CLANGERS IN REPORTS ABOUT NT EDITOR

Rude expressions escaped the lips of this writer on reading an article about the late and great NT journalist, Jim Bowditch . The story was in an old clipping , written some time after his death in 1996, under the heading CRACKIN’ PICTURES AND CRACKIN’ YARNS –Images and stories which made the news. There was a picture of Bowditch late in life and the text wrongly stated he had a Cockney accent ; he was not born within the sound of London's Bow Bells and on lobbing in Australia soon found that Pommies were paid less because of their accent, so began to sound somewhat like Clancy of the Overflow, but more refined , not so slow . Instead of saying he had been a COMMANDO in Z Force Special Operations , it had him a COMMANDER

The dismal article then proclaimed that he had been one of the Rats of Tobruk in Tunisia .Wrong . Tobruk is in Libya . Wrong again was the statement that he had won a Walkley Award for journalism in 1957 for his support of the “Wave Hill walk off.” He received his Walkley some years later for coverage of the Sea Fox saga , about happenings aboard a yacht skippered by Hollwood actor –magician, John Calvert , who had a chain smoking chimpanzee aboard when the vessel sailed into Darwin.

Unfortunately, there was no info to identify the author or publication from whence this offending clipping came . Recently admirers of Jim Bowditch , locally, interstate and overseas , were irked to read a piece in the NT News which said that when Bowditch was editor of the paper he used to sit at his desk shirtless, wearing thongs, and threw “hissy fits” which caused reporters to take shelter under desks!. Balderdash is a mild response to this scenario . Little Darwin pointed out at the time that it was incorrect and that there had been a reporter at the News , also named Jim , who did shed his shirt / and type away , taking regular sips from a can to get the creative juices flowing .That Jim, however, never took his shoes off in the office. It was also pointed out that Bowditch had been a decorated WW11 hero , had nightmares about mutilating an enemy soldier to hide an imminent invasion , and self medicated on alcohol .

His name and contribution to the Territory , humanity in general, cannot be sullied by plainly incorrect reports in any publication.- By Peter Simon .

SUPPORT FOR WHISTLE BLOWERS

Probably the only tribute to whistle blowers in Australia can be found in the Tasmanian tourist attraction - Tasmazia - which consists of a maze and the model Village of Lower Crackpot , started by spirited dairy farmer , Brian Inder , obviously unimpressed by what was going on in economic and political circles at the time . ( See previous post - CRACKPOT QUEENSLAND VOTE.) Whistle blowing is an honourable act and to be encouraged , but often those who lift the lid experience rough treatment , are ignored, punished .

At the present moment a whistle blower has made extensive allegations about a large number of doctors and other aspects of the Queensland health system. On the face of the sensational allegations, the Dr Jayant Patel scandal at Bundaberg Hospital , kept quiet for so long , exposed by brave whistle blowers, could be just one of many instances of malpractice and incompetence being hushed up .

Whistleblowers Australia’s website carries the Edmund Burke saying : All it needs for evil to flourish is for people of good will to do nothing. It is an association for those who have exposed corruption or any form of malpractice –especially if they were hindered or abused – and for those thinking of exposing it or wish to support those who are doing so .

There are various state and territories acts covering whistle blowing ; in the Territory there is the Public Interest Disclosure Act (2008). A recent report in Nation of Change , progressive journalism for positive action , an independent news and opinion website, which Little Darwin highly recommends ( nationofchange.org ) cites massive court cases in which whistle blowers exposed corruption by banks including Bank of America , JPMorgan Chase , Wells Fargo and Citi in the housing mortgage "shenanigans " which almost brought the US economy crashing down, disdain for politicians and the political process.

TERRITORIANS ENDANGERED BY INADEQUATE BUILDING INDUSTRY CHECKS

The Northern Territory News on March 21, under a heading FAULTY WIRING PROBE A MUST, said WorkSafe should fully investigate how the “ scandalous situation” regarding electrical wiring in the Masonic Homes villas at Tiwi came about and let Territorians know if this is common practice. Certification that the Masonic Homes wiring was up to Australian Standards was provided to Adelaide based McCracken Homes by an unnamed Darwin electrician subcontracted by Faith Constructions. Of course, both companies were deeply concerned and Faith Constructions is rectifying the situation described as "profoundly dangerous."

