DARWIN IN THE GRIP OF CURRY WAR

Unnoticed by the local media gourmets  is a price war in places dealing in Indian tucker . Two businesses , one off the Smith Street Mall and another long established cafe in the Nightcliff village , have closed their doors. The Nightcliff premises  are  in the process of being converted into an eatery specialising in good old Australian meals. A supermarket at Tiwi, now owned by Indians ,  has  added  national dishes  to  its takeaways ; a mobile canteen that visits construction sites has an Indian connection. It is self evident that there has been an increase in the Indian population in Darwin and it is suggested this is  responsible for the competition on the vindaloo  front. On the Asian food side , the “ food enhancer” MSG, which gives some people  headaches and  makes  some feel hungry after a meal,  is widely used in Darwin cafes and markets- surely  both  these   situations  are ideal subjects for  ABC TV reports, or anybody else in the Press corps , a group renowned for flashing their  fangs like whitepointers  at free PR banquets

SMALL (CHINA) WORLD DEPARTMENT

It is a small but most interesting world-despite the frustrating, often tragic, political and social issues of the day. Back in the l980s , my wife and I espied a tiny FOR SALE notice in the greasy window of an old china shop in Jetty Road, Largs Bay , Adelaide. It was one of five shopfronts in a rundown terrace building built in  the l880s to cater for overseas shipping which brought passengers to the nearby jetty , a train running into Adelaide. Built at the same time was the impressive Largs Pier Hotel , where Jimmy Barnes exercised his tonsils  in earlier days , diagonally across the road. The china shop was closed and all the other shopfronts were empty. Why not have a go ? we both thought .

And so we bought Invicta Antiques from a struggling English couple and launched ourselves into a whole new fascinating world of auctions, house clearances, wheeler dealers, collectors. To make the china shop window look different , I inserted a large model of the huge WW11 Japanese warship Yamato among the delicate cup and saucer sets, which must have caused puzzlement.

A quick and cheap paint job in navy blue and gold I did on the weathered wood and lacework around the window  appalled two finicky gents who were restoring a fine old building nearby. They sniffed that I had made it look like a cheap Greek joint instead of ye olde curiosity shoppe .

In a bout of enthusiasm , we rented one of the empty shopfronts, started the Den of Antiquity, a name lifted from an old  English antique book,  dealing in a wide range of goods, including furniture, pictures, aeroplane propellers , uniforms and a book section which rapidly expanded, one single mass purchase was 15,000 volumes, with an associated mail order book catalogue . Each year the smiling landlord conveyed the joyous spirit of Christmas by announcing the rent would go up 10 percent in the new year.

We encouraged a merry band of others interested in antiques, art, militaria , old radios and gramophones , ephemera , rustic furniture , kitchenalia to take up the empty shopfronts. One of those was a great guy who had spent some years in Alice Springs when he was a schoolboy. He distinguished himself when he chased and lassooed with a rope a  man  who had attacked a woman in a railway subway. By the time police arrived he had the miscreant neatly hogtied .

A cooperative , at one stage , took  over a shopfront and displayed a number of paintings in the window and  inside which appeared to be variations of female genitalia . For some strange reason, I was asked by a concerned shopkeeper  for my expert opinion on the subject, and while I said it appeared that the paintings were indeed  of the said naughty bits , they were rather scary renditions, a bit like views of the Grand Canyon in various stages across the aeons . If , as suggested, the paintings were done by a doctor’s wife, he may have been a gynaecologist  and only engaged in  shoptalk  at  night.

Jetty Road  grew in popularity  and in our enthusiasm we said it would eventually become the Golden Mile . Fun was had by one and all . A demented Russian chased me with a penknife, a man who asked a woman who lived on the premises to show him her tits for a trifling amount of money was soundly thumped by her bikie husband , there was a strange siege nearby which involved kissing cousins, one of the residents in the terraces packed his basement with tinned food because of a firm belief that we were engaged in World War 111 and the wife of well known scribe told us she had broken into a flat, grabbed the fur coat her husband had given his girlfriend and ruined it by putting it  through  a  washing machine .  A little old lady who looked like the grandmother in The Beverly Hillbillies surprised me  when she asked if  I stocked any dirty books.  Eh?!!!It turned out  she was  after racy American comic books for  young  men  parked outside  in a  car who looked and sounded   sod busting  hillbillies .

