EXCLUSIVE : SEPARATE STATE MOVE IN QUEENSLAND

So far unreported by Townsville  media  is  a  large bank  of  signs   in  the Flinders  Street  CBD  detailing  how North Queensland has had a lousy deal from  Brisbane   from  colonial  days , listing  the  current big  ticket  projects  going on  in  the  capital  and   south east  of  the state . A  roaming , visiting  , bearded  Little Darwin   academic   friend  spotted  the  signs  today  and  said  it  is  reminiscent  of  the separatism  movement in Townsville  from 1884 to 1894. No authorisation  appears on the  signs . More later ...

BREAKAWAY STATE  OF  EXTASY?

Here , two days later ,  are the signs , still  not picked up by the  media ,which state that since  1859 North Queensland has wanted to secede from its "its South East Tyranny, " calls for a  referendum  at  a  coming election  and says  jobs , not refugees are needed .

 

DANGER IN YUMMY PARADISE

Beautiful Cardwell, North Queensland ,   not only  has magnificent views , it  even has  an op  shop from which, just before it was due to close for the day, was discovered  and bought  a  magnificently illustrated   book ,  Secrets of the Island An Oral History of Tasmanian Surfing , by Emily Davey,Tassurf Publishing, printed in China by Everbest . Homemade vanilla  slices  sold  by  a bespoke  bakery  are  also  tasty. Then  there is the art gallery with a  wide range  of  locally  produced  items , including  paintings  of  Curlews . In   English,  German and  Chinese  , there is  a  warning  sign  about  crocs  on  the  beachfront .   

FANNIE BIGGS , KANSAS AND HEMINGWAY INFLUENCED AUSTRALIAN JOURNALISM

During a search and  discovery  tour  of  op  shops in the  North Queensland  town of  Ingham  a  recently written   book   on  the  American  journalist and  author  Ernest Hemingway  was   bought and  subjected  to  a  rapid  read .

By Peter Simon  

In the l950s , when I was a  copyboy and later a cadet  reporter on The Sun newspaper , Sydney ,  Hemingway  and   his  terse  writing style  was  popular among journalists .  One  worldly  reporter , older than I ,with a  dazzling blonde   girlfriend ,  had  been  to Spain , where  Hemingway  served as a war correspondent, and  even  had  one  or  two  bullfighting posters , the ultimate link   with   Ernest  who wrote about the  topic ,  receiving both the Pulitzer Prize  and   Nobel Prize   for  literature in  the  1950s.

Another reporter I knew , who lived in  a sparsely furnished flat , used the mantelpiece  as   an extension of  his   bookshelves  on  which  were  a  collection of   paperbacks ,  some Hemingways .

Early advice I was  given as  a cadet reporter  was  to keep everything tight ; every story, I was informed , could  be  told  in  the  first  three paragraphs , this to meet the demands  of tabloid  journalism . The  guts  of  a  story also  helped  sub editors prepare a last minute  breaking  event   inserted   in  a small space, or in  the  STOP PRESS .

On reading INFLUENCING HEMINGWAY People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work , by Nancy W. Sindelar , published by Rowland and Littlefield, USA and UK, 2014, I was surprised to learn that  when he was at high school writing for  the  school magazine,Trapeze,  the  journalism teacher, Fannie Biggs, ran the classroom like a rotating newspaper office and taught students   that  the  there were  three   criteria  in  writing  good articles... the first , tell the whole story  in  the  first  paragraph .

The  instruction  to  young  Hemingway  was  reinforced when Hemingway went to  the  Kansas City Star  as a  cub reporter  where the house style manual  emphasised  short  sentences , short paragraphs and  vigorous  English.The author quotes Hemingway as saying  his seven months  on the Kansas  newspaper with its house style  rules  were  the  best advice  he ever  received  for  writing .

Over the years, I have  collected Hemingway books, newspaper clippings,  watched documentaries  about  him   and  viewed the   movies based  on  his stories . A most unusual link with  Hemingway  turned  up  in my disorderly  collection  of odds and ends,  research resulting  in  the  following condensed  article .