Little Darwin has been informed by various people, including tradesmen and home owners , that the Masonic Homes situation IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG in the Territory construction industry. One person , with interstate building experience ,inspected some houses under construction and declared they would collapse in a cyclone because of obviously inadequate bracing . There is talk of intense cost cutting by some resulting in shoddy, sharp practices . Others speak of people “dragged in off the street” to become instant painters and carry out other work in which they have no prior experience , dodgy statutory declarations , apprentices left to do work unattended , “cowboys.”

The NT self certification system which enables work to be declared as meeting the required standards is not worth the paper it is written on in many cases , according to sources, as was shown in the Masonic Homes case.

WorkSafe has a small number of inspectors-five in Darwin , two in Alice and none in Tennant Creek and Katherine. The inspectorate is more involved in checking worker safety on large scale buildings . Work carried out in housing projects and private homes gets scant attention- self certification with a ballpoint . One critic made the allegation that some of the work carried out in "the bush"- down the track where there are no resident inspectors - would not pass inspection .

In the Darwin Magistrates' Court lawyer Peter Maley was reported as saying amphetamine use is “rife” in the Territory’s building industry . He was appearing for a 21 year old carpenter who was arrested with $41,000 worth of ice in his underpants. Maley told the court tradesmen took the drug because they worked long hours . If this be the case , then it is a matter of deep public concern as it raises questions not only about their capacity to carry out work, its quality , their own general health and safety , and possibly explains why so many trade vehicles are driven erratically on the roads.

Little Darwin has been made aware that electricians in Darwin , despite the so called asbestos safety code , regularly carry out work in buildings which contain asbestos , which endangers their lives. The public is entitled to ask what the NT Government, the building industry, WorkSafe and various trade groups are doing to protect the public, trademen. It is a subject you would expect to be followed up by an in depth probe by the media. MORE TO COME .

THE LIONS IN WINTER

(Ace architect/columnist / illustrator, Peter Burleigh , recalls those jolly , carefree daze at his ivy-clad alma mater and a leather-clad travelling companion, Pete Steedman, when, like young lions, they prowled parts of the British Empire and other foreign deer hunting grounds . )

QUESTION: Which Pete has the Toni ?

Because it’s easy to predict the behaviour of school, university, office or reformatory inmates at their reunions: lame jokes about sexual prowess, falling hair, failing eyesight and general disgruntlement seem mandatory, the invitations are also easy to refuse.

Imagine your reporter’s angst when I discovered I’d agreed to attend two reunions on a single weekend in Melbourne, a city I publicly vowed would lie over my dead body before I returned; and this at a time when I vigorously ignore both my birth year of 1943 and my ex-girlfriends of that era, all of whom are now over 65 years of age.

The first is a reunion of the survivors of his “Class of 62” intake of the Architecture course at Melbourne University. The second is lunch with Pete Steedman, a radical politico who managed to stretch his student status into the eighties. Readers of Little Darwin may recall stories of our adventures at university, in England, Spain and Morocco. My friendship with Pete continues to defy definition, so the things we have in common must be its foundation - good wine, swearing and a shared missionary zeal in attacking polite society – or maybe it’s our determination not to mature.

In 1962 my evaluation of my Architecture classmates was that the majority of them were and still are of little interest to anyone. A quick troll through the room showed this hasn’t changed (and is reflected in most of the buildings they’ve created), although several people are missing or are dead. A couple of us have been murdered. Surprising that over the years more of us haven’t been slaughtered for crimes against design.

The “askance glance” works overtime as people compare my outward signs of aging to theirs. Reactions of personal dismay or cruel satisfaction can’t be concealed amongst the slowly whitening, wrinkling, squinting, stooping and limping crowd, cowed as always by Melbourne social convention and now by physical deterioration. They say their weight gain has nothing to do with beer or fast food, it’s due to watching McDonald’s and Hungry Jack’s ads on TV.

Exhuberance is hard to find but it radiates from a group of about ten people, the same people who energised our experience of the 60s and who were responsible for the outrages, pregnancies, arrests, fines, breaches of promise, exam failures, repeat years, and offensive behaviour towards earlier generations. They are – ahem – my friends. About half of them still pretend to be architects and the rest have gone into everything else, including psychoanalysis, theatre, veganism, retailing, child bearing and writing for Little Darwin.

The current Dean of the faculty works the room asking us for money. We can have our names on a plaque in the new building, he says. Think of your legacy, he says. Given that our most influential creative experience during our 5-year course was the annual Architects’ Revue, a stage show which was so consistently good it had a following among the theatre-goers in the City – and for a pretentious place like Melbourne this was really something – that is the legacy we would support. But there’s no theatre in the new building, so we don’t fill his hat with gold. No Architects’ Revue? Once again the lid comes down on exhuberance. Cued by our scowls he moves away.

