THE RACE WHICH STOPPED THE WAR

From the Little Darwin WW11 collection comes this 1943 photograph taken at Finschhafen, New Guinea, of AIF troops drawing a Melbourne Cup sweep on the morning of the race. An officer puffing on a cigarette,standing, is looking on as slips for the sweep are prepared by Private B.K. Ashton, South Australia, Corporal A.E.Walmsley,Western Australia , and Lieutenant - Corporal F. J. Corbett. The winner that year was Dark Felt, the prize money a mere 7700 pounds ,15,400 dollars.

WILL US PRESIDENT'S VISIT RECTIFY DARWIN WAR MEMORIAL SHAME ?

Advance publicity says President Obama will honour the memory of those who died and served in wars when he visits Darwin on November 17. Presumably that ceremony will take place at the Darwin War Memorial , off the Esplanade, where the large media contingent likely to lob in town will be able see how Darwin authorities have allowed glaring errors in the spelling on the western granite wall at the back of the cenotaph to go unchanged for years . This includes the incorrect spelling of the Philippines , a significant nation in American war history, as it was from there that General Douglas MacArthur was driven by the Japanese and flew to Australia , landing at Batchelor, with his wife and son. After proceeding to Alice Springs , the general’s party travelled south where he made his famous statement that he would return to the Philippines .

General MacArthur’s arrival kick started Australia’s close relationship with America eventually enshrined in the ANZUS Treaty, another reason for the Darwin memorial to be spot on . Another obvious error is the incorrect spelling of another theatre of war to the north of Darwin, in what was known as the Netherlands East Indies,now Indonesia .The memorial erroneously states NETHERLAND'S . Again , America was deeply involved in this part of the conflict.

Then the memorial wrongly refers to UNITED NATION PEACEKEEPING , when it should be plural- UNITED NATIONS , which, of course , is based in New York .

On October 18,2009,Little Darwin drew attention to this matter. Nothing happened. Again,on February 24,2010, after the annual observance of the bombing, Little Darwin pointed out the unsatisfactory situation and that there were errors on Darwin websites dealing with significant NT war sites. Incredibly, nobody in high office-the NT Government, Darwin City Council, RSL, spin doctors,the media ,the large committee planning the 70th anniversary of the bombing ,under the repugnant title of BRAND BOMBING, responded.

It would seem that Darwin needs more than a bomb under it to erase these clangers which make the place look like Hicksville . If these embarrassing errors are not corrected by February 19 next year when there will be many Americans here , some from Hawaii- Pearl Harbour- then Darwin (Australia's Pearl Harbour ), should hang its head in shame.

Little Darwin pointed out that when the original war memorial , made from granite by a Sydney monumental mason, arrived in the 1920s to be erected opposite Government House, and it was discovered that there were errors , PROMPT action was taken to make corrections within months. Some 80 years later , Darwin has failed all round to come to grips with this classic snafu which reflects adversely on the NT and could be said to be disrespectful of those that the memorial honours.

THE (UN)QUIET AUSTRALIAN : DARWIN'S ROBERT WESLEY - SMITH . Special profile by Peter Simon

Surrounded by books, files, newspapers, paintings , musical instruments , a photo above his kitchen sink of an East Timorese hero killed in the fighting against the Indonesians,Robert Wesley-Smith is a veteran campaigner against injustices and inequalities .
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During the Vietnam War, standing atop Saigon's famed Continental Hotel, where American author Graham Greene once occupied room 214 and wrote The Quiet American, about the Indo-China conflict, Darwin agronomist Robert Wesley–Smith watched distant explosive flashes in the night. It was 1972, the end of which year America heavily bombed and mined the entrance to Haiphong ,the supply port for the North Vietnam capital,Hanoi.