During WW II , journalist Hugh Milner , left , was interviewed by Security in Australia after he wrote to Ernest Hemingway, seen here on dust jacket of  the famous   writer’s  biography, by Denis Brian, Grove Press, New York, 1988.
 

From an uncertain source , an old postcard tucked away in a cigar box   has revealed an intriguing story involving “Kiwi spies”, an outstanding orator , Ernest Hemingway ,“ the Fairy Godmother of Malaya” mining deals and Australian journalists   in   Asia  before World War ll.
 

While recently trying to put some order into my ephemera files , assembled over decades , I  pulled out  the cigar box and studied the mixed contents with the aid of a magnifying glass . A worn  real photo postcard [above]  showing a contemplative man with a pipe ,   attracted my attention. I vaguely recall having acquired it at a swap meeting in Adelaide or perhaps  from a Brisbane antique shop which had turned up some treasures over the years , including an early 20th century booklet about Portuguese Timor- issued by Sydney investors - who said Timor workers were paid a pittance , so  low , if  paid to Sydney paperboys there would  be a protest.  That unusual  publication went to the late  Darwin  historian   and author Peter Spillett who wrote about Timor .
 

There was a penned inscription on  the front of  the postcard ... To a grand wanderer , from Hugh Milner , Singapore. Dec. 1938. On the back were two discernible pencilled in names and addresses : A. H. Huntley, c/- J.B. David , Singapore   and Mr  Len Law , Carlton Hotel , Timor . Almost illegible were the names Nicol Thompson and H. Young, YMCA. Hugh Milner , the person in the postcard , it was discovered , had been a journalist in pre–war Singapore , mentioned in WATCHING THE SUN RISE : Australian Reporting of Japan , 1931 to the fall of Singapore , by Jacqui Murray .

 During WW11 , a letter Milner  wrote from  Rabaul, New Guinea, to Ernest Hemingway, describing American military activity in the Philippines and Australians fighting   in New Guinea , was   intercepted under wartime censorship and security . Hemingway covered the Sino-Japanese war from Hong Kong in 1941 and in 1942 left his Cuban villa to cover the war for Collier’s. As a result of the letter , Milner was questioned   in Sydney and Security reported that he was no risk, loyal, there being no further need to check him out.

 

On the other hand , Milner’s brother , Ian, became the subject of close attention by   a considerable number of security organisations and the subject of a paper about the so-called Kiwi Spies , by Dr Aaron Fox , entitled : The Pedigree of Truth : Western Intelligence Agencies versus Ian Frank George Milner and William Ball Sutch . It contains the following excerpt:

One of the  many intriguing Cold War mysteries centres on the enigmatic figure of Ian Frank George Milner. Was Milner, a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar, Australian Government and United Nations diplomat, and an academic based first in Australia and then in Czechoslovakia, falsely accused of being involved in espionage with the Soviet Union as part of the anti-communist hysteria which gripped Western democracy in the 1950s? Or did he indeed pass secrets to the Soviets while in Australia in the 1940s, before defecting with his wife to Czechoslovakia in 1950? Mirroring as it does certain aspects of the Alger Hiss perjury trials in America, the defection of the British diplomat Donald Maclean, and the treachery and defection of the British Security Intelligence Service (SIS, otherwise known as MI6) officer H. A. R. ‘Kim’ Philby, the Milner case is a classic example of Cold War intrigue. 

Milner’s guilt or innocence has long been debated in Australia. Robert Manne in The Petrov Affair, Richard Hall, in his provocatively-titled biography of Milner, The Rhodes Scholar Spy, and Desmond Ball and David Horner in Breaking the Codes: Australia’s KGB Network 1944-1950, have all concluded that he did indeed pass top-secret documents to the Soviet Intelligence Service. Milner’s reputation has been vigorously defended by left-wing Australian historians Frank Cain and Gregory Pemberton, both of whom emphasise the absence of any conclusive proof of his guilt. David McKnight, in his award-winning study of ASIO, Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets, preferred to leave the final verdict on the Milner case to the assessment of Soviet and British intelligence service archives by ‘independent historians’.

