PRICKLE FARMER RESURRECTED

The extensive promos for the ABC’s new 24 hour news channel have been running footage of the well known former Darwin journalist, the late Mike Hayes, reporting from the Cyclone Tracy devastated city in 1974.

Songwriter, musician, raconteur, comedian, he even won the World Yarnspinning Championship in Darwin from author Frank Hardy . His Prickle Farm ABC radio series , about the happenings at Gundaroo , near Canberra, in which he had a small holding , which rivalled the Vestey pastoral empire , was well received throughout the nation.

He and his brother recorded songs under the name The Fabulous Hayes Brothers. His biggest selling song, Narelle, about the travails of rural women in tough times, such as droughts, was recorded by Rolf Harris. Mike was 58 when he died in 2003.

In the Little Darwin files is a photograph of Mike , armed with a bow and arrow , to which is attached a fishing reel with a line to haul in the catch, in a Fannie Bay demonstration of a new exciting way to catch killer whales.

ALP SECRET WEAPON REVEALED

Deep inside a popular Sydney Chinese restaurant where Sussex Street assassins and gluttonous journalists regularly disport themselves , the ALP’s secret election weapon -Basil the psychic Balmain Bug - is kept prisoner in a locked room.

Basil is Australia’s answer to the repulsive octopus which became a global celebrity by predicting the outcome of soccer matches in South Africa. Our Basil is the house trained pet of former NSW Premier , Neville Wran, who found the cute creature was still alive when he won a seafood tray in an ALP raffle. Instead of cooking him, Wran made the critter one of the family and taught him all he knows about politics.

It was discovered Basil could predict the outcome of elections anywhere in the world. In an exclusive interview with Little Darwin, Neville Wran said he is proud of Basil because he is a tough little bugger. “Balmain Bugs don’t cry,” he told us-apparently they do not have tear ducts.


When the ALP’s X-lotto numbers man, Richo ,heard about Basil’s amazing powers and encyclopedic political knowledge, he borrowed him from his old mate to head the government’s election campaign. “ If Basil says Julia has to look like a mermaid to win votes, we’ll have her sitting on a rock looking like the Little Mermaid out of Hans Christian Andersen,” Richo , a master tactician , told us.

Each day now, Basil is asked who will win the forthcoming election. The crustacean has the choice of two things: a steamed dim sim , representing hot gospeller Tony Abbott , or an upright springroll with a strip of red Peking Duck on top which, of course, stands for Julia Gillard.

Without exception , Basil darts at the springroll and devours it in a flash. There is concern that if he eats too many springrolls he will end up looking like a magnificent West Australian rock lobster and elope with Magda Szubanski who now looks like Twiggy or a seductive springroll , throwing the entire ALP campaign into disarray.

BANKS IN THE FIRING LINE

Darwin man trying to get his affairs in order after death of his wife contacted one of the four pillars of our banking system to arrange necessary change to the joint account. Two months later , after several non-returned calls from the bank, strange requests , being notified that he , a retiree , now had a business account ( never mentioned at any stage , not wanted ) , and a statement that the Sydney office would have to be contacted for instructions about what to do about the piddling amount of $30 , an interview was arranged with the manager.

Not good enough was the mild , if inadequate, verdict by the bank official when the unsatisfactory saga was detailed. It is a wonder the customer, who had been dealing with the bank for 50 years, was not given a complimentary packet or two of Fantales for the stress.

In case you have not noticed, something strange has been going on in banking . Banks have actually been handing money back to customers after it was discovered that they had been illegally , systematically milking the public. The media follow up stories have been few and far between on this subject .

There was a truly bizarre event in Melbourne when a large number of ANZ staff were either sacked or departed after it was alleged some kind of drug distribution had been going on from the premises.

