In a bid to prevent the spread to members of family and friends of a nasty flu which has surfaced in the Townsville region, it was decided to retreat into the book - lined den , turning it into a quarantine station .
By Peter Simon
A very low one at that because a basic folding bed , stored in a corner, was opened up . It required the lifting and restacking of plastic archival bins , filled with more treasures than in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings , collected over many decades to make room for the bed . A large hairdresser's chair , bought at a garage sale several years ago , also had to be dragged about.
The bins had been filled with much of the contents of a bank of filing cabinets some years ago when it was thought that because of a serious operation I had, we should pack up and move to the mainland .
We did not move , the binned contents , and the rest of the motley treasures left to moulder, gather dust .
The first time I settled down on the uncomfortable bed and looked up at the tomb walls ,I felt a touch of mal de mer , when I noticed that two nautical pictures ,one of a sailing ship on a rough trip to Australia , were crooked .
Fading stickers on those cabinets indicated they had once contained a weird range of material covering New Zealand , the Northern Territory , crocodiles, ballet , early motorbikes and cars , sheet music , pantomimes , first day covers , even Hitler.
Being so low to the ground, on the bed , the titles on the miscellaneous books on the bottom shelf of the nearest large bookcase, topped by a row of old bottles dug up at Pine Creek and Brock's Creek, in the Northern Territory , could be read , deciphered .
The first book pulled out and rapidly examined was the biography of Australian playwright David Williamson (The Removalists , Don's Party, The Club,et al ) by Brian Kiernan . My old journalist and political mate , Pete Steedman , had bought Williamson's residence , north of Melbourne, at Hurstbridge, a mud brick structure , on 9 1/2 acres .
Steedman is decribed in fhe book as having been one of the New Left radicals at Monash University , later a federal Labor parliamentarian , the Member for Casey , his exciing life covered in great detail in Little Darwin over the years .
The book was placed on the bed next to me ....Soon after , my wife's phone rang and she appeared at the sliding door of the den / tip and announced it was Pete Steedman for me ! In his distinctive voice, he announced he was ringing from a Melbourne hospital , where he was being treated for a a badly infected arm ,involving his lymph glands ,following the removal of a growth in an earlier operation .
I pointed out the coincidence that I had just read about him in the Williamson biography and the book was next to my gammy leg .
Pete said he was sharing " a cell " with a woman who in conversation revealed she had been in Darwin at the time of Cyclone Tracy . It just so happens that Steedman , who went to Darwin after the cyclone to provide news for the many people evacuated throughout the nation , and drew up a report on the handling of the disaster , how to deal with future ones.
During Pete's recent visits to hospital he took along with him a copy of my book , Big Jim , about the great crusading editor, James Frederick Bowditch , and arranged for a copy of the book to be sent to his cell mate .
In the meantime, from the uncomfortable bed in the den , which will probably lead to painful haemorrhoids , several dusty drawers were opened and out popped Pete Steedman yet again !!!!!!!!
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This was in the form of a mailing tube for rolled up items sent to me by Steedman in Melbourne through parcel post years ago . Out of it slipped a huge poster of Fabula , the curvy Canberra secretary , drawn by Gerald Carr, who wielded a whip , in the Broadside magazine edited by Steedman in 1969. If you took out a Broadside subscription you received the large Fabula poster . That's not the above poster, it's her on a Broadside cover .
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Withour a doubt , the other poster included hairy , hippy Steedman , in l971, in London, posing with a woman carrying an automatic firearm and a young boy on the front cover of a London mock version of the Californian counter culture magazine ,Berkeley Barb , which looked to change the world , supporting civil rights , anti-war and backing numerous counterculture movements.
The woman on the cover was Nigerian model Mina Bird , the boy, Dante Hughes, son of art critic and author, Robert Hughes.
One of the sellers of Berkeley Barb , in the San Francisco finance district, was artist Bucklee Bell , of Underground Comix fame, longtime capaigner with strong views on politics, war, the environment . One of his paintings graces the LIttle Darwin collection.
He set up a business in Chiang Mai , Thailand , dealing in beads, textiles, paintings and books .
Steedman had attracted the attention of Berkeley Barb when he was editor of two Melbourne university newspapers, opposed to the Vietnam War , conscription , censorship . It had even been suggested he should go to America and address students, but he was confidentially informed by a member of the United States Information Service, over a beer , in Australia , that there was no way he would be allowed into the country .
Other unearthed , forgotten treasure's from King Tut's Tomb will be run in coming weeks if the quarantine station is not napalmed to prevent the North from being overrun by the dreaded lurgy.
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