MILNER’S DENIALS  

 Dramatic Darwin Airport  Petrov scene

Dr   Fox’s highly detailed  volume  contains further information about Milner ...  In 1954, following the defection of Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, senior  intelligence service officers with  the Soviet Embassy in Canberra, the  Australian Royal Commission on   Espionage was established. On the evidence of the Petrovs’ testimony, and the Venona decrypts, the commission concluded that Milner’s access to classified documents while in Canberra ‘gave rise to grave suspicions as to the use he made of them’. This allegation, even ‘making all allowances for the impact of the “cold war” and suspicions as to my residence and University job “behind the Iron Curtain”’, came as  a severe shock to Milner. In a ‘Personal Statement’, which he signed in Prague on 1 March 1956, he denied, to the best of his recollection, ever having met ‘Klod’[ said to have been a Soviet Australian spymaster , identified as Kiwi born member of the CPA, Walter Seddon Clayton ; it was alleged Ian Milner , known as BUR, was a member of the Klod Ring ] , or having divulged ‘confidential official information to any unauthorised person’. He did not waver from this stance right up to his death in 1991.

 

DR  SUCH   CASE   

 

Dr “ Bill” Such , teacher, economist, writer, diplomat, highly influential public servant and social policy analyst , an associate of Milner’s , was charged in New Zealand under the Official Secrets Act 1951 with obtaining information which would be helpful to the enemy, following a series of meetings with an official of the Soviet Embassy in Wellington. It was a sensational trial which  resulted in him being acquitted . 

Hemingway  was mentioned  recently on Magnetic Island  when talking to Dr Clive Stead   who  had  been   to  Cuba  and  visited    the writer's residence  from whence  he  made  many  fishing trips, resulting in the Old  Man and the Sea ,for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. 

HERBERT SNAFU SIGN OF MEAN /LEAN TIMES IN COALITION

Despite having officially lost the election , the  vanquished  Ewen Jones  (LNP) sign still is in place above the Townsville  office into  which  the  victor, Cathy O'Toole (ALP) , has  already moved . It is understood  federal Administrative  Services officers  who came to Townsville to assist  O'Toole move in  were surprised that  the  large  Ewen  Jones  sign, at a busy main intersection ,  had  not  been  removed.

Somehow, the  local media   has  not  twigged  that  this is a most unsatisfactory situation  which could  be interpreted that Jones, backed by the Queensland  branch of the  Liberal National Party ,   is  not  admitting defeat ,   and that  Ewen's    fingernails  will be   under the  wallpaper , when   he  is eventually  dragged  out of  office , if the almost  certain appeal to the Court of Disputed Returns  fails. 


 Once again, it reveals that Townsville needs  an independent  media  outlet to ask obvious questions, chase up obvious angles , break new  ground . One shining example was  the recent  event in which Jones announced , midst much fanfare, a  $45,000  grant to a  stock exchange listed  ferry  company on which  Lucy Turnbull , wife of the PM ,  had  once been  a member of its board. No scribe asked the  obvious  question ... could this  in any way embarrass the PM? And , being a savvy party whip ,  did you not think to raise this point with the PM to avoid any  controversy  ? 
  

When this  blogger raised  the  above points with Jones , he dismissed it as being money for  Aboriginal employment . How much  employment  is provided  by  45K?  Furthermore , the  ferry  company  has  just announced it had a good  year , doubling  its  profit   to  $22.3million , so why the federal government  drop in  the  bucket? 

The  Conservative  father of both houses of  federal  parliament ,  Senator  Ian Macdonald ,70,  was  quoted frequently  during and after the election , but as usual  it seems not many questions were asked of him by reporters, one being why he had his arm in a sling  during the  counting .

