DARWIN'S DUCHESS OF DUKE STREET HAS RENDEZVOUS WITH AN ANGEL

A touching and unusual tale about an angel delivering a feather to announce the death of a Darwin woman, once known as the Duchess of Duke Street, emerged at the funeral service for Jill Graham , of Nightcliff, pictured above .

The celebrant told the small gathering that a woman living in Queensland had found the feather in her house and believed it had been delivered by an angel to announce that Graham had died .

Little Darwin attended the service and followed up the story . Jill had a friend with whom she had worked in the NT Government’s Protocol section . They had discussed life after death . Graham, an atheist, said it was finito once you died and were buried or cremated . Her friend, now residing on the Gold Coast , having had a long illness , firmly told Jill there was life after death.

They regularly rang each other to see if they were alive or “upstairs" . A kind of a pact was made to let the other know if they were no longer around. After hearing that Jill was in hospital , a feather suddenly appeared in her house which was taken as having been brought by “an angel” announcing Jill had departed her mortal coil. And so she had .

A highly efficient , low level clerk in the public service , Jill Graham used to be one of the most powerful people in Darwin. She compiled ,updated and had published for several years what amounted to the A-List, called WHO’S WHAT WHERE . You were a nobody, even if your were on the Readers’ Digest ubiquitous mailing list, if your name did not appear in its pages. People clamoured to be included in the publication, which she irreverently called WHO’S UP WHO .

At her funeral service , it was revealed that she deliberately left out some people from the directory because she did not like them, probably with great justifaction . A shorthand typist from London, Jill worked in the Information and Public Relations office, later in Protocol, playing a prominent part in both .

In the chaos after Cyclone Tracy , she helped produce a daily information sheet which was run off and distributed at centres where people went for meals in the wrecked city . Soon after , she went to Sydney to help conduct the Northern Territory stand at the Royal Easter Show with the head of Information and PR , Dick Timperley , and the “White Hunter “, Allan Alexander Stewart , of Nourlangie safari camp fame.

Stewart , an old PR hand who handled the Humpty Doo rice account, once stood for parliament in NSW and later in the NT, took up a position in the members’ bars at the show where he hobnobbed with old military mates and captains of commerce.

He arranged for the Royal Australian Naval Band to frequently march up to the NT stand and play deafening music for Jill Graham and Dick Timperley . While Timperley was furious, Jill thought it hilarious. Timperley said he would not have been surprised if the White Hunter arranged for a Scottish pipe band playing Amazing Grace to be parachuted onto the stand, which would reveal what was hidden beneath the kilts. Through her work she met many local, interstate and overseas journalists .

At the funeral, a longtime friend , Shirley McManus,recalled that when Jill lived in Duke Street, Stuart Park , being a good cook , she entertained friends with fancy meals at which the wine flowed. Because of these grand evenings, she became known as The Duchess of Duke Street, after the British TV series, centred about the renowned female hotel owner, highly regarded for the wonderful table she kept.

Jill liked a punt, and each Melbourne Cup she held a party in her small unit ,which was decorated for the occasion , her catering lavish . She was also a dab hand at billiards and snooker.

Cockroaches terrified her from the moment she first encountered them in her Sydney bedroom and screamed blue murder , soon after she arrived in Australia. On being told that cockroaches would be numerous in Darwin, she went to the library and got out every book she could which had information about them. When a librarian asked if she was making a study of cockies, she said no, she just wanted to know how to kill them. Her unit was sprayed every three months to achieve a cockroach free zone .

Two of her great nieces , Louise and Clare , raised in Darwin, came up from Sydney for the funeral , and told how Jill had a magical influence on the household each time she visited when they were children . They loved her visits so much they made a sign WELCOME QUEEN JILL , placed on display near her coffin, along with family photos and a teddy bear or two .

Jill, 75, died suddenly in the Darwin private hospital on January 4 and was cremated .

NOBODY HOME IN CORRIDORS OF POWER

During business hours, a person recently rang the Chief Minister’s Office and got an answering machine . Is there a staff shortage or is the place still in holiday mode? Seems so going on another encounter with the same office .

There having been no reply on a matter, the Chief Minister’s office was contacted . Oh, yes. That was handed to somebody who is now on holidays .

From the Wedding Cake came a wordy ,unsatisfactory –annoying - letter from a ministerial adviser apologising for not having replied to a letter sent to the minister more than a year ago! How does the slogan go ? Real ideas ...Real action.

Here are a few impertinent ideas. Get a real human being to answer your phone and if somebody is going off on hols get them to clear the in basket before departure .

DARWIN TRUCK WITH HISTORICAL MILEAGE FOR SPRAY JOB?- Exclusive

A truck which has played a large part in the social history of the Northern Territory is being considered for heritage listing and restoration. It is a 30cwt Bedford owned by longtime Darwin activist, Brian Manning.