After leaving South Australia , with fond and odd memories of our time in Largs , we headed back north , eventually returning to Darwin. Last year we were in Adelaide and booked into the Largs Pier Hotel , above in earlier  days , now renovated a la Raffles style with punkahs , and fondly inspected the old terraces across the road; all the shops were closed , only one in the old wares business,  our book shop which , we were informed ,  hardly ever opened  and displayed the same books year in year  out . The elusive Golden Mile mirage was nowhere to be seen.

My wife , Judith, assists in the Genealogical Society of the NT office , Cavenagh Street, Darwin, and recently in walked a person seeking information about his family. He supplied the name of his father and stepmother- the people who sold us the china shop! Hanging on our  wall  at home is a painting of that shop , Invicta Antiques. Of course, my ever loving  surprised by instantly rattling off details about the couple on the spot and is now chasing up family history for him in Britain . – Peter Simon

FORGOTTEN TROUBADOUR-John Ashe,#3

The  Battle  of  Jutland  &  Cupid  Delayed  

Ashe’s mother , reduced to tears every October 20, the anniversary of her husband’s tragic death in Western Australia, died in l946. A close relationship developed between Ashe and Sydney literary critic and playwright L. L. Woollacott. In correspondence Ashe variously addressed Woollacott as L.L.W., Dear Dyed in the Woolly and just Woolly . In turn , the critic, a former editor of the caustic literary magazine Triad , which distinguished itself by never accepting free tickets to anything , signed his letters ,Woolly. They discussed everything from authors to poetry and music .

In one letter written in the l950s, Woollacott asked Ashe if he was too old to consider leaving Townsville to handle the business side of a literary magazine. “Woolly” indicated Ashe’s likely response: “ Don’t throw that bottle of beer at me .” He also suggested Ashe should bring out a book illustrated by someone like cartoonist Emile Mercier to catch the Christmas market . Woollacott claimed to have given Mercier “ his start ” 20 years previously.

( By Peter Simon )

The lanky accountant gained much inspiration for his songs from bushies who came into his office. Invariably , he adjourned to a nearby pub for lunch when clients dropped in from the outback . Before he left the office on such occasions he would instruct staff not to present him with matters requiring deep thought upon his return .

His work as an accountant and involvement with theatrical groups in town brought him in contact with a broad cross section of society  including , as mentioned earlier in Little Darwin , the Communist writer and activist , New Zealander Jean Devanny. Devanny had  been expelled from the Communist Party of Australia. Ashe , conservative politically, was reportedly willing to talk to anyone as long as they had a sense of humour. He and Devanny had what were called friendly arguments. Devanny aged 68, died on International Women’s Day , March 8, l962. A book of musical poems written by John Ashe saw him made a Fellow of the International Academy of Poets, Cambridge, England, in 1968.

Ashe married late in life , l970, aged 63. In typical jocular fashion , he put this down to the fact that when he was young and blue-eyed girls made his heart backfire he was not on the marriage market as salaries were small, and he was “ backstop” for three generations in the family cottage . A retired Royal Navy officer, Captain Campbell, who had fought at the great Battle of Jutland in World War 1 , was responsible for him meeting the woman he wed. She was Mrs Joan Margaret Mealy , a petite schoolteacher from Newcastle, NSW, who had a liking for French, classical music, opera and ballet; she also taught hearing impaired children in Townsville.

Captain Campbell, ultra  British, tall, emphatic, lived on Magnetic Island , and took her hiking, striding along in the lead , a great cane in hand . He commanded her to come and meet this accountant friend of his called John Ashe , who also wrote poetry. The meeting blossomed into romance . The two subsequently married and Captain Campbell , a chest full of medals , gave the bride away. John distinguished himself at the church by parading down the aisle waving his arms as if conducting Mendelsson’s Wedding March .There was never a dull moment living with John Ashe.

Mrs Ashe told me of  many occasions when her husband , sitting at the table writing a song, would laugh , jump up and play part of a tune on the piano ; he would mutter and play some more until he got it right. When he had a batch of songs finished he would ring up a Sydney recording company and they would tell him to come down. They would both travel to Sydney and while he went off to the recording studio, she would visit relatives .

Then they would indulge themselves by attending every classical music concert possible before heading back to Townsville. During their visits to Sydney they called on Slim Dusty and his wife, Dot, who in turn visited them in their Townsville cottage when on tour in North Queensland. Mrs Ashe said John frequently brought graziers home , and they would sit around the table, drinking, laughing and swapping hilarious yarns.

