MERMAID LINK WITH DARWIN

The wreck of HM Schooner, Mermaid, used to chart large parts of the Australian coastline, including a portion of what became the Northern Territory, has been found off Cairns by an Australian National Maritime Museum expedition. After striking Flora Reef,13km east of Frankland Islands, the vessel sank 180 years ago. The cartographer and mariner Phillip Parker King circumnavigated Australia twice in the Mermaid . He mapped large sections of the coastline from Arnhem Land to Cape Leeuwin and King George Sound to the Great Barrier Reef between 1817 and l822.

Under command of another mariner, Samuel Nolbrow, the Mermaid left Sydney for Port Raffles (Cobourg Peninsula ) on May 10, l829 . Disregarding advice, he took the dangerous route through the Barrier Reef and ran aground. A detailed account of the discovery can be found in the lively Magnetic Island online newspaper at http://www.magnetictimes.com.

NOTE-King dined with Charles Darwin in Sydney before he set sail for home to later write his controversial book about the origin of species.

HOWARD FACES HAVANA HORROR

Former Australian PM, John Howard , has been placed on the hit list of the bumbling squad which has attempted to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro more times than Donald Bradman and Matthew Hayden made runs.

Mr Howard is the target of the month because he insisted on squatting in the White House grannie flat instead of allowing President Elect Barack Obama and family to move in and roast marshmallows. Little Darwin has been informed that the brutal executioners have drawn up 628 sure ways to rub out our beloved former leader during the next seven days.

Top of the list is a gift box of Bill Clinton exploding imitation Cuban cigars. If that fails, there is the old shrinking Akubra hatband trick which will suddenly apply the pressure of a randy octopus to his brain , causing it, and his eyebrows , to pop. Other fiendish methods include arranging for a statue of Amanda Twentystone to fall on him, presenting him with a rabies infected pet rodent and , most hideously, casting him adrift in a crowded , leaking refugee boat off the North Australian coast .
.

DARWIN NURSING SHORTAGE EASES

A celebrity British nurse better known than Victoria Beckam flies in tomorrow to begin new age bedpan duty at Royal Darwin Hospital. She is Florence Nightingale who has been attempting to get a job at RDH for more than 150 years. During the bitterly cold Crimean War, Ms Nightingale heard about the fabulous Northern Territory lifestyle. “Bugger this ,”she muttered, shivering, despite a quick swig of rum from a hip flask, while the vinegary faced matron was busily waxing Lord Kitchener’s moustache . “ I’m off to sunny Darwin .”

On the back of a suffragette war manifesto, she scribbled an application for a nursing job in Darwin , addressed it to the Health Department , placed it in one of the empty gin bottles from under her bed and chucked it into the Black Sea.

Miraculously, the bottle quickly washed up at Glenelg , Adelaide , and was transported by Afghan camel, donkey , an Aboriginal runner with a cleft message stick and pony express to the Darwin Health Department IN tray . In those rough and ready pioneering days the department was located in a bush timber building shared with a sly grog shop. White ants promptly ate her application.

After nearly a half century wait , patient Florence enlisted Queen Victoria’s help to get a reply. The Queen , not amused by the absurd delay , threw another plonk bottle in the briny with a royal command to appoint Ms Nightingale. Unfortunately , prevailing currents carried the bottle north to Greenland where it was buried deep beneath the ice cap.

While waiting for the reply, Ms Nightingale knocked back at least 1000 marriage proposals , a job in Buckingham Palace shovelling dung in the Queen’s racehorse stables and a lucrative career as a chorus girl. It is also rumoured she had a dalliance with a prominent WW11 politician who, like Bill Clinton, loved cigars and made rude public gestures with his digits.

Thanks to global warming, the Greenland ice cover melted , the bottle floated free and reached Darwin after being plucked from the sea by an Iraqi refugee picked up by the Tampa. Eventually Ms Nightingale received a letter from the Health Department confirming her appointment, even though it was nibbled by termites. Filled with joy, she cartwheeled through the Chelsea Pensioners’ barracks in her best Mother Hubbard and several inmates died from shock when they spotted a naked ankle. Then she threw her daring neck to ankle bikini into a kitbag and booked a cattle class ticket for the fabulous Territory.

