Many memories came flooding back when a copy of
the 1982
Cairns Post special centenary publication unexpectedly
surfaced . It was edited by the late , three time Walkley
Award
winning journalist,
Keith Willey ,
who spent eight years in the
Northern Territory in Alice Springs and Darwin
. I worked with
Keith on the NT
News in Darwin from l958-1962
; played rugby with
him ( he and I were the only
two non-Catholics in the Brothers
team ) and he was best man at my wedding
. I also worked on the Cairns Post
in the early l960s and later
on The Sun, Sydney, with Willey .
Part of an article , above , with biographical details of Willey in the publication, stating he was then
51, had attended school in Innisfail,
and
been acting editor of
the
Cairns Post
from 1971-1973. At the time of
his special commission he was a
research scholar at the
Australian National University
where he also
lectured
and tutored part-time.
He had covered wars in
Vietnam, Cambodia and the
Middle East , racial massacres in Cyprus and Kuala Lumpur
and witnessed the hanging of Ronald Ryan in Pentridge .
Other assignments had been
the disappearance of Prime Minister Harold Holt at Portsea and
raising Captain Cook’s cannon from Endeavour Reef . He had also written 18 books.
Keith travelled to Cooktown to gather material for the special edition and wrote a lengthy article about author Xavier Herbert who wrote Capricornia and Poor Fellow My Country.
[There will be more information about Willey in the ongoing biography about NT Crusading Editor, "Big Jim Bowditch".] The centenary copy belongs to veteran house painter Danny Houlihan , once a Cairns resident , who now sports new kneecaps and resides on Magnetic Island. - (By Peter Simon )