Her husband, she said, had a “ wicked” sense of humour . At funerals, while mourners were being informed of the sterling qualities of the dear departed , John would make cynical comments out of the side of his mouth , making it hard not to laugh . Extant somewhere is a photograph showing Ashe in a relaxed pose, his feet up on the piano .

Ashe had been hopeless with his hands, unable even to change a light globe. His longtime friend from 4TTT, Alan Stephenson , told how he found Ashe struggling to open a tin of sardines. Stephenson told him to use the key attachéd to the tin, and Ashe asked what you did with the so and so key. Mrs Ashe said John managed to open a can on his own one day and had been proud of the achievement . Anything “ technical ” about the house was left to her to handle.

While coming back from a swim with Ashe, Stephenson drove to a shop to buy something to  eat. Ashe spoke to a young girl there who had her own car. Not having ever owned a car himself, he asked her how she could afford one. Her reply-“ I’m living on the social service ”- instantly gave him the inspiration for a song , Living on the Social Service .

Recognition for his musical work came in 1978 when he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. As part of Queensland’s growing interest in its wartime past , Ashe, aged 77, was filmed in l984 singing his song about Uncle Sam ; he was also asked to provide first hand information for a book about the Americans in Townsville.

Ashe became confused late in life and wandered away, eventually being placed in a home. Mrs Ashe found it distressing to see a man who had been so knowledgeable and full of life reduced to such a sorry state. Each time she called to see him, he would say ,"Good, you have come to take me home ." However, he soon forgot everything , and Mrs Ashe would leave in tears.

Ashe died on Christmas Eve l994 at the age of 87 ; his ashes were buried in the family grave in Townsville Cemetery . The old miner’s cottage in which he spent most of his life remained as  a time capsule before eventually being sold in 2004. In it were his  beloved books, his large record collection , the upright piano, paintings and engravings of early Townsville and other Australian pictures.

A large Eric Jolliffe Aboriginal drawing , with an associated risqué story, presented to Ashe by the cartoonist , hung on the wall . Among the books was a l968 presentation copy of We Bushies (Modern Australian Ballads) by Richard Magoffin , one of Ashe’s fans, who also wrote the folk history of Waltzing Matilda. Ashe wrote the foreword to the book which the author could not get published in Australia, it being produced in England and Hong Kong, running up sales of more than 15,000 .

Magoffin, Ashe wrote , was a “ true disciple” of Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson . He continued : “Since the advent of the talking films, radio, television and the Top 4O, Australia has completely passed under the influence of the U.S.A., and the bush ballad, so popular in earlier days , has just about died out, except Out West in the cattle camps... The day will come again when Australians show more interest in their own country and I hope Richard Magoffin will keep up this good work and keep the Aussie light shining bright . He writes of a wonderful country, one of the last frontiers , and he is following the trail blazed by our best balladeers . Good luck to our modern Banjo of the West ”

Tucked away in Ashe’s record collection was a presentation copy of the score from the musical play Song of the Snowy , composed by Edmond Samuels, who wrote : “To John Ashe-From one entirely Australian -minded composer to another.” 

THE ROAD OF DOOM

The Peter Burleigh  Bulldust Diary epic adventure continues as he braves one of Australia’s worst outback roads , is thrown about like a  Swedish crash dummy, and experiences a religious moment - like  Paul  on  the  heavily  bombed  toll  road to Damascus.

The Gibb River Road in WA has perhaps the worst reputation of any road in Australia. It shouldn’t exist in a Christian country as it is evil and vindictive, and should be the focus of an Eleventh Commandment. It murders cars but tortures them first. Shredded bits of its victims are scattered along its 750km length of rutted, washed-away, razor-rocked, pot-holed, corrugated horror. Advice is don’t take anything less than a 4WD, definitely don’t take a caravan or motorhome and don’t even take a tank. “Naah,” you’re thinking, “that’s exaggerated.”

What is exaggerated is the name Kalumburu Road. It winds north-west to the sea and the Mitchell Falls. It takes the Gibb River Road and twists it into something more deformed. The state of this road – better described as the secret level in Dante’s Inferno – should be signposted FOR MASOCHISTS ONLY. Even Salvador Dali couldn’t imagine the conditions between the Gibb River Road and Drysdale Station, a distance of 51km. If you manage to get there you want to stay; the return journey is a frightening thought. To go further along this road is sufficient evidence of insanity, and there are several dozen drivers locked up in corrugated-iron sheds who have lost their marbles thinking about the return journey, let alone the physical, mental and financial cost of proceeding to Mitchell Falls.

