The publication of this book has revealed an amazing story about an extraordinary Australian family , including three children , worked as spies for ASIO , who took the Russian defector Vladimir Petrov and wife Evdokia on holiday in Queensland during the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games to protect them from possible assassination or abduction by the KGB .
By Peter Simon
Just the mention of the Petrovs in an ABC interview was enough to raise my interest as I knew the burly police officer who at Darwin Airport put a stranglehold on a Russian guard , thought to be going for a gun, trying to force distressed Mrs Petrov out of the country.
In addition, I had written about the dramatic Darwin Airport event and arranged for an eyewitness account of the saga to be published in the Northern Territory Police Museum and Historical Society's journal, Citation , by the late New Zealand journalist and author , Ross Annabell .
My interest in the Petrov case began in Sydney when I was a copyboy for The Sun newspaper in the l950s.
During that time Vladimir Petrov, Third Secretary at the Russian Embassy, Canberra , defected in April 1954.
In the sensational media coverage and the Royal Commission into Espionage it was revealed that Petrov had been wined and dined by ASIO contacts , including Dr Michael Bialoguski, at the Polish restaurant , Adria , in Kings Cross ,Sydney .
Dr Bialoguski (l917-1984) was a Polish-Austrian medical practitioner and intelligence agent. A trained musician, he had been invited to perform on stage in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra by Sir Eugene Goossens .
In Gavin Souter's book Company of Heralds, A Century and a half of Australian Publishing , the history of the nation's oldest and best known newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald , there is a strange entry in connection with Dr Bialoguski .
It seems that the SMH's news editor, Harry Kippax, was visited one night by Bialoguski in l953 , He had met Bialoguski at a party and they had talked at length about Russia .
On the second meeting , Souter wrote, Bialoguski revealed he had been working for ASIO and that through his efforts a Soviet MVD agent in Canberra was on the brink of defection .
Bialoguski later said he had temporarily ceased operations for ASIO because he was unhappy about payment . Furthermore, he was prepared to supply information about Soviet activities in Australia .
It was suggested he should write some articles for the Herald . In a typographical error, the book said that on April 13, l964 (sic), Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced the defection of Vladimir Petrov.
For a time at The Sun, taken over by the Herald, I was a copyboy in the Features Bureau. I sat in a room and answered to a buzzer. My important duty was to make sure that I filled the head man's drinking water bottle first thing in the morning ,otherwise I was buzzed, he pointed at the carafe , and frowned at me.
I also picked up overseas syndicated material from downtown offices for distribution to various publications .
From time to time ,the pleasant singer and actress June Bronhill, whose early career had included taking out prizes in The Sun Aria contest , dropped in to use a desk .
Part of the Features Bureau included a section which syndicated stories and photographs , which it did during the Petrov Affair .
Into the syndication section came none other than debonair, flamboyant Dr Bialoguski , who flirted with the female staff , one of whom became a lawyer .
I'm sure he managed to smile and say hello to the well groomed Sun Social girls nearby as he walked by . There was one very attractive redhead in Social who caught my eye . Even though I thought I was a cool cat with Ivy League button down shirts , string ties , even a pair of blue suede shoes , a jazzy jacket , I did have slight acne and the women in the office avoided me-unlike James Bond - after I had time off with mumps .
Disease free, I flew to Darwin in 1958 ,to work as a reporter on the Northern Territory News ,under crusading editor Jim Bowditch , the subject of ASIO and Special Branch files .The Darwin Airport confrontation with the Russians and the police came up now and again . And of course Douglas Lockwood , the veteran Melbourne Herald journalist , who had covered the Petrov airport story , was stationed there.
One day, editor Big Jim Bowditch instructed me to go with Doug Lockwood to the airport on a special assignment : run a tape measure over the British bombshell, Sabrina, her body insured for a vast sum, and be photographed in the act. Not knowing I had once suffered from mumps , she would not recoil at the stunt.
The one who put the stranglehold on the Russian , the late Greg Ryall , a genial joker, had a police baton hanging on the wall of his office . I suggested he had used it to massage the noggins of miscreants in the past . Flexing his large forearms , like Popeye the Sailorman after downing dynamic spinach , he assured me that in his younger days he did not need a baton to help him subdue troublemakers
Another officer who had been on duty at the airport the dramatic day of the Petrovs was Police Prosecutor Alan "Fangs " Metcalfe , so nicknamed because of his dental front , with whom I had much contact covering the courts .