 

Senator Macdonald  plays  same monotonous  old  tunes on  upright piano, one being that  GetUp! is the Hitler Youth group of   the Greens (November 3,2011) , backed up by  likening Stephen Conroy(ALP)  to Joseph Goebbels  , leading to an apology to the Jewish community , not  Conroy .

 

He has just  had  printed in the Murdoch   Townsville Bulletin , which  backed   Jones to  win , a wide ranging  statement which could be interpreted as an indication that there  will be a court  challenge to the win by O'Toole  by  37 votes.
 

In  it he launched an  attack on the ALP (what's new ?) and  ended up saying what a mighty job  Ewen Jones had  done  for Townsville    in six  years . Really ?Townsville  has  the highest unemployment  in  the state , the  highest bankruptcy  level , high youth unemployment ,  real  estate  values  down , parts  of  the  CBD and  industrial  areas  looking  like  Detroit . Eventually Jones  and the PM were belatedly forced to   support  the stadium and entertainment centre, which  Bill Shorten  had  backed  to  the tune of  $100million.

 

During  the election campaign,O'Toole  drew  attention to the  real  plight of  Townsville  by  pointing  out  this derelict street  building , not far from the Townsville Bulletin  office; one main   street  with 80 plus empty or up for lease/sale  premises .

  

 Meanwhile, where is Ewen Jones ? In short public statements ,where obvious questions were not asked ,  he announced he  would abide by the party's decision on whether  or not to  mount a  court challenge  and that  he was  going  for a  holiday .

 

Obvious questions . Who ( names )  is conducting the  examination of  the election  for a  possible challenge on the alleged grounds that soldiers  and  hospital patients had  missed out on the chance to vote  ? Where-Townsville, Brisbane, Canberra ?  How many lawyers involved , are they local ? Is  the Attorney-General  George  Brandis involved in any way ?Where  is  Ewen Jones holidaying ...Queensland, Rio ?

 

And do Jones , Senator Macdonald , the PM  and  Senator Brandis think the Ewen  Jones   sign  should   be  removed  immediately, if not sooner ?  MUCH , MUCH  MORE  LATER.

REVENGE OF THE CONTINENTAL GREY NOMADS , THEIR UGLY RELATIVES AND YAPPING PETS

The  scourge  of Aussie Grey Nomads, Peter  Burleigh  encounters  the  repulsive  French   equivalents ,  the  tubercular  Camper  Van  crowd, in another   article  which  is  part  of  his ( deliberately )  supercilious  log  series , this  gem  headed : ENDURING CHARMES

************************************************

Captain  Horatio  Burleigh's  attack  boat , right.

Cruising on the French canals is common fodder for tourist marketing and it sells successfully, judging by the significant numbers of Australians, New Zealanders and  less  savoury nationalities who choke the waterways every year. We’ve been doing this  on and off for about fifteen years. The original concept was to obtain a catamaran, sail out of Sydney Heads and keep going.

 

 When we realised we knew nothing about sailing, had zero experience of navigation and couldn’t even understand how to use a marine toilet, we went straight to France, obtained/rented a plastic canal boat with proper beds, a kitchen and a grog fridge and formed a habit which continues to this day. We cruise amongst grassy fields, pick wild plums and apples and restock at wine shops without needing any justification, with none of this ‘endless ocean of giant swells’ stuff.

Cruising is 90% beautiful, calm and peaceful. French people are welcoming. They don’t display any of their legendary aloofness. It’s a myth. Problem is your reporter is a curmudgeonly type. He seeks out weirdness, incorrigibility, eccentricity, futile gestures and hubris.  
 

Hidden in long stretches of emerald-green countryside, wide rivers and deep green forests are storybook villages. French people live in them. They’re old – yesterday in Fontenay le Chateau I saw a door lintel with 1689 carved in it. The words ‘gallo-roman’ turn me on. Each village has its own history. Each has its quirks and evidences of foolish local government decisions.


