A surprising number of books about the great Australian cricketer Donald Bradman have turned up recently in North Queensland op shops, says our Shipping Reporter who is always cruising about looking for treasures . He has had to restrain himself from buying all of the Bradman volumes for sale .
However, he did get the desirable boxed two volume Don Bradman Albums, a 1995 Lansdowne Publishing reprint , and the 2019 ABC Books Tea and Scotch with Bradman discovering the man behind the legend, by acclaimed author , Roland Perry.
Tucked away in the Shipping Reporter's jumbled sea chest are some old Don Badman oddities , including a l931 article which appeared in the Cummins and Campbell's Monthly Magazine about the time he came to Townsville for an Easter carnival with what was termed the Visiting Southern Cricketers .
It appears this was the Alan Kippax Xl which played against North Queenland in Townsville.
Buchanan's Hotel featured the " renowned " Bradman and the Southern Cricketers , below, in its advertisment which appeared in the magazine.
The carnival involved the Palm Island Aboriginal settlement , where a big welcoming ceremony was arranged by "the natives " , including a corroboree , although it seems Bradman and some other team members did not get there , as the following extract reveals , perhaps due to the weather and a rough trip on the Hayles Barrier Reef tourist ferry , Malita.
In the l960s , this vessel took supplies from Darwin to an American oil drilling company on Portuguese Timor . Its skipper , Bert Cummings , later ran the Lion's Den Hotel , named after a tin mine , at Helensvale , near Cooktown , Queensland , also wrote about his experiences in Confessions of a Mudskipper , edited by Glenville Pike, and The Lion's Den A Pub Yarn, Angus and Robertson.
When the Malita was in Darwin , the English remittance man Donald Charles Duncan, also known as Drunken Duncan .and Dapper Donald , who was the cleaner at the Northern Territory News , went looking for Cummings on the waterfront , hoping to get a job aboard the boat . Duncan fell into the harbour , made national news after surviving drifting about all night , eventually naked , in crocodile and shark infested waters.
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| Duncan recovering in Darwin Hospital, watched by children who spotted him floating in the harbour , only wearing a sock, and raised the alarm . |
Also tucked away in the Shipping Reporter's kitbag is a pamphlet for the l936 melodrama film , The Flying Doctors, in which The Don made cameo appearances, in cricket clobber, battlng for South Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground .
The movie was said to be Australia's first feature length movie based on aviation ; lost for a decade , it was rescued from a tip . Bradman also recorded a song , Every Day is a Rainbow Day for Me.
*** On September 16, 2020 , James Cook University Library News ran an illustrated article by author , historian and writer Trish Fielding , about Cummins and Campbell Limited and its unusual magazine . The company was founded in 1899 as a partnership between John Cummins and Aylmer Campbell.
They were wine, spirits and general merchants , had their head office in Flinders Street, Townsville , which by the mid-1920s had branch offices in Cairns, Charters Towers, Innisfail, Ingham and Bowen. Agencies were located in Ayr, Hughenden Yungaburra and Cloncurry.
Filled with a wealth of interesting articles , photos and advertisements , at times running to 100 pages, the magazine first appeared in 1925 and lasted until l957.
(Bradman , Finds, Duncan.)
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