Corrugations extend right across the road. They vary in width from 100mm to 600mm across and there is no letup. There is no sweet zone on the road so your vehicle is rattled and smashed so hard that your windscreen-wiper stalk and your indicators are switched on by the vibrations. The rear door, the one with the heavy spare tyre on it, is also juddered downwards with such violence that the handle won’t open it any more and the hinges are distorted. Ditto the other doors – I thought the glass would break. Essential components under the car chatter like a tapdancer on speed. The anticipation of breakage is so extreme, and the thought of being stranded out here in this super-heated landscape of broken rock is so frightening you’ll try anything to get a smooth ride. Go ahead - try anything you can think of. It won’t work.

The contents of the car fridge are hammered up and down so violently a bottle of wine breaks and two cans of beer burst. This is a serious blow to our travelling cellar, especially as no one volunteers to drink the resulting - perfectly palatable, I’m sure - white wine-and-beer mixture. Maybe it is the shards of glass in the liquid that puts people off.

I’ve run out of superlatives to describe the agony, anguish, pain, suffering, distress, misery, woe, torment, persecution, injustice, hurt, soreness, sacrifice, martyrdom and throbbing (OK, maybe not throbbing) of this experience. At the camping area at Drysdale Station a man approaches me because he also drives a Pajero. He asks if mine has special shock absorbers fitted. No, just factory shocks on my little beauty, I say. He looks downcast, as if he’d discovered his Pajero is possessed by evil spirits. He’d destroyed two sets of four shocks so far, he said, and was waiting out the 15 days it takes to have replacements flown in from Darwin to Kununurra and then onto the Mail Plane. He arrived a week ago at the moment the plane was taking off and must wait a full two weeks for it to return. Drysdale Station is not the kind of place you want to stay 2 weeks.

My car has taken a bad battering, but has held together like the mighty Samurai Warrior it is. OK, the nuts holding the spare tyre on to the door had unscrewed to within a millimetre of disaster and the Jesus bolt on the tow hitch had come loose (the Jesus bolt causes a scream of “Oh, Jesus!” when it falls off ) and the fuel consumption had risen to 21 litres/100 km, but I was confident its inherent qualities of machismo and cojones would prevail - but not confident enough to want to go further up the road.

There is no democratic vote, but a vehement negative consensus prevails – instead of driving we’ll take a scenic flight from the station’s airstrip.

FORGOTTEN TROUBADOUR-JOHN ASHE, #2.

Working for the Yankee dollar !

 John with sisters and worldy-wise  Uncle Thomas who warned about the growing power of  America in the Pacific.

John Ashe was born in Sydney on September 4, l907, the day the Norwegian nationalist composer Edvard Grieg died . As a result , Ashe was wont to say he was Grieg’s reincarnation . Ashe’s father , a clerk with the Bank of Australasia, left the family behind and went to Western Australia to explore the possibility of improving his lot by farming with some brothers who lived there.

John, only five, remembered seeing his father off on the ship to WA. Within a short time of his arrival out west , his father dived into a shallow dam and was found floating , dead. His grief - stricken widow , accompanied by her mother , four children , two boys and  two girls, ranging from nine months to seven years, returned in l913 to Townsville , where she had met and married her husband.

(By Peter Simon)

The house in which they eventually lived with elderly relatives was a wooden miner’s cottage transported to Townsville from the goldmining town of Charters Towers ; additional rooms were added to accommodate all the occupants. It was a musical household filled with lively people , including , on the maternal side, great uncle Thomas Eykyn.

Uncle Tom, aristocratic in bearing and manner, was brought up in England by a relative who had been an MP for Eton and Windsor , married to a daughter of the sixth Lord Vaux. Through the MP, Uncle Tom met British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and  described him as having a yellow and crinkled face.

Attracted to the cloth , Uncle Tom trained at the Salisbury Theological College, was versed in Latin and Ancient Greek, and became an ordained Church of England minister . In midlife he gave up the church and travelled widely in the Pacific , calling on Queensland relatives along the way. During his travels he became concerned about the growing influence of America , saying he had been in Hawaii before “ the blasted Yanks owned it. ”

There he met the last reigning monarch of the Hawaiian islands, Queen Liliuokalani , who was forced to give up her throne when the country was annexed by the US . During his time there he had been taken to a cave in which he was told were buried the bones of Captain Cook . This claim , he said , was highly dubious as had been the people who acted as his guides .

