player, Mrs Irmild Beinssen was heard describing how her adventurous husband, Ekkhard , a prominent member of Sydney's German community , used to spend many hours talking to Xavier until late into the night .
Born in Sydney of German parents , Ekkhard had been taken back to Germany with them in 1911 and at 17 became a soldier in the German army . After the war he became a technical adviser to King Ali of Hedjas and fled Egypt when the Arab kingdom was taken over by King Ibn Saoud.
He went back to Germany in 1925 , spent three years in New Britain and New Guinea running a schooner and gold prospecting , meeting Errol Flynn .
Back in Germany in 1930 he wrote about his experiences in New Guinea, took up gliding and became a journalist . In America, he managed shale oil concessions where he met and married his wife and visited Errol Flynn on a film set and his wife at their home . The Beinssens came to Australia and lived in Anzac Avenue , Collaroy. Beinssen became the Australian agent for a diesel driven German Junkers 86 aircraft .
He and Xavier discussed in great detail their colourful lives . Beinssen is said to have declared Herbert was too good for Australia , that he was a Dumas , a Dickens . He introduced Herbert to other leading Germans in Sydney.
Herbert was so close to the Beinssens that he left with them the typescript of a short story, The Kite Hawk, which later ran in the Australian Journal .
Ekkhard became the model for the Australian-born German, Bruno Schroeder , one of a group of " Happy Huns ", in Poor Fellow My Country.Mrs Beinssen told me her husband recognised himself in the book and roared with laughter as he read parts of it to her , saying Xavier had put "everything " in it .
Thankfully, another tape dealing with Xavier Herbert and Northern Territory characters had not been penetrated by ants, although others were seen about . It contained information about how Xavier first met Sadie on a ship going back to England after her marriage in Australia had failed .
NEXT: More Xavier Herbert related items including a letter from Rupert Murdoch and other tapes of interest .