We are the people who cruise the waterways and we are a strange bunch bonded by a common experience of absurd French regulations (which everyone ignores), and we interact socially via grunts and lewd gestures if there is no common language.

 

Faithful readers of these logs will remember making a prose visit to the French town of Charmes in July 2015. After facing overwhelming numbers of Camper Vans and their incorrigibly down-market occupants, the crew of our canal boat vowed never to return (the crew is two persons including myself; did you know Rope Girl and the newly promoted Weather Girl are the same person?). Only one year later our ‘best laid plans’ are rubble. We should have known. Plans never survive the dead hand of the VNF, the national manager of the French navigable waterways.
 

We intended to cruise west to Briare, Sancerre and Digoin and thence a loop to the Soane River. The VNF thumbed its nose at us – and who knew where the thumb had been before that? The VNF announced two ‘debacles’, each only a shudder short of a ‘catastrophe’, on our route and closed those canals to all traffic. A ‘debacle’ could be defined as the gates falling off one of the locks or a breach in the canal banks which empties the bacteria-rich canal into the drinking water of a large town. A ‘catastrophe’ is very serious – imagine four fully-loaded fast trains colliding on a bridge over the canal while at the same moment several airliners nose-dive into the same spot, and all this on a religious holiday

 

So our route to the west is blocked. We must head east from Epernay and retrace much of the same route we took last year through the picturesque Vosges Mountains and the ‘Tunnel of Death’ which I have avoided for years. The Meuse River and its canalised waterway the Vosges Canal deliver us directly to…Charmes.

Sure enough, Camper Vans [above]  line the mooring wharf at Charmes. Because the vans all look the same, the wharf has become a Camping & Caravan Show which features the entire global output of camper vans, each complete with a frayed middle-aged couple, a miniature dog and often an ugly relative who sit at a card table in front of each camper. Hundreds of bloodshot eyes swivel toward our boat as we moor, and mentally-unbalanced silky terriers yap hysterically.

  

 Without exception the dogs and people jointly stare into our boat’s windows and shake their heads at our untidy non-naval habits. Their massed ‘tsk-tsking’ chirrups like cicadas. This is a different crowd from 2015. It is more cohesive. National differences seem to be less important. When they stare at us and our boat they become “happy campers” – grinning gormlessly, nodding mechanically, and being proud of themselves for not drooling. 

 

 It’s the same facial expression they use when their dogs shit on the grass, write their names in urine on other vans’ tyres and chase the ducks that taunt them. It is difficult to differentiate between the dogs and the occasional feral child which emerges from the campers.
 

It is we who are being treated like gypsies; boats don’t have tyres so therefore we don’t belong. These 2016 campers don’t have any co-ordinated dance moves to offer. Last year there was choreography, colour and Cliff Richard music. Now there’s a dull European Union quality to the place – a perverted Eurocamping gestalt as mundane as the vans themselves. Where did this cultural behemoth come from? It must be a caveman thing, although it took modern man to combine the discovery of the wheel with a cave lifestyle. The Neanderthals never twigged to the concept of the portable cave.

Burleigh's drawing of Australian Grey Nomads and their  portable  all mod cons  portable caves  from his  acclaimed  Bulldust Dairies account of  a safari across   the top of  Australia.

Among the definitions of ‘charm’ is this one: ‘a trait that fascinates, allures or delights: a physical grace or attraction.’ I tirelessly searched the city of Charmes for examples of these characteristics for at least half an hour before throwing in the towel. Admittedly it was a holiday weekend and the entire population of Charmes was absent, leaving only the denizens of the Camping Vans, estimated at 31,633 people, to represent the town’s allure and delight. As for physical grace, the town itself wouldn’t have been regularly burned to the ground by invaders over the years if it hadn’t managed to deeply offend everybody from Erik the Red to Hailie Selassie – even the hard-to-insult Saxon Barbarians couldn’t find a good word to say about it.
 