I relate this to Steedman while we are underground in his concrete bunker in a trendy area on the edge of Melbourne’s suburbs. Once his house was surrounded by bushland and rolling hills but now the suburbs have caught up to him, like the creeping fungus from The War of the Worlds. The middle class has joined him, rather than the other way around. Pretend-farms are everywhere, with 2.5-hectare blocks dotted with token sheep, goats, llamas, Shetland ponies, trophy wives and other fashionable livestock. Meanwhile, new residential subdivisions are getting closer. They have lies for names: Fairview, Meadow Glen, Fern Dell, Farsee Retreat. They are “leafy” but you can see the power pylons marching over the hills.

Merc and Beamer owners patronise the local supermarket, but once it was outlaw bikies, parolees and dysfunctional borderline psychotics who lived out here. Pete may be the last one in the area. He taught them the Steedman style of social interaction: keep advancing on your audience until they back away from you, then raise your leather-clad shoulders and loom. It worked for him as a member of parliament in Canberra.

He uses his bunker as a wine cellar and pretends it’s just a folly, but it’s a child of his paranoia. The bunker roof, he tells me, is two feet thick and obviously built to survive the Apocalypse or at least a direct hit from a neutron bomb. Pete has a compactus-full of secret files on everyone, but they haven’t been transferred from the house because the bunker leaks when it rains. He is expecting an attack from a secret Government agency at any moment, and is looking forward to it.

We remember friends who’ve fallen off their twigs or are still in jail. Pete knows many more people than I do, so their mortality looms larger. Friendships have become lists of victims of attrition. We wish we weren’t participants, but you’re only young once. Or in our case, twice. It troubles us that our delusions can’t bring back our younger days; they sustained us for decades, why not now? We get to work on a new set of delusions, but sound disturbingly like a couple of characters from the Pickwick Papers. After a few wines Pete tells me he’s planning to move house but doesn’t know where to. There is a town nearby called “Beveridge”, but it’s spelled wrongly.

Friends easily reach common ground by ignoring reality and so we easily agree that every one of our surviving contemporaries has sold out, some for impressive amounts of money. Steedman and I remain not-rich and therefore continue to hold the moral high ground – in this case, in a subterranean bunker –and that we are National Treasures.

I took my camera to record the event for Little Darwin but one look at Pete and I put it back in its bag. No one would believe the photograph wasn’t Photo-shopped. How youthful and unlined we are, and how we are still full of it! Potential, that is.

[LITTLE DARWIN ZOO NOTE : Burleigh recently stopped the traffic when he put a tiger in his tank at a service station -inserted the wrong fuel-and his wallet was savaged in the process .]

AMERICAN WARTIME SHOW IN AUSTRALIA

Billed as America’s Latest Novelty Revue, GLAD RAGS entertained Melbourne at the Tivoli in December 1942 . The eight panel fold out theatre programme lists the New Yorkers who provided acrobatic burlesque . Star of the show was George Wallace , whose Ocker-like humour was popular ; Clem Dawe and Eric Edgley, well known in Australian showbiz, also performed ; Elsa Stenning, known as the Australian nightingale, who had performed at the Royal Opera House, London, not only wowed the audience with her voice but gave a lunch hour recital in Collins Street during an Austerity Loan Rally .Comedy sequences were provided by Fred Parsons who wrote scripts for the radio personality Roy Rene – Mo McCackie of McCackie Mansions. Also on the card were the Tivoli glamour girls and famous ballet dancers. For the tenth year in a row, the Christmas pantomime MOTHER GOOSE , with 150 artists, was staged . Advertisements included " the world’s greatest counter lunch" at the City Club Hotel and there was no shortage of stockings at that stage of the war as Mignon hosiery , in all the newest and most glamorous shades- a thrill to touch , a joy to wear- were available from a penny less then six shillings (60c). (From Little Darwin Ephemera Collection.)

DILI AUTHOR DIES

David Scott, author of LAST FLIGHT OUT OF DILI -Memoirs of an Accidental Activist in the Triumph of East Timor , recently mentioned in Little Darwin in connection with telegrams sent to Interim Foreign Affairs Minister , Andrew Peacock, and Darwin agronomist Rob Wesley-Smith , has died. The funeral is likely to be held this Saturday at Christ Church, South Yarra. Scott was closely involved with Jose Ramos–Horta in the wilderness years .

