In the l991 book covering the sailing boats of Sydney and the Sydney Flying Squadron , the author mentioned the part played by Lou d'Alpuget who covered races in the newspapers for decades . The cover illustration was from the d'Alpuget collection . An experienced yachtsman himself , his name came up a few days ago in a Radio National interview with longtime yachting reporter Rob Mundle , who has written a book about the epic Sydney Hobart Yacht Race .
The problem of getting race progress reports in the early days of the event was discussed with Amanda Smith of the ABC . An RAAF flying boat, he said , had tried to help out , but was hampered because of cloud coverage . Early radios were not powerful .
There was rivalry in the media to get progress reports . As a result, d'Alpuget arranged for Frank McNulty , a newspaper crewmember of a yacht , to take homing pigeons.
Mundle said the first attempt to send a report attached to a pigeon failed because the bird did not like the rough weather and just flopped down on deck . It had then been grabbed and heartily thrown into the sky and flew to Lou .
This writer , at the time a cadet reporter , had dealings with d'Alpuget , nicknamed the Sea Going Ox , his daughter writer Blanche , later second wife of Bob Hawke , on The Sun newspaper in Sydney . He was the news editor at the time , the executive editor , Lindsay Clinch, with reporting experience in America , also a keen yachtsman .
From Tasmania today came this photograph from one of our wandering correspondents of an interesting eatery at Deloraine filled to the scuppers with a vast range of collectables. Old gramophone records stuck to the wall decorated a toilet , which is food for thought , so many records , including The Goons singing EE AH OOH (broken into pieces ) , stashed away in our den .
