In our exclusive series- Rewind The Press!- we recalled the Northern Territory's colourful media past. In this case , it is a rerun about an unusual publication and the dynamic duo who produced it after Cyclone Tracy destroyed Darwin in l974.
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| Damaged Chinese Temple sign in shatttered city. |
Victorian Pete Steedman , a seasoned and scarred ALP warrior, known as the Black Knight , had been in the eye of countless political storms. It was an epic tempest, Australia’s worst natural disaster, Cyclone Tracy, which saw him called in to utilise his skills as a forceful journalist / editor, publisher and communicator in the production of the Darwin Newsletter .
Ball had lived in Hong Kong and there were articles, illustrated with a picture of ships swept ashore in tidal surges , about how the British colony coped with regular hurricanes and information about its building code, The byline on one article billed John Ball as "our cyclone-proof obsessed reporter".
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An historically significant bound volume containing the first eight issues-May to December 1821- of Australia’s first periodical, The Australian Magazine, at $45,000 , is one of the many items of note in the latest acquisitions from Douglas Stewart Fine Books, Melbourne.
Edited by Reverend Ralph Mansfield and printed by Robert Howe , it went out of circulation in September 22, 1822 after 14 issues.
Robert Howe (1795-1829) was a member of Australia’s most important early publishing dynasty.
His father, George Howe (1759-l821) , printed the first book in Australia in l802 , the New South Wales General Standing Order , and Australia's first newspaper , the l803 Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser .
The first issue of The Australian Magazine – printed by Robert Howe – was published on May 1. 1821, 10 days before George Howe’s death . Having already succeeded his father as Government Printer, Robert also became editor, printer and publisher of the Gazette, which he had formerly helped his father to publish .
According to the bookshop, ‘Robert Howe was dissipated as a young man and in 1819 fathered an illegitimate son. Next year, however, he experienced a spiritual awakening and, in his own words, was “wonderfully and mercifully visited by God and snatched from infamy in this world and Hell in the next”.
He joined the group of Methodists who were working in Sydney ,and their influence, particularly that of Reverend Ralph Mansfield, was apparent when he published The Australian Magazine; or, Compendium of Religious, Literary, and Miscellaneous Intelligence, the first periodical to appear in Australia.
Reverend Mansfield (1799-1880), was a recently ordained and zealous Methodist minister who had arrived in Sydney from Liverpool, England, in September 1820.
Mansfield’s editorial Preface, dated December 1, 1821, bound in at the front of the above volume stated:
‘Our design, from the first, has avowedly been, “to disseminate useful knowledge, religious principles, and moral habits.” And though some, we are aware, object to our Magazine, that it wears too grave and religious an aspect, candour must compel them to acknowledge, that we have not swerved from the intentions we distinctly proposed.
Political discussion, and party spirit, and personal allusion, we have scrupulously avoided. Literature and science, while we have devoted to them a portion of attention, have been kept subordinate and subservient to our primary design.
Of Colonial occurrences we have endeavoured to select the most interesting; though this department is, in a great measure, superseded by the weekly Journal [i.e. the Sydney Gazette].’
(Publications.Colonial. Books.)
Whether it's one for your mantelpiece, one for your cellar or just one to toast one of our really great Labor Prime Ministers with your friends, I'd encourage you to buy as many tickets as you can so that we can all keep the legacy of Bob and all the other great Labor Prime Ministers alive for the benefit of today's Australians and our future generations.
Remember in Australian political history, it's always been Labor Governments that have been the nation builders and it's always been Tory governments that have been the divisive social wreckers.
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Views from Mount Louisa, a Townsville suburb , taking in distant Magnetic Island and mainland Castle Hill,access to latter closed because of landslides caused by the recent heavy rain, taken by Aeronautical Correspondent Abra.
During WWll there were about 4000 Americans in a depot at the base of Mount Louisa, which included the Garbutt aerodrome , now the international airport and RAAF base.
(Track.Townsville. Wartime.)
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A touch of Jackson Pollock in rain lashed Townsville. |
(Weather. Pollock. Townsville.)
One of those items, $550, is the above circa l920 London China Inland Mission wooden collection box, thought to have been in use up untill the l960s, with chromolithographic labels on three sides and labels for the Young People's Branch of the CIM, money from which was designed to win boys and girls over to Christ in China.