After 10 years of heartbreak and trauma , a Sydney friend recently got settlement of a kind from a bank - one of the four pillars - which enthusiastically urged she and her husband should take a loan against the value of their house and invest it in a recommended property development group which went belly up out west, taking with it the savings of many people. It was subsequently discovered that in filling out the papers for the investment, the bank had given her a bogus occupation - hairdresser . Sounds like the subprime racket in the USA which brought the world to the brink of a depression.

In the attempt to get justice -a hard to obtain commodity when dealing with banks who like to use their money, power and lawyers to crush mere mortals- she went to all the so- called regulators , politicians , and media organisations , the latter tending to quickly drop the matter , apparently because it was a bit involved and involved the Big End of town .

However, one crusader in WA took up the case for many of the people caught up in the smelly affair and kept fighting. During the decade of struggle , the woman and her husband were under constant threat of being evicted from their own house, there was great family tension and the future looked bleak.

In the Storm Finances collapse in Townsville, Queensland, hundreds of millions were lost , people were ruined , marriages broke down when the stockmarket took a dive . Evidence came out at public hearings and TV interviews that false claims were made in documents about the income of people who were advised to borrow more and more money to invest in the stockmarket.

It was claimed that a small Townsville Commonwealth bank was writing amazing amounts of loans and nobody, apparently, at head office or elsewhere thought there was a teensy weensy justification for close examination to see what the hell was going on .

During an early goldrush in nearby Charters Towers it is said a miner who struck it rich rode a horse shod with with golden shoes and a song was written about him and his flash mount . It is not sure which bank thought Townsville's streets were paved with gold during the stockmarket casino run.

The Commonwealth Bank has offered some victims of the Storm collapse a resolution of some kind , secret of course. Others are resorting to class action. America has just passed new legislation to get tough with its outrageous banks which had to be bailed out by the nation to the tune of some $700 billion . There the banks mounted an expensive campaign to try and prevent the government from ending their long running party .

The revealed slick dealings of our own banks and financial industry demands stronger regulations and penalties , more alert regulators with greater powers who react speedily to the complaints of Joe Public , often ruined overnight .

NAUGHTY AUNTY ABC

You expect Yanks to butcher English but the local ABC comes up with some excruciating clangers . The island of , sounded liked , Goo-am , is a protectorate of what country ? asked one morning radio presenter. Think she meant Guam , pronounced Gwarm . Another ABC newsreader called the Pfizer drug company Fizzer ,many of which are found after cracker night.

An American techno- optimist who advises a large number of the top 500 US corporations mentioned Armageddon , but the way he pronounced the word it came out not like the end of the world but a medication for treating insomnia and drug addiction – a mogadon . When using the adjective affluent, he twice made it sound like what comes out of the Larrakeyah poo shooter. If I heard him correctly, he repeated the cheery news that during the next millennium there would be three international wars and humanity would survive .

Increasingly , the annoying American way of referring to the French/English word route as ROWT is heard over the Australian airwaves, including some of our academics who must have received a Fullbright Scholarship and swanned about the US of A , picking up the local twang .

JACK SUE TRAGEDY

It is sad to learn that WW11 Z Force commando , Jack Sue, who died last year , aged 84, has been accused of fabricating parts of his book, Blood in Borneo, dealing with his part in the campaign against the Japanese forces. Military historian Lynette Silver has claimed there are factual errors and inconsistencies in the book. In particular, she said Sue’s claim to have been a witness to the Sandakan death marches did not accord with the records. Sandakan has been described as the single worst atrocity suffered by Australian servicemen during WW11. More than 3600 Indonesian slave labourers and some 2400 Allied prisoners died

While doing research on the wartime record of another Z Force commando , the late James Frederick Bowditch, MC, a former editor of the Northern Territory News , Cyclops had several telephone conversations with Sue in WA . Although he had not been on any operations with Bowditch, Sue, who received the DCM for his wartime exploits, was well aware of him.

