The news that Jimmy Ah Toy's famous store , above, established in 1935, in the old gold mining town of Pine Creek in the Northern Territory ,had closed about a year ago had somehow escaped my notice. Many interesting times were had in and around Pine Creek , 230kms south of Darwin , fossicking for old bottles, Chinese utensils , coins , mining and railway items.
By Peter Simon
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| Frank's find |
Frank , left, was scornful of young blokes who did not know how to do a day's hard work and regarded taking up a shovel as picking up a venomous black snake. Also, he did not like a number of similarly aged Pine Creek residents who used to gather at Ah Toy's store on pension day, the group collectively referred to as " grumpy old death adders."
I mentioned Frank to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh one day when they were visiting Darwin , and told them he would not mind returning to his homeland on a visit . The crowds , he said , would not worry him after all the time in the bush ; his bladder , however, could be a problem, I informed the Royals. The Queen appeared to sympathetically concur , uttering a meaningful ,"I see." She did not command me that the next time I was in Pine Creek to tell Frank to drop into Buckingham Palace for a cup of English Breakfast should he lob in London.
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Simon in hole
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Frank took me bush to meet the eccentric prospector Captain Jack Marsh , who jumped out of a shack, saluted , and told how he had shot Germans in the trench and had himself been shot in the head . Years later, I was told that Captain Jack had caused a stir among women in a Darwin retirement village and had been found to have a German Luger pistol in his possession.
On a particularly memorable visit to Pine Creek , I and my youngest son saw a publican pistol whip a customer. Numerous many fabulous stories were collected including one about the Crow hating resident (he could not stand their mournful cry) who personally told me how he shot the birds with a rifle fitted with a silencer and they dropped down around startled police at a roadblock ; he died from an overdose of drugs .There was a Russian Cossack who had jumped ship way back and ended up in the Territory. Author Xavier Herbert accompanied me on a trip to Pine Creek and we met a person a relative of whom had been involved with Herbert in Darwin in the late l930s, close to the publication of Herbert's novel Capricornia .
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Edward Cheong Ah Toy , Territorian of the Year 2005, informing Darwin visitors about the Ah Toy family corrugated iron bakehouse and bakery building opened in the 1920s ; Eddie was born in Pine Creek in 1937. During the gold rush era ,see below ,there were close to 3000 Chinese in the area ,with a temple and their own cemetery.
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The late historian and author Glenville Pike worded this plaque.
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While the Ah Toy's store , which had developed into a supermarket over the years , is no more , there is a service station still carrying the name . Another place of interest down the track, the Emerald Springs Roadhouse ,32 kilometres north of Pine Creek, is on the market for $1.2million. The roadhouse was once owned by Glenville Pike, his mother and aunty , who found that truckies who called in during the 1950s only mainly ate steak and eggs. Sold out for 800 pounds ,$1600, a few years later,Emerald Springs subsequently changed hands several times and was modernised and expanded , now boasting 40 rooms with ensuite , caravan and camp sites, offering more than steak and eggs , a tub of tasty homemade ice cream consumed there by this writer who provided new owners with information about pioneering Pike and family.
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Covered in waterlilies, Emerald Springs .
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