The above partial set of Historia general de Philipinas by Juan de la Concepcion (1724-1787), priced at $18,000, said to be the best and most exclusive history of the Philippines ever written. There is reference to Spanish possessions in that country and to their Spanish-American territory. It also chronicles the work of the Augustinian Monks and their important missions in China and Japan .
(China. Philippines.Exploration.)
Dulcie Gray was the pseudonym and stage name for Dulcie Winifred Catherine Savage Denison,nee Bailey, (l915-2011). Born in Kuala Lumpur, her father a solicitor, and educated in England , she returned to Malaya to teach .
Upon the death of her father , she returned to England and studied at the Academy des Beaux Arts, London , and the Webber-Douglas Dramatic School . She married actor Michael Denison in 1939.
In Murder in Melbourne an Australian airline pilot finds his girlfriend poisoned with strychnine in the bedroom of a squalid hotel . An explanatory note states the first part of the book was written in Melbourne when Dulcie Gray was starring in Tea and Sympathy.
The book thanks Detective Inspector Welby of the Russell Street Criminal Investigation Branch, Melbourne, for help he gave the author about Australian police procedure. Detective Inspector Peters of the CIB is assigned to the case.
Gray was vice-president of the British Butterfly Conservation Society and in 1978 published Butterflies on My Mind, a work on the conservation and life of butterflies in Great Britain. She also wrote a short biography of J.B. Priestly, the English novelist and playwright.
(Murder. Melbourne. Butterflies.)
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| Vallis close up. (Ladybird. Race. Bull.) |
Our waterfront roundsman has been getting about with a notebook which on its cover declares it is one to be used in all weather condtions . On spotting the notebook, we asked him if he expects an outbreak of southerly busters or if he is planning a trip to Antarctica.
In his salty reply, he said several of the notebooks had been given to him by a contact in the mining indusry who has to take notes, sometimes in the rain or with water spraying about .
The Shipping Reporter is a great scribbler . Sometimes his usual notebook jottings are hard to decipher after coming into contact with rain or spillage from a drinking session with sailors in waterfront grog shops .
In any case, soon after he began using a waterproof notebook he found the revised book about the wreck of the Pandora by Peter Gesner, published by the Queensland Museum, in a Townsville op shop .
HMAS Pandora, sent by Admiralty to the South Pacific to recapture the Bounty mutineers, ran aground on Australia's Great Barrier Reef on August 29 ,1791 ,resulting in the loss of 31 crew and four mutineers.
The mutineers were locked up in a shipboard prison named Pandora's Box.
For more than 200 years the wreck remained untouched,a number of maritime archeology dives made on the site, resulting in a Pandora exhibition in Townsville's Museum of Tropical Queensland.
One of those involved in the project was marine archeologist Vivienne Moran ,late of Magnetic Island , who ran the above art gallery there, dived on the Pandora , and also wrote a book about Southern Ocean shipwrecks.
She knew the late Dr Colin Jack-Hinton who was the inaugural director of the Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, Darwin, which set up a maritime gallery in his name covering traditional boats and canoes .
(Pandora. Moran. Shipwrecks.)
It is said to include – among the other irreplaceable treasures – several Australian wartime quilts. Made by Australian soldiers who were captured or held in camps or were stitched when they returned to Australia, they cut up their uniforms to create a vivid memory for themselves or to give to their loved ones and families at home.
The unique collection contains quilts made by soldiers. sailors and regimental tailors over 300 years , in the Prussian, Napoleonic and Crimean wars, and in British India.
Supplied information states Dr Gero classes her collection in two groups: those commissioned and made for important people and those made by soldiers during World Wars I and II.
Her recent research on the first group has revealed a fascinating link to paintings and etchings: many of the quilts were bespoke commissions for prominent notables of their day and were deliberate copies of famous works of art. They are elaborate pictorial panels using the compositions of popular etchings and paintings as templates.