Over the decades it has been used to advance Aboriginal rights, provide the official platform for speakers at May Day Parades, carry bodies after Cyclone Tracy , run supplies to strikers at Newcastle Waters and the Gurindjis who walked off Wave Hill , maintain radio contact with East Timor after the Indonesian invasion and scores of other causes.

Manning bought the truck from the Darwin Workers’ Club when he was its manager . The Aboriginal footballer and actor , Robert Tudawali , was involved in running supplies to the Gurindji on the truck. Manning has a photograph showing Tudawali loading supplies onto the truck shortly before he was diagnosed suffering from TB.

Federal Police commandeered the truck after Cyclone Tracy to convey bodies to the morgue. Sandblasted by the fierce winds, the green duco on the vehicle had been cut back to the red undercoat.

Manning had the truck fitted with a special public address system operated from the cabin which enabled official speakers to be heard at May Day Parades. A Communist and an official of the Darwin Watersiders , Brian has taken part in many campaigns, including ones with former NT News crusading editor, Jim Bowditch, at whose funeral he paid a lengthy tribute.

An advertisement in the NT News recently announced the truck, parked next to Manning’s Stuart Park residence for 20 years , now in the old Qantas hangar , has been recommended for heritage listing and restoration and called for public comment . It would be inconceivable that this vehicle with all its associated history, including the part played by Manning in the NT and East Timor , is not thought worthy for restoration .

Manning would like to see the faithful vehicle put on display at the Gurindji homeland.

TOPLESS AND TITLESS IN TOP END

Pandanus, the gifted anonymous political writer who penned the popular BEATING THE BULLDUST column in Darwin’s independent newspaper, The Star , in the 1970s , sadly no longer in existence , has come in from the cold down south . Little Darwin has received coded emails from the mystery writer as a result of our media series ,REWIND THE PRESS !

While showing obvious signs of memory loss, Pandanus still has a whimsical streak and frequents the hallowed halls of academe from time to time, relentlessly attempting to discover the meaning of life and furtively scratching Socratic sayings into the sandstone foundations on campus.

Somehow, Pandanus spotted a blooper in the NT News report that TOT night-Tits On Tuesday-at the Discovery nightclub in Darwin could come to an end. More attentive than us , Pandanus noticed the News said this event sees “scantily clad ” female patrons dancing on stage- “often bearing (sic) their breasts.”

Obviously interested in mammaries from an academic and anatomical point of view , pedantic Pandanus was titilated , so emailed us saying it was good to see that in swinging , modern Darwin the nightclub allows girls to take their breasts along to the premises. But what about the damsels not bearing gifts and breasts ? I hear you ask . They also cavort on stage , their lack of front, no doubt due to a bad case of rickets and shortage of starch during puberty , hidden from view by a coarse Pandanus frond, a cheap Territory imitation of the Dance of the Seven Sherberts.

JOURNOS SHARING AN AIL

Two veteran Darwin reporters -John Loizou and Peter Murphy- are on the sick list. Loizou , hospitalised in Vietnam last year, has undergone a series of tests in Darwin. Murphy , in Victoria , is suffering lung cancer and hopes to be back in Darwin in a month’s time. We wish them well .

NEWS TIP FOR HOTSHOT REPORTERS

Newshounds in Darwin and elsewhere be aware that arrangements are being made for a possible three way link on February 4 in the latest development in the attempt to get justice for Darwin Aboriginal art gallery owner, Shirley Collins, financially ruined by her involvement in the Bank of America Down Under Tour in an inflated pavilion which was a replica of the Sydney Opera House, part of the build up to the Sydney Olympic Games.

At this stage, the proposed Darwin hook up will be made between the Supreme Court building here , Collins’s Brisbane based representative, accountant Barrie Percival ,and a magistrate in Perth .

This matter was drawn to the attention of the Federal Ombudsman after a strongly disputed rejection by the Department of Finance and Deregulation of her application for an act of grace payment .

Little Darwin has seen assorted documents which indicate she was made the “ scapegoat” for shortcomings in various government agencies and other organisation in what was to be a major promotion for Australia in America .One document sighted was from John Morse , the 2000 managing director of the Australian Tourist Commission , the year of the Bank of America Down Under promotion . In it he says he was based in New York and it was a hectic time. Word came through that there was a problem with the Aboriginal Art exhibition organised by Shirley Collins but it was being handled by Los Angeles .

After the Olympics, on visits to Kakadu as part of a review of tourism for the then Minister for Tourism, Joe Hockey, Morse met Collins and she told him her story about the Bank of America fiasco and produced documentation to back up her claim . This had led him to the conclusion that “Shirley had been used as a scapegoat for the mistakes, and misinformation of others .”