CAR SPRINGS ETERNAL & LOVELY LONGREACH LOO

( On the Renner Springs-Elliot-Dunmarra-Timber Creek stretch , intrepid Bulldust Diary columnist/illustrator, Peter Burleigh, experiences the Territory’s massive alcohol abuse problem. )

The Buchanan Highway was clearly named in jest by a vengeful employee of a Northern Territory council. Goat track it is, highway it ain’t. The grass changes to low, spiky scrub more accurately described as stubble, as if the land has been shaved by a hung-over abattoir worker who leaves cuts and grooves for floodwater.

Other desolate roads encourage introspection, but this road demands your attention stay exclusively in the real world. The talking book about the British Navy mutters under its breath and is left to its own devices; all your concentration switches to the road. It’s a tyre-shredder. It threatens to tear the wings off your metal fly, if you know what I mean. It’s sad, useless country. I can’t tell what treasure might lie underneath it, but you wouldn’t choose to stay on top of it like we are, driving as fast as metal fatigue allows.

The village of Elliot lies half-way to the Kununurra road. It’s built around the gas station. To get fuel you must go into the office and ask for the key to the pump but first they size you up; it doesn’t matter if you’re a minister of God or an axe-murderer, if you fit the profile of a pump-absconder you can whistle for it. All the windows and the door of the Roadhouse are covered in metal security mesh. The pale young man running the place is alone. He sells unidentifiable fried things so wrinkled by time that plastic surgery couldn’t help. (Fuel: $2.25 per litre –a new record). Here you can buy beer where you buy your petrol, but there are rules restricting what strength you can buy and when. Aboriginals sit in knots around the few trees, themselves waiting to be refuelled.

The settlements become fewer, and these not-even-villages are mere punctuation marks in the very long paragraph of the Buchanan Highway. The Top Springs Roadhouse is more extreme. New laws severely curtail the sale of grog. Big signs along the remote road shout: “Proscribed Area–no alcohol”. Unfortunately they should say “Watch Out for drunk Aboriginals”, because that’s what you get. Several men take it in turns to stagger over to my car. They try the doors, attempting to get in with me. They struggle to keep their cans from spilling.

“Hey Boss, take me down the road.”
“Boss, I need to see my brothers at the bridge.”

I wouldn’t give a lift to myself if I was drooling drunk; not only that, I have no wish to drive alone into an Aboriginal community. This is sad and dispiriting and it’s happening in our own country. If I feel alienated, how do they feel?

How you relieve the despair of Aboriginal people I don’t know. My feeling of Helplessness is unpleasant. It is part of the modern Australian experience and I wouldn’t avoid it – but I wouldn’t deliberately go out of my way to see it either. I do know for sure that we have as much of an idea of how to help them as they have about helping themselves.

Mickey, our token white Rhodesian, announces that he’s on a “pie quest” to find Australia’s best pie. It’s no good looking for such an example of the pastrycook’s art out here. You want a pie, you buy a Mrs Mac’s pre-packaged, pre-digested, de-flavoured cookie-cut handheld, sauce extra. The filling is mystery meat. The mere idea triggers my gag reflex so I won’t be going deeper into the details. My own quest to find the cleanest toilet in the country has taken a step forward. It began as a child when I was told I could catch leukaemia, elephantiasis, cholera and scurvy from toilets. In Longreach I found a toilet with a colourful paper sash across it saying that it had been ‘Hygienically cleaned and sealed for my protection’ so I knew my vulnerabilities had been addressed and I was safe.

We pass the homestead of Victoria River Downs, one of the biggest cattle stations in Australia. There are three choppers parked near the house.

LITTLE DARWIN FOOTNOTE: At last month’s sittings of the NT Legislative Council , during a CLP Matter of Public Importance debate over alcohol consumption and related problems , the member for Sanderson, Peter Styles, a former policeman , said he had recently driven from Darwin to Alice Springs . At Elliott , where there used to be four service stations, there was now one . After speaking to locals and travellers, some said they stopped coming to towns because of humbugging for money, cigarettes and alcohol , up and down the track . Many grey nomads travelling on their own or with children did not like stopping in towns, staying in caravan camps instead , to avoid being humbugged .

Another MLA , also a former police officer , Willem Westra van Holthe , of Katherine , spoke of the frustration the police force has picking up the same drunks . “. They take them to the cells at the police stations ; they take them to sobering up centres ; they take them home and leave them where they can be left at home with a responsible person who can look after them. That is frustrating, and it is annoying because you just become a street cleaner, cleaning up what is a mess on the street.”