Charmes needs to reinvent itself, apply a cut-through marketing concept if it’s to overcome the bad press and word of mouth it suffers from all who pass within ten kilometres of its boundaries. What about an International ‘Charmes Offensive’? Get all the charming people from France and the EU (excluding Brexit scum of course) to gather in Charmes to charm the pants off visiting dignitaries? It’d grow. In five years it’d be huge.  And that’s just one idea! How about baking a ‘Good Luck Charmes’ toy into every croissant made in France for the month of Charmuary?


 Think people won’t stand up and notice once they read the ‘Choking Hazard’ warning on each one! And how about re-writing the Cinderella story to make the lead character ‘Prince Charmes’? The books! The tourist magnetism! Watch the Disney dollars flow! Another winner would be the Charmes School of International Modelling & Domestic Science. Why not hire Elle MacPherson as Patron? I am just a humble writer and I alone have hundreds of such ideas. So why has this town rolled over with its legs in the air?


 It must have redeeming features. Doesn’t it have a lime tree planted in 1654 to celebrate the wedding of…no, wait, that’s Croix-les-Messinies or somewhere… why couldn’t Charmes claim the real-life Prince of Vaudemont? He built a castle in Commercy, only a few kilometres up the Meuse from here. We could have speculated on J.K.Rowling’s inspiration for the evil Voldemort, but we can’t. That would be false, and journalists never write anything false. All this time I have been looking for answers in French history and in the name ‘Charmes’ when the truth must lie in the present.

 

Right here in the present, reality is calling: in the van parked three metres from our windows all three inmates are having a co-ordinated coughing fit. The phlegm flies. I expect to find gobs of tuberculoid lung fragments spattered on our hull. It’s time to leave.

 Facing us are a couple of hundred locks which drop us from the summit of the Vosges Mountains to the Soane River not far from Lyon. On the way we must pass through the five kilometre Mauvages Tunnel. Neither of these daunting prospects could be as bad as facing another morning coughing chorus of massed camper vanners.Time to retreat into the glories of canal-side rural France, the vanless parts.

BOMBING OF DARWIN DOCUMENTS FOUND IN QUEENSLAND

A detailed   diary  kept  by  Mayor  J. F.  Burton  during  the  WWll  bombing of the Northern Territory  capital   by the   Japanese   has  been  found  by Little Darwin  in an interesting new  secondhand  shop in Ingham , North Queensland. It was  accompanied by  a  badly silverfished and  torn , illustrated  map  which forms  the  endpapers  in  Douglas Lockwood's  Australia's Pearl Harbour  but includes a  photo  of  the MV Neptuna , loaded with depth charges  and  other explosives, which blew  up   in  a massive, deafening  fireball , and  another  view of  the Darwin Post Office  where  staff  were killed .   



The badly silverfished cover note [above] to the diary , written in 1981, states  Burton was  one of the few who remained behind to attend to  air raid  and other  duties  , one of  the last public servants  to leave after the town had been  taken  over  by  the  military . 

Details  from the first attack on February 19, 1942  to June  16 are  covered in the above diary  extract; there is  even mention of  a  violent earth tremor . It seems these  documents  may have been part of   a  display , a large penned  in  note saying  the  diary assisted  the  commission handling  claims  for   war  damages. The  proprietor of the interesting  shop  said she had obtained the  items  from Cairns

Present  day  memorial  to  bombing  in  Darwin .

NOTE: Burton's diary is included in the appendices to  Lockwood's book The Front Door - Darwin,1869 -1969. 

CHOMSKY BANNED BOOK

The independent  American   NationofChange,  is offering this book , banned by US military censors. Chomsky, a NationofChange.org supporter,tackles the hard, controversial issues facing America  today.It covers the increasing urgency of climate change, the ongoing impact of Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing, nuclear politics, cyberwar, terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, and the Middle East, security and state power, as well as deeper reflections on the Obama doctrine, political philosophy, the Magna Carta, and  the importance of a commons to democracy. See website for details on how to obtain a copy by making a  US $30  donation to Nationof Change and how to be linked in.

.