Further informal investigations by Morse had confirmed his initial belief. “There were many factors involved, including an unrealistic commercial assessment by consultants, a naivety on behalf of Australian Tourist Commission officers in the USA as to the commercial opportunity, change of policy by the Bank of America , and subsequently a hard line,unsympathetic approach by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.”

Continuing, he said: “Having seen Shirley’s gallery in operation , and recognising the importance of the fact that that it was one of only two Aboriginal owned galleries operated successfully in this country,I felt strongly that a different approach was necessary ,rather than confiscation of the unsold art (from the US tour ), and recovery( by ATSIC) of all investment monies. "


Morse even took it on himself to visit Canberra and speak with the deputy CEO of ATSIC, without any positive result. During further visits to Darwin,he saw Collins go from a vibrant, successful Aboriginal businesswoman, running an Aboriginal art gallery, to someone who lost everything ,including her business, her health , her home and her dignity. Summing it up in two words - “grossly unjust.”

This local, national and international story has received scant attention by the media in Australia .

No doubt the NT News is gearing up to supply the Wall Street Journal , one of the Murdoch chain, with a feature on this long running sorry saga which involves the Bank of America , an international business and accounting firm, shortcomings in the Australian Tourist Commission operations in America , questionable NT legal advice and much more. Collins worked at the NT News in the 1950s.

On October 23, 1995 former NT Chief Minister and federal president of the Liberal Party,Shane Stone, praised the work Shirley Collins, daughter of a stolen generation woman, had done for Aboriginal arts and craft in the Territory. He congratulated her on the recent opening of the Raintree Gallery in Darwin.

Strangely,trying to get an audience with Aboriginal Affairs Minister , Jenny Macklin, to discuss the matter is proving difficult .

Collins , a pensioner , is not well after a recent operation in Darwin and has had many blood tests.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

One of our roving culture vulture reporters, Charles Dickens, reluctantly tore himself away from a CBD patisserie where he usually lolls about reading Le Monde , noisily sipping latte and nibbling truffle impregnated Anzac biscuits, to try and gauge the disposition of Darwin rural area peasants who labour in the gamba grass infested fields.

From conversations with dyspeptic members of the CBD bourgeoisie , especially the Smith Street Mall and Cavenagh Street shopkeepers, our dilettante scribe had formed the firm opinion that there is immense unrest among the citizenry, verging on revolt .

Smith Street Mall shopkeepers want to tar and feather the Darwin City Council over the loss of business they blame on the refurbishment project. The Cavenagh business people, says Chas, are furious with the Darwin City Council’s proposed plan to turn the street into a tree-lined imitation Champs Elysee , wiping out 100 parking places in the process , as well as guillotining the financial well being of a considerable number of businesses.

From these soundings, he is convinced that if Danny the Red rocked into Darwin in a battered Citroen with a pack of long-haired, unwashed backpackers and defiantly declared that they would not pay Council fines for parking overnight at East Point there would be a massive uprising against all authority, equal in ferocity to the storming of the Bastille .

Our reporter says the Cavenagh Street burghers are so angry he has not heard such abusive language uttered since he was ejected by Inspector Clouseau from an Alliance Francaise party one July 14th after drinking too much free champagne/absinthe/ cognac , loudly braying that real men don’t eat croissants, and draping the tricolour about him like a berka.

Donning a Panama, much loved by members of the legal fraternity and bowtie wearing members of the literati , our man hired a charabanc and ventured out to the darkest depths of Darwin’s rural area to gauge the pulse of the rustics.

From past experience , he knew what to expect : wild stories about the Labor government in Canberra going to treble the GST; Pauline Hanson is the reincarnation of Mother Mary MacKillop; the emperor has no clothes; a well known Federal politician had a different name when he worked in the Territory and a Russian man ( or was it the Captain of a UFO?) pretended to be the father of a widowed Latvian woman to scare off the pollie who had amorous intentions ; the *#/*!United Nations in the Yew Nited States is plotting to take over the world, etcetera, etcetera.

As our intrepid observer travelled about the backblocks, deep in our equivalent of the Bois de Bologne ,the green sward running between Howard Springs and Humpty Doo , he detected evidence of civil animosity towards the bewigged establishment.

Several signs warning the NT Government not to rezone the land caught his eye. One read GREEN BEFORE GREED . Clearly, this is not the motivating force of Wall Street. Another plugged for no clear felling of trees. Henderson was instructed to back off . Australian flags fluttered on several properties and boxing kangaroos stood guard , ready to pounce on any surveyor or person with a chainsaw and kick the bejezus out of them . A missing young dingo was the subject of another sign.

FOOTNOTE: After experiencing all the pent up anger throughout the Top End , Dickens suggests those able to take advantage of the rising Aussie dollar should flee across the English Channel to France before the tumbrils begin rolling along the Stuart Highway .