Before setting out on her flight to Darwin, Ms Nightingale graciously agreed to an interview by Little Darwin’s London based medical roundsman , Dr Jonathan Ripper. Dr Ripper says Nightingale, looking like a dried out mummy from King Tut’s tomb, needs a good rub down with copious quantities of whale oil and extensive cosmetic surgery . In other words, she looks like your typical overworked Darwin nurse. Our reporter strongly advised Ms Nightingale to put a new wick in her lamp to cope with Darwin’s blackouts .

Ms Nightingale is looking forward to the lavish residential accommodation for medical staff at the Royal Darwin Hospital which is affectionately known as the Black Hole of Sebastopol .

CROCNETIC MAULS SLUGGISH DARWIN

Queensland has pulled the rug from under Darwin with yet another catchy tourist slogan. Remember how Queensland successfully boasted about being beautiful one day and perfect the next-despite being ankle deep in cane toads ? Well, with all the publicity given to one solitary crocodile recently swimming about Magnetic Island, off Townsville, the lovely resort, under threat by developers with beer bellies and white shoes, now calls itself CROCNETIC .

This surely shows up how devoid of imagination we are here in the Territory when, if you believe the local paper, we are knee deep in saurians and have been so since Garden of Eden times . Yet nobody here in the NT has thought fit to devise a catchy slogan or suggested renaming Darwin to cash in on our superfluity of crocs. Just being known as plain old Darwin conveys the impression of a geriatric bloke who cuddles monkeys or that it is some kind of human zoo, not far from the truth. As annoying advertising denizens would say, brand-wise , Darwin is not very sexy .

Just imagine what changing the name of Darwin to CROCVILLE would do for the tourist industry. Country music unfortunates and jazz fiends would be attracted by the name CROC-A-BILLY BAYOU. The CROC POT would appeal to overseas gourmets wanting to sink their teeth into Down Under wildlife. And for all the huffing and puffing about Baz Luhrmann’s film , Australia, being used to promote Northern Territory tourism, it did not feature one crocodile in the script. What a blunder! As Napoleon would say, who is responsible for this faux pas, Josephine ?

The crocodile which inspired Magnetic Island was an unfortunate creature which had been transported by the Environment Protection Authority 1000kms from Cape York Peninsula and relocated near Townsville. Feeling lonely, it liked the look of Magnetic Island, so headed there and petrified locals and tourists. After a few weeks , it was captured and, sadly, died. CSI New York are looking into the suspicious death and are anxious to interview a woman seen running away in lizard skin shoes. The Queensland government has coughed up $40,000 compensation for the island to help it get over the croc attack , a clear indication of how close the next election will be in Bananaland .

During the island pursuit of the crocodile , the arty editor of the online newspaper, The Magnetic Times, George Hirst, even composed a lengthy poem along the lines of Banjo Paterson’s The Man From Snowy River. It was headed The Croc from EPA and opened with …There were many in the water / when the word was passed around / that the croc from EPA had got away / Wired to a satellite / they thought it could be found / But the croc had headed north for Cockle Bay.

Apparently editors of the NT News have never been poetically inclined otherwise they would surely have penned a ream of rollicking ditties like editor Hirst’s Nobel Prize effort . Some grumpy, unimaginative spin doctors and uncouth readers of this post will undoubtedly describe it ( and others ) as a Crock of S***.

SHOCK AUSTRALIAN SWIMMING LEAK

Once again, Little Darwin’s hyper-active sports department, its members regularly tested for substance abuse, can reveal an astonishing scoop about Australia’s secret new human fish who will dominate the next Olympics.

He is Bill Leak, the gifted Australian newspaper cartoonist, artist, parrot fancier , dog lover and now life member of the famed limp fallers’ club. After his recent stint in hospital following his nasty fall on his head , Leak has more lumps on his cranium than a humpback whale. And recent scientific tests have shown that whale lumps, rather than impeding progress through water, actually accelerate progress.

Furthermore, it has also been discovered that these same whale- like bumps on planes reduce the fuel bill by as much as 35 per cent - which will make airline companies very reluctant to reduce fares. Anyway , let’s get back to Bill’s bumps , as the actress said to the phrenologist.