An outspoken opponent of the Vietnam campaign, Wes, as he is commonly known,had organised anti-Vietnam War marches and other opposition in Darwin in earlier years, his actions and comments noted by ASIO. After spending Christmas in Hong Kong with his brother, Peter , a professor of constitutional law, Wes, his then wife, Jan,in the company of a professor of political science, flew to Saigon. The flight took them over Cambodia where the landscape was pock-marked by lunar-like craters, the result of secret American carpet bombing-2.7 million tons dropped - exceeding by about one million tons the amount dropped on Japan during WW11. During their time in Saigon they met political contacts through the professor and witnessed a wild scene in a restuarant when a large American Marine went berserk and began to wreck the premises.He was nearly killed when much smaller Vietnamese flew at him. A Vietnamese police officer fired his gun into the air and rescued the Marine.

What he saw and heard about the war confirmed his conviction that it was unjust , unwinnable and that Australia should not have been sucked into the destructive bloodbath. The fact that young Australian conscripts were sent to fight there on the strength of a marble dropped out of a lottery barrel , he regarded as another obscenity .
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Wars of various kinds have and still are playing a big part in Wes’s life. Born in 1942, the year the Japanese bombed Darwin,he was named Robert after an uncle who had been killed in an RAAF plane crash near West Wyalong in February of that year.

Wes's father was an Adelaide teacher,and his mother, Sheila Main Martin, a local beauty, had played the part of the Spirit of South Australia at the 1936 centenary celebrations of the state. A kindergarten and primary school teacher, a singer and musician, she hosted the ABC’s popular children’s radio program,Kindergarten of the Air, for about six years. The program was broadcast to the Northern Territory and throughout Radio Australia.On his mother’s side, he was related to the recently retired NT Chief Justice ,Brian Martin. When Wes thanked former Chief Minister Clare Martin for appointing his cousin, Brian Martin, to the top judicial post , he claims her jaw fell.
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WES’s parents were bound for England, where his father wanted to be a French teacher, when WW11 broke out ; the ship turned about at the Suez Canal and resumed the voyage via the Cape of Good Hope. Mindful of the German U-boat sinking of the liner SS Lusitania in 1915 on its voyage to England , they were put ashore in Ireland, where their first child , Jerry ,was born. The family subsequently headed back towards Australia, but were not far from Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour ; their ship was diverted to Fiji. On arrival back in Australia, his father joined the Army and became an intelligence office. Wes’s father,regarded as an expert on Japanese "order of battle," was sent to the Pentagon in 1944 when the Americans were stepping up plans to clear the Japanese from the Pacific and then went to Bletchley Park , in the UK , where enemy messages were decoded at a place known as Station X.
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As Wes put it,each time his father returned from active service , his mother gave birth nine months later. After Wes in December 1942, twin brothers, Peter and Martin,were born in 1945. All, like their mother , were musically inclined. After the war, his father was a Guidance Officer for WW11 returnees. Then he became Academic Registrar at Adelaide University, having many dealings with overseas students brought to Australia under the Colombo Plan.

One of those was the Sri Lankan, Kamahl, who had been living in Malaysia . He visited the Wesley-Smith household and joined in the musical entertainment . With Wes's mother on the piano,the family gathered around heartily singing the Hallelujah Chorus and many tunes from the Oxford Book of Song. Wes upset his mother by saying she used to "thump " the piano in those happy sessions ; she responded by emphatically stating she never ever thumped a piano.

Wes’s father gave Kamahl sound advice about his future career and, as previously explained by Little Darwin, media proprietor,Rupert Murdoch,took him under his wing for two years,prevented him from being deported and helped him along the path to international fame as a singer. Kamahl recently discussed with Wes a proposal by the Wesley-Smith brothers to commemorate the great Afro- American activist, singer Paul Robeson, who came to Australia ,in a musical production . Wes fondly recalls meeting Robeson,whom he describes as a hero in the eyes of the family,at an Adelaide concert .
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Wes, in suit, tie and cap, went to Adelaide’s respected St. Peter’s College, where he was president of the musical society and a versatile sportsman. From an early age, he expressed strong views on many issues including Aboriginal rights . Aged 14, he and his father had frequent , sometimes angry debates , late at night, in the study. " We argued about points of fact," Wes recalls . His father would say that Wes would have to concede that he (father) was more likely to be right because of his vast amount of experience , compared with his young son. Wes would not accept this ploy. "If you are right , with your academic experience, you should be able to persuade me by the power of your argument that you are right," Wes would counter . These lively exchanges , which generated a certain amount of tension, usually ended with Wes having to concede that his father was right-sort of- and being sent off to bed.