His interest in the Pacific inspired him to write a Polynesian mass , Missa Pacifica , which included an Hawaiian melody , a copy of which is in the National Library of Australia. As a result of his observations , he wrote a book , Parts of the Pacific by a Peripatetic Parson. Uncle Tom wrote several other books , one being John Bull Awake , which warned the British Empire was being taken over by America . His attitude to America obviously rubbed off on his nephew.

In l922, at the age of 67, Uncle Tom had moved in with the Ashe family in Townsville , bringing with him an extensive library , including an l864 edition of the poetical works of Thomas Moore , which young John found inspiring. Ashe’s interest in literature was heightened when in l923 he was awarded Palgrave’s Golden Treasury as a maths prize at Townsville Grammar School .

Ashe put mathematics to great use-musically . He wrote that he discovered the piano was a mathematical instrument  and located all the main chords by arithmetic . Playing about with the piano , he was soon composing small pieces and also setting poems to music as songs. In those early days Ashe said Schubert had been his “God” because he had been the first man to know you must NOT play on the piano what you are singing …it must be something different to the melody , but with it harmonise.

Uncle Tom had a vast repertoire of songs , some of them quaint old English airs , and taught John to sing in French, Spanish and Italian . Uncle was a master of the King’s English and deplored the way Australians spoke “ beastly Cockney.”Ashe’s first job was as a copyholder to a proofreader at the Townsville Daily Bulletin. Then he went to the State Government Insurance office and later worked for public accountant C. T. Leach .

 A 1936 newspaper item reported that an old English music song play , “Come Lassies and Lads,” had been produced at St Anne’s Girls’ School. During the interval , Miss Mariette Ashe sang two numbers- “When Maidens Love” and “Just a Song At Twilight” . Mr “ Jack Ashe “ sang the “Miller’s Daughter”and” The Minstrel.”

In l938 he became the North Queensland representative of the Blennerhofosett Institute of Accountancy , a coaching firm . Ashe sang some of his early songs over the Townsville radio station 4TO ; just before World War 11 he was a radio announcer for three months . People who remembered his time as a DJ said he always tried to inject humour into the show . Subsequently, he explained that radio announcers each day had to play mass produced , run of the mill , uninspiring “bullsh” about loving you until the stars fall out of the sky , and crying your heart out , interspersed with moronic hillbillies .

As Uncle Tom lay dying in l940 , he anxiously asked how the Battle of Britain was going and if the Mother Country was winning the war. During his life he had written many letters to prominent people in Britain, including Royalty, Winston Churchill , Field Marshall Lord Roberts and the writer Marie Corelli . The letters he received in reply were kept in a box in a cabinet and on it being sold after his death to a secondhand dealer were thrown into a bin and burnt.

Ten days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour on December 7, l941, Ashe was employed as an accountant with the US Army Finance Office in Townsville until l945. During this time he saw vast amounts of money being paid out to US servicemen from a large table in what was part of the Commonwealth Bank . His sister, Mariette,  a North Queensland Eisteddford prize winning contralto with a striking voice, was given the unusual job of censoring letters American servicemen sent home and was shocked by some of the things she read .

It was suggested Ashe should write a war song , which he did – Swing Boys Sing – his first pop song in print. Copies were sent to all military bands throughout Australia . It was reported to be “ all the rage ” at the Ingleburn Army Camp , near Sydney. Another wartime song he wrote was Australia For Me . Unable to get a publisher for the tune , he paid for 500 copies of sheet music himself and sent them off to many artists. The internationally acclaimed Australian baritone Peter Dawson responded warmly. With an autographed photograph came the encouraging Dawson message : “ A good song, and when the occasion arises I will sing it . I admire your love of country , and hope you will give us much more . Worthwhile songs are scarce.” Dawson’s frequent singing of Waltzing Matilda during the war made it popular overseas and in Australia.

In a special wartime tribute to America , Ashe wrote Aint It Grand To Have A Rich Uncle Sam , the sheet music of which was decorated with the flags of both countries . A patriotic tune  he  composed  was Australia ( Home Sweet Home ) which  was sung by Alan Light with the National Military Band and the Sydney Singers over the ABC national programme; it was also recorded by the Ivan Rixon singers on the Prestophone label.

