A wide range of interesting material and information continues to surface during the ongoing effort to sort out the files and books of Darwin agronomist and activist Robert Wesley-Smith.
As a result , his steady stream of welcome emails to this blog cover many subjects from the East Timor fight for freedom , newspaper clippings about the Lindy Chamberlain case , old letters to the editor , current Territory issues and the ongoing plight of Julian Assange . Books discovered during the tidy up also get mentioned from time to time.
A recent email contained an excerpt from an article by Bernie Brian, a history student, in the Darwin University paper , probably late l990s, dealing with Territory newspapers.
It covered the start of the Northern Territory News and its great editor , the late Jim Bowditch :
In 1950 a plan was put in place to set up a rival newspaper to the Northern Standard , described as a communist publication. The reason was the publishers , the North Australian Workers' Union , was led by members of the Communist Party . A Canberra based publishing company was approached and told by the local (NT) Administrator that it ' would be in the best interest of Australia ' if a rival paper to the Standard was established in the Territory .
The NT News came into existence in l952. In the l960s it was sold to the Murdoch Corp and we have today the paper we all love to hate . However, it was not always as it is today .
Till l973, the News editor , Jim Bowditch , revived the best traditions of the Territory press and according to Douglas Lockwood , the News became a 'people's paper '.
Bowditch championed many causes such as Aboriginal citizenship , the rights of indentured pearlers, ,refugees from the Portuguese dictatorship and the Gurindji land rights struggle .
He found out later in life that ASIO had kept a file on his activities ever since he chaired a peace meeting in Alice Springs in the early l950s.