In his final year at school,Wes organised a daytime concert involving numerous groups. He convened a group of prefects called the Four Prefs and they sang to raptuous applause from snivelling kids wanting to curry favour. A Kingston Trio-like group included a future premier, John Bannon. One of them got sick and Wes told his brothers , Peter and Martin,they would have to get a replacement act together for the concert. The trio included a contemporary of their’s, Keith Conlon, later to become a well known TV personality in Adelaide . Called the Wesley Three, below, they put out four long play records and were popular .

NEXT : The music continues, Einstein is challenged and Wes has to decide if his future will be in NEW GUINEA OR THE NORTHERN TERRITORY?

CONTRACTORS FURIOUS

Strange goings on in a Darwin business which has been the subject of glowing media reports and photo opportunities for government ministers and overseas corporations. Angry contractors have been demanding payment, one said to have even kicked in the main office door ; female office staff have felt threatened and phones were turned off for several days . A source says one contractor,offered less than he was entitled to, was promptly paid in full when he delivered a withering blast on the blower saying that he would turn up with a F!!!**!! representative of every !****!!** F!!! media organisation in Darwin and demand to be paid. Oddly enough, the local media seems not to have heard about this situation being talked about in many circles , yet its name has been invoked to get payment in one instance.

VOYAGE BY CANOE TO ATAURO-ISLAND OF MISSING GODMOTHERS

Panoramic recent photograph taken by Darwin resident, agronomist Rob Wesley Smith, a longtime supporter of Timor -Leste, whose eventful life and tireless campaigning for worthy causes will soon be the subject of a special Little Darwin series. Surrounded by deep water, close to Dili, with a population of about 8000, Atauro is served by a large German ferry and is being developed for tourism, especially fishing and scuba diving on the reefs . Both the Portuguese and the Indonesians used it as a prison. Because of the dislocation during those times, island couples, when they came to be married, could not supply priests with the names of godmothers. As a result, a Red Cross worker on the island is now godmother to about 60 or more people .

WEST PAPUA FILM : DISPATCH FROM NEW ZEALAND PACIFIC MEDIA WATCH

AUCKLAND, (Pacific Media Centre/Pacific Media Watch): As the Libyan revolution hit its peak tonight with news of the death of tyrant Muammar Gaddafi, it was no wonder that events in West Papua couldn’t make it into the papers–even Gaddafi’s death lost out to endless pages of rugby mania. Another event occurred in downtown Auckland last night that attempted to draw Kiwis’ attention back to what really is news –tyrannical violence on our doorstep.

In the Academy cinema in the basement of Auckland City Library, Charlie Hill-Smith’s film Strange Birds in Paradise was screened at an event co-hosted by Amnesty International, the Indonesia Human Rights Committee and the Pacific Media Centre.In the film, writer, director and documentary-maker Hill-Smith starts narrating with breathtaking shots of the unspoilt parts of West Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya.

“In 1999 with a small band of hiking companions, I blithely stumbled
into West Papua from New Guinea the old Australian colony just to our north. I had travelled the islands of Indonesia for over 15 years and yet strangely had never heard traveller’s tales, media news stories, nor any accounts from this giant, forested province.”

His adventures with friends while on holiday quickly became a cultural
and political denouement for the Australian, who had grown up on
Indonesia’s main island of Java and speaks fluent Bahasa Indonesia.

“By the time my friends and I shipped out of West Papua the penny had
finally dropped and we realised we had not been hiking in a Neolithic
cultural paradise but an undeclared war zone.”

