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Still flying high over Townsville is the large Adani coal mining company sign . In November, Adani changed its name to Bravus, an unfortunate move as academics pointed out the name could be taken to mean "villainous and crooked."
While describing itself as the Queen City of the North, Townsville is also the throbbing metropolis where large public clocks do not work . One is the former post office tower clock , below ; its failure to partly imitate London's Big Ben , mentioned in a British documentary , gives the impression of being permanently drunk .
Then there is the one over the railway travel centre that has been derailed for a long time . There could be two shovel-ready news stories for any wound up mainland media organisation that ventures into the CBD pits, looks about, asks questions. Regular checks of the city's neglected war memorials would also result in more copy, says our Shipping Reporter.
Eureka moments in New Zealand
The latest edition of the New Zealand Genealogist contains many interesting articles , two in particular by Miles Dillon, who seems to be a relentless researcher. Included in the Auckland Museum Library treasures, he writes , is a small file of letters written between 1858 to l863 to Bishop George Augustus Selwyn, the first Anglican Bishop of New Zealand , which included Melanesia , by members of the Pitcairn Island Bounty mutineers community resident on Norfolk Island .
The literacy and educational achievements of the isolated Pitcairners amazed the writer .
Dillon was impressed by the literate and writing style of Arthur Quintall Senior (1795-1874),son of Bounty mutineer Matthew Quintall and Tevarua.
He wrote with a flourish in a strong, well formed hand. His son, John Quintall, employed a " tight , uniform style in the l850s."
However ,it was puzzling to discover a letter from John in 1907 written in a " juvenile-script of a primary schooler". Why ?
NZ and Australian newspapers published a periodic syndicated column from a Norfolk Island correspondent , The Auckland Star of November 15,l888, provided the answer .
It said one of the oldest and most respected members of the community, Johnny Quintall,"through the premature explosion of a charge of dynamite, while fishing from the pier , blew his hand away, there also being injury to his face, body and legs .
Not only did he make a full recovery after his arm was amputated four inches above the wrist, but he taught himself to write again with his left (?) hand . Eureka!I had my explanation, Dillon penned. . Johnny lived to 90.
Dillon had another Eureka! moment , solving a 50 year puzzle while researching his grandfather Edwin Logan Dillon, a teacher and keen photographer , who contributed to various publications.
Two photographs the writer had been aware of since a child were of a well dressed Pacific Islander (above) in a suit and bowtie, and another snap of him at the front of a house, in the l920s. He was eventually identified as Olaf Frederick Nelson , a fighter for Samoan independence , who from January 1928 was exiled to New Zealand for five years.
The son of a Swedish trader and a Samoan mother, Nelson, who could speak Swedish and German as well as English , was a leading businessman and politician, one of the founders of the anti-colonial Mau Movement , declared seditious . While in exile in Auckland, he set up the NZ Samoa Defence League and started a newspaper, the NZ Samoa Guardian .
In l962, Western Samoa became the first Pacific Island nation to achieve independence ,from New Zealand , .later changing its name to Samoa .
Shipping Reporter Expose
The ongoing neglect of war memorials in the garrison city of Townsville continues.
Following is the shameful pictorial evidence from last Friday afternoon .At the front of the North Queensland Remembrance Garden , the metal lift up lid for the register of those honoured within the garden , bearing on top the names Australian Government , Department of Veterans' Affairs and Office of Australian War Graves , was obscured by muck, which was on the surrounds as well.
A short distance away, last Friday , at the large Battle for the Coral Sea Memorial (below) there were assorted leaves and droppings from surrounding trees , a broken plastic fork. Details of the major battle need touching up as much of the white lettering has been washed away or faded.
Another nearby important memorial (below) commemorating the fierce 1945 battle by Australians launched from landing craft at Porton Plantation, North Bougainville, needed a clean up of its surrounds .