He was able to supply the name ( which Bowditch had forgotten) and details of the unarmed combat instructor on Fraser Island , Queensland, a former Perth professional wrestler, who used to attack his men at any hour to see if they were alert and battle ready. Bowditch said you would be coming out of your tent first thing in the morning , hear a scream , and it was the instructor, a major, who weighed about 20 stone, flying at you feet first. He described the startling situation as being like a scene from the Pink Panther movie, Peter Sellers playing the crazy Inspector Clouseau , his oriental manservant trying to catch him off guard .

Sue’s cousin, Peter Wong, was on Fraser Island when he heard “mad screaming” within the instructor’s tent , from which he charged , wielding a rifle with bayonet attached , and hurled it at him. Much smaller, but versed in unarmed combat, Wong stepped aside and threw the rifle into a sandbagged sandpit in which much training took place.

The major and Wong then had a wild wrestle in the sandpit, Sue’s cousin becoming so furious after having his head rubbed into the sand, he hurled the major out of the ring three times. This response on behalf of Wong delighted the major.


The book responsible for the controversy was written after Sue suffered a stroke . Historian Lynette Silver came across the claimed inconsistencies in the book when asked to do research for a proposed documentary. As a result of research done by Silver , the former president of the Prisoner of War Association of Australia, Rex Crane, last year was charged with fraud as he had never been a POW .

The WA state president of the RSL , Bill Gaynor , has gone on record as saying Jack Sue had been a man of integrity who would not make any claims that were not true.

CHARLIE'S PUNCHY TUCKER

A former Northern Territory boxing champion, Tommy McDonald, recently visited Darwin from Canberra and went looking for Charlie’s restaurant in the CBD but was disappointed to hear that it had closed its doors not long ago. He told Little Darwin how a tasty steak at Charlie’s had helped him form the conviction that he would knock out his opponent , Frankie Martin, at a forthcoming professional fight.

After the weigh in for the bout , Tommy headed to Charlie’s and ordered a big steak. While devouring the steak he psyched himself up for the fight against his experienced opponent who had a reputation for going the knuckle.

Both fighters bounced out of their corner and went at it hammer and tongs . Martin hit the deck on his face with blood streaming from two cuts to his face . McDonald , also sporting a cut about his eye, thought it was all over , but referee Tim Angeles, probably thinking fight fans would be annoyed if the bout was over after only one round, delivered a slow count and Martin got to his feet. It was to no avail because Martin went down in the second and was counted out. Both combatants could have done with a platter of Charlie's raw steaks to ease the facial swelling.

An angry fight fan from the Northern Territory News, compositor Bobby Wills, claimed Frankie had taken a dive, having put money on Tommy to win. McDonald rejected this suggestion . Martin had thrown everything at him and had taken a lot of punishment

There were no lasting hard feelings over the fight. Years later , McDonald saw Frankie Martin, running an Aboriginal hostel at the time , in Canberra, with the late Charlie Perkins of the Aboriginal Affairs Department , and they invited him to come and have lunch with them

During this recent visit to Darwin with his wife, Judith , Tommy went out to the McMillan’s Road cemetery to see his father’s grave. While there he came across the grave of a promising Darwin boxer, Johnny Hunter, who was tragically killed during a magpie goose shooting trip before a scheduled fight.

McDonald fought under the name Rocky Mack , some of his bouts taking place in the Rushcutters Bay Stadium , Sydney. He arrived in Darwin from Scotland with his family in l948. As an indication that nothing much has changed in Darwin since those days, he was walking home from the Star Theatre one night and picked up a stray crocodile in the gutter.

Tommy showed Little Darwin an advertisement out of the NT News for the M.V. Johnston Motors WHO’S WHO contest which invited readers to identify six well known Territorians- young Tommy one of them. Others included community fund raiser Billy Pitscheneder , diver Carl Atkinson , Nelly Flynn from Rum Jungle who inspired a character in Xavier Herbert's novel Capricornia, and another girl who was a Miss NT or Miss Australia entrant. The prize, he thinks , was a weekend at Adelaide River .