Ashe often took American servicemen home where they mainly listened to classical records. One of the Americans was Gabriel Jacoby , possibly a colonel, who had worked for the New York music publishers , Leo Feist Inc . In l942 Jacoby was sent to see Ashe after he told a Townsville music shop proprietor he had a song in his head that he wanted to put down on paper. From a jungle in New Guinea Jacoby sent Ashe lyrics for Memory Hill which he turned into a catchy, slow foxtrot. The song was sung to troops in New Guinea by Lanny Ross with the backing of a band . Ashe and Jacoby collaborated to produce other songs – Dream In Your Heart and Convicted and Sentenced.

Jacoby , who lived in Alabama, corresponded with Ashe after the war and tried to get American record companies interested in his Australian friend’s songs. From New York came a “ nice ” letter from Jacoby’s old boss , Mr Vocco, then a partner in music publishers Bregman Vocco and Conn, about a waltz John had written called Love’s Island.

While commenting favourably on the song , the publisher said the firm was so involved with Fox Films they could not handle it for him . In a l956 letter to Jacoby , Ashe voiced his frustration at being a battling songwriter in Australia . “ I have been promised so much in this country that never comes off , I am now convinced we are a lot of no –hopers here !” There had been a promise to record some songs in Melbourne , but nothing had been heard from the company for 10 months …“ Could drive you crazy !”  NEXT: Inspiration from the   bush and marriage .

 

ALAN JONES FOR PRIME MINISTER !!!!

It is surprising at a time when shock jock Alan Jones could end up a stuffed parrot in a Monty Python skit after widespread public outrage over such things as his bout of badmouthing women in general , the PM constantly and outrageously, especially in connection with the death of her father, that no reporter has contacted a top female journalist and author who wrote that Jones would have made a great Australian Prime Minister. Today, the very idea that Jones could be our PM would almost certainly cause   mass migration to the Kermadecs. 

 The journo who made this startling statement is Toni McRae who admits she was responsible for ruining Jones’s attempt to become the Premier of NSW  by dressing him in a skirt and the wicked Packer Press made fun of him .

Tough Aussies in pubs scoffed at this would- be- politician who danced in sheila’s clobber. All is revealed,including comments about Alan’s magnificent thighs, in her book EXPOSE Scandals,Stars and Scoops , Zeus Publications, 2011, reviewed previously in Little Darwin . At the very top of the cover illustration is a pic of a solemn looking Jones in 2GB, looking every bit  a  King's School  master,  his index finger pointing to Heaven, either  Line Dancing or doing  the  Hokey Pokey.

Veteran reporter Toni has interviewed many high flyers , and once actually worked with Jones when he stood for parliament , with  high hopes of  eventually becoming the Premier of NSW. To try and woo the Greek  vote , Toni induced Jones to dress up in a pleated skirt and a blouse-like-top which men in Rhodes had worn for centuries ;so attired,  he danced   with great gusto at a major Greek festival.

It has to be said the Toni was impressed by Jones, his drive, intelligence   and pointed out that he was “so poor “ that he had a bomb of a car and had to borrow hers.  After failing to  enter parliament, Jones eventually got  a  job  as speechwriter for  Malcolm Fraser. There is another photo of Jones on a home exercise machine in the book . Toni once worked in Darwin, now lives at Hervey Bay,Queensland, and  is working on another  book. Her latest published book  is the biography of  a Greek millionaire with  Darwin  connections .   

JONES LOSES MORE WHEELS

In a new blow to Alan Jones, the NSW Rickshaw Drivers’ Association has placed a black ban on the broadcaster. Jones has been reduced to roller skates for transport since his free Mercedes was taken back and fumigated . In a special protest meeting held outside a Martin Place watercloset, a convoy of angry rickshaw drivers declared Jones a persona non passenger . Rickshaw spokesman , Spike Milligan , said all right thinking drivers , including notorious raspberry blower  Neddy Seagoon, were outraged by what Jones said on air about the PM . Some would like to see Jones fall or be thrown  in the water at  the infamous North Bondi outlet . Meanwhile the Charles Darwin University senate  ( anybody for beef jerky ?),may even be brave  and   instruct  the campus  radio station to stop running The Parrot’s squawking .