The second group made by soldiers was an accidental discovery through a phone call informing Dr Gero of a quilt pictured in the Gympie Times,Queensland , featuring a double-headed eagle. “This made me aware”, she said, “that immigrants had bought extraordinary old quilts from their homeland when they came to Australia, the double-headed eagle representing so much of Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And of course, other quilts reside here from British wars as well…”
A second one turned up at Christie’s in London at auction. Dr Gero expected to bid against every museum in the world. However, she was the only bidder. At that time no one really understood what these war quilts made from military fabrics were.
Accompanying the exhibition is Dr Gero’s catalogue, Wartime Quilts: Appliqués and Geometric Masterpieces from Military Fabrics. This richly illustrated book was reviewed by the New York Times as one of the best art and design publications of 2023 and is available at the Gallery Shop.
(War. Quilts. Cairns. )
In a follow up to the Little Darwin recent post about British mineralogist John Mawe , who in the early 19th century issued a guide to collecting the wonders of the New World , including seashells , he having bought the collection of Captain William Bligh's widow, is a circa l811 advertisement for a business he ran in London for those keen to climb aboard the collecting craze, which included royalty . He personally collected minerals for the King of Spain and his wife, Sarah, advised Queen Victoria .
MINERALOGY.
The study of this useful science has been much retarded by the difficulty of obtaining a Collection, and the high prices generally asked for peculiar Specimens. With a view to obviate this, Mr. MAWE has been induced to form Portable Collections, classed and arranged, with a Catalogue, at Twelve Guineas; larger Cabinets, containing two hundred and fifty Specimens, at Fifteen Guineas; others, containing upwards of three hundred Varieties, Twenty Guineas. Collections, consisting of five hundred larger and fine Specimens (without Cabinet) Fifty Guineas.
Any Specimens may be exchanged, if required; and the Collection may be formed peculiarly rich in any given Class.
Large, elegant and rare Minerals at reduced prices. Precious Stones, Minerals and Shells, purchased.
A great Variety of elegant Vases formed and enriched after the Antique.
(Collecting. Royalty.Minerals.)
A spectacular opera could be made about the life of Australian collector , feminist and opera fan , the late Margaret Vine ,who had been an art researcher at the Australian National Library , Canberra.
By Peter Simon
Called Rocky Road, after her Magnetic Island residence,on Olympus Crescent, it could be bigger than the Rocky Horror Picture Show . Imagine a grand parade featuring her colostomy bag named Stanley, rock wallabies , kookaburras and curlews draped in jewellery , dancing books , assorted prancing retro clothing , a pet Beagle named Ponsonby who had a library card , and jiving telephone directories , which would make Giuseppe Verdi's much raved about parade in Aida , that included elephants , giraffes and horses , seem prety dull.
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| Some of Margaret's pet curlews in the rocks. |
To add to the spectacle of the unique opera , because Margaret had green fingernails , Magnetic Island children wondered if she were a witch ; she told them she was , but did now have a broomstick, so a coven of grounded island witches could be included , perhaps even Macbeth ?
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A small number of the pet wallabies that jumped off large granite boulders onto her roof are shown above. |
Her love of opera was such that she had two cabinets jam-packed with opera CDs and made special plane trips to Sydney to attend opera performances.
Because she had difficulty sitting and the need to cope with her colostomy bag , she had to pay for two airline seats each way .
Little Darwin recently reran articles about the remarkable Margaret Vine. As a teenager, she was told that because she was a girl, who would probably get married early and have children, she would not be sent to university, but her brother would .
She went on to carve out a distinctive career as an Australian art researcher, collector , conservationist , feminist . Margaret carried out reseach work for the epic tome Documents on Australian Internationl Affairs 1901-l918 which included Bulletin cartoons in the illustrations that could feature in the Rocky Road extravaganza .
Some books from her collection, in boxes which once formed the base of her bed , went to Special Collections, Eddie Koiki Mabo Library , James Cook University.
Recently pulled out of a dark corner were cardboard boxes containing a broken run of National Library of Australia News magazines from the l970s to the l990s that had belonged to Margaret , which she had given me .
Some of them contained handwritten annotations and underlining of text by her , including question and exclamation marks . Each volume was closely examined .
This resulted in ideas for a swag of follow up stories and the proposed Rocky Road opera brainwave.
The September 1994 issue featured a cover photograph of opera composer Larry Sitsky, the associated four page article receiving much attention by Vine, indicating she may have written a condensed piece about him and his works.
