The
blackout in Darwin which closed down the Top