SENSATIONAL DARWIN AIRPORT INCIDENT REVIVED BY DEATH

The dramatic 1954 Darwin Airport international incident which saw police manhandle armed Russian guards attempting to hustle Mrs Evdokia Petrov , wife of a defecting Russian diplomat, out of the country has been resurrected by the recent death of distinguished Australian public servant and academic, John Burton .

The Petrov Affair was mentioned in the replay of a Burton interview by Phillip Adams in the excellent ABC Late Night Live classic interviews series.

Burton emphatically stated he felt the Petrov Affair, which included a Royal Commission, had been a political stunt to damage Labor. [ It came to light three weeks before a Federal election at a time when it was felt the Menzies government would be voted out and it would have to, as one newspaper putit , pull a rabbit out of a hat not to be swept from office ; Menzies was re-elected . ]

Burton said Vladimir Petrov, Third Secretary at the Russian Embassy, Canberra, had been playing up all the time and it was quite reasonable for the Russian ambassador to want to send him back to Russia . In the case of his wife, she was quite different, and the couple were not getting on well at the time. Her husband had defected and she, escorted by two guards, had been dragged aboard a BOAC flight plane to be taken back to Russia. There were extraordinary scenes at Sydney airport when an angry crowd , many of them European migrants, invaded the tarmac and attempted to prevent the guards from taking the distraught Mrs Petrov aboard the flight.

In Darwin , a deadlock was put on one guard , and they were relieved of their weapons. Mrs Petrov sought asylum and was taken to Government House.

Her husband had been able to make contact with the Defence Department and brought with him a document, which Burton suspected Colonel Charles Spry of ASIO had drafted . “ Petrov could not have drafted it as his English was impossible” he told Adams.[ It was subsequently revealed that Vladimir Petrov had been paid 5000 pound on defecting and promised a similar amount if the document he supplied ASIO warranted it]. That document , said Burton , dealing with many issues, gave the impression that Prime Minister Menzies was going to rescue all of Australia from subversive elements . No one would ever know the truth, he continued but he felt there was strong evidence that it was “ just a political stunt. ”

(An eyewitness account of the Darwin rescue of Mrs Petrov , written by New Zealand journalist and author , Ross Annabell, a former editor of the NT News , was recently published in the Northern Territory Police Museum and Historical Society journal, Citation. It consisted of the actual story he filed covering the event.)

Burton , the head of the External Affairs Department , also had another important link with Darwin. He was involved in the Federal government’s move to establish another newspaper in Darwin other than the union owned and run Northern Standard , regarded as a communist publication, which eventually led to the birth of the NT News. PM Ben Chifley , said to be obsessive about communists, is thought to have originated the idea for a new Darwin paper . In 1948 Burton raised the issue with political reporter Don Whitington, former chief of the Canberra bureau of the Frank Packer owned Consolidated Press, who had close contact with the ALP.

When the Chifley government was voted out, Canberra lost interest in the newspaper proposal. However, it was later renewed and the conservatives arranged for the old tin bank in Smith Street to be made available to Whitington and Eric White , head of a leading PR firm , who had a strong connection to PM Robert Menzies , for the new paper.

Burton died at the age of 95 . During his time he worked round the clock during WW11 in Canberra , was closely involved with the workaholic, demanding and suspicious Doctor Evatt , including the period in which he played a big role in setting up the UN , contributed behind the scenes to the eventual settlement of the Indonesian Konfrontasi with Malaysia and Singapore , pioneered the study of conflict resolution now taught in many universities, and was a contemporary of other influential public servants such as " Nugget" Coombs and Roland Wilson .

Believing in the postwar welfare state set up by Atlee in Britain ,which Curtin and Chifley pushed here, he unsuccessfully stood as a Labor candidate in the federal seat of Lowe, which was won by William McMahon, later to become PM. Burton upset Labor by leading a delegation to a peace conference in China and claimed the US had used chemical weapons in Korea. Interestingly, he opposed the Indonesian takeover of West Papua from the Dutch .