On his journey into the province, he explains that when word passed
around the villages that they could confidently speak to him, they
“opened up with stories”..." Guarded whispers of missing sons,murdered husbands and villages burnt to the ground." Hill-Smith’s personal journey into West Papua and his historical account of Indonesia’s stranglehold on the province is aided by the poignant story of three brothers, led by Donny, who set sail for the Australian coast in 2006 and caused a political maelstrom betweenIndonesia and Australia.

Donny and former child soldier of the West Papuan Resistance Movement,Jacob, gained refugee status and tell their story through song.Hill-Smithsays early in the film that the West Papua story is “a wonderful musical tradition,an ancient culture and a nightmare in the modern world.”

Towards the end of the film, accounts of the brutal killing of Arnold
Ap are told. The man was a musician and a poet, the writer of inspirational songs that are still played and form part of the repertoire of the Australian-based group.

Australian rock musicologist David Bridie, who teamed up with
Donny, Jacob and others to record and promote their music, says it is telling that a peaceful man who writes songs was arrested and taken to the forest and told to walk away before he was shot in the back.

“You are not going to suppress a popular resistance movement by banning singing,” he says. But Hill-Smith offers some hope that the aspirations of the people of West Papua are being communicated to the outside world.

“We are reaching back in time to one of West Papua’s most important
cultural practitioners and reintroducing him to a new generation of
Papuans and the world,” he says of Ap.“His beautiful and gentle
Melanesian songs are steeped in the imageryof nature, culture and resistance.”

Maire Leadbeater of the Indonesian Human Rights Committee spoke before the film and mentioned the timeliness of the event, with reports yesterday that people had been killed by the Indonesian military’s violent reaction to the Third Papuan Peoples’ Congress.Today’s Pacific Scoop report has the body count at six.

Hundreds of people were reportedly arrested from among the 5000-strong gathering in Padang Bulan, Abepura.

Dr David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, which co-hosted the film screening said about the crisis in West Papua that the public "is not very well served by the media" on international affairs in NZ. He added that while the crisis was news in leading Australian media it did not rate a mention in the local press.

Dr Robie also launched the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review, which includes an in-depth report on Pacific media freedom,and West Papua features as the worst situation in the Pacific.

Margaret Taylor from Amnesty International said prisoners of conscience, such as Filep Karma, were still held after previous peaceful rallies and Amnesty is making a concerted push to have him released.

She said Karma was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment in 2005 for
rebellion and expressing hostility and hatred towards the state under the Indonesia Criminal Code.

In July 2010 Karma was offered a remission of his sentence, but he
rejected it, maintaining that he should never have been imprisoned in the first place.

GREAT NEWSPAPER ARTIST-By Peter Simon

The distinctive talent of internationally renowned Australian artist,Tony Rafty, now 95, shines through in this detailed caricature of Keith Namatjira , fourth son of Central Australian Aboriginal artist , Albert Namatjira, who looked so much like his famous father. It is interesting to note at this time of the royal visit that Keith, a teenager , was present when his father was presented to Queen Elizabeth 11 , in Canberra, on her first visit to Australia in 1954.

Soon after Cyclone Tracy , I called on Rafty at the The Sun newspaper building , Sydney , he having been responsible for me entering journalism as a teenager. He asked after Jim Bowditch, former NT News editor, an old friend . Then , from his files, he took out this drawing of Keith Namatjira , who died in 1977, and penned a message, wishing me all the best after the "STORM."

He later gave me a copy of the book TONY RAFTY’S GOLFERS A Treasury of Stars in Caricature , written by Fairfax sports writer Terry Smith, with a whimsical sketch about Bowditch playing golf and sinking ‘em at the 19th. In it Jim was drawn inserted up to his neck in the cup on a green, lining up the golfball with a prominent snozz.

Last year the Australian Embassy in Indonesia held an exhibition of Rafty’s sketches and drawings at Surabaya as part of the National Heroes Day celebrations which honour those who fought for the country during the Dutch colonial period and the Japanese occupation. ( See post below ).

An exhibition of Rafty’s cricket caricatures is now being held in the International Cricket Hall of Fame , Bowral, NSW, running through until January .