In secret trials , Leak has been dragged behind a Manly ferry and performed like another show off Flipper . He frequently surfed ahead of the ferry and reached the destination in time to push the ramp into position for passengers to alight . Swimming Australia, planning ahead for the British Olympics , believes Leak is capable of rewriting the world’s swimming record books due to his bumps. There are, however, two major problems: his bumps could subside to mere pimples and the Japanese whaling fleet could harpoon him as part of their bogus scientific study of dogfood.

To make sure Leak retains his bumps, he will be regularly battered with a piece of four by two by his mate , John Singleton . The Australian Navy has been instructed to blow Japanese whalers out of the water if they come within 100kms of leak’s bathtub. A noisy Collins class sub will also shadow the whaling fleet in Antarctica and cause all sea life to flee and take shelter off Bondi . Dawn Fraser, who had a nasty collision with a midget submarine manned by Australian swimming officials some decades ago, is helping train Leak . This morning she told Little Darwin she will do something unusual with a Japanese flag if the whalers harm or impede lumpy Leak during training in the open sea . Naturally, this breathtaking report will win another Walkley Award for Little Darwin and bring a takeover bid from Singleton who knows a hotshot outfit when he sees one.

LITTLE DARWIN WORLD CRICKET SCOOP

The cricket world will be stunned this morning when it learns that former Australian PM and cricket tragic , John Howard , will coach the Pakistan cricket team . Howard impressed the Pakistanis during a visit to that country when he was PM and bowled several overs which no batsman was able to hit . On that occasion his balls performed a weird trajectory said to be a cross between a googly and Kermit the frog with a bad dose of Delhi belly.

The Pakistani batsmen were mesmerised by the PM’s deliveries and went in awe of him. They said his wrist action was stranger than that of Muralithuran . Baffled sub continent cricket writers at the time declared him a demon bowler. In an exclusive interview with Little Darwin at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Mr Howard yesterday said he is not fazed by the fact that a former Pakistani coach was found dead in a hotel room in mysterious circumstances. “I have nothing to fear in Pakistan , ” said he. “Some of my closest Coalition friends in Australia want to garrotte me after the election debacle, so what have I got to lose in Pakistan ?”

FOOTNOTE : Alert watchers of the Channel 9 Australia v South Africa coverage will have noticed that the ex PM had very bushy eyebrows when he was interviewed by Tubby Taylor. Little Darwin can reveal this luxuriant growth is due to Shane Warne’s exclusive hair treatment . With the help of KFC secret herbs and spices, the eyebrows will rapidly grow into a thick mop of hair and he will arrive in Pakistan looking like a lost Beatle with one of Warnie’s spare studs in his ear.

NT FIRES UP SASSY SHARPSHOOTER

Duck! Trigger- happy US vice president contender, Sarah Palin , is coming to the Territory on a Down Under shooting safari. She became interested in Australia when she heard that bucks never seem to stop in our political shooting gallery .

Right now, the Haneen buck, with more antlers than a herd of hatstands, is running free when , by rights, it should be shot, stuffed and turned into venison or a tasty dish of vindaloo. Recovering from the strenuous presidential election, during which she was repeatedly shot in the butt by comedians and gun totin’ Republicans , Palin wants to relax, culling our wildlife.

This morning Governor Palin told Little Darwin’s Alaskan correspondent , Juneau Junior , that Darwin seems like an ideal spot for a mild mannered hockey mom with an itchy trigger finger to chill out . She has been informed that the grounds of Darwin Hospital are overrun by rampant feral bucks. It would give her great satisfaction to plug some of these critters straight between the eyes like Annie Oakly or her hero, the late Charlton Heston, who now runs a shooting gallery for right wing angels on Cloud Nine. .

In another generous gesture, the Alaskan Governor says she will teach Country Party leader Terry Mills how to use a Winchester to cull out his restless herd to avoid being gored from behind by a fractious follower. She told Little Darwin she will advise Mills to perform a Dick Cheney shoot- your- buddy episode on any bellowing pollie who shows the slightest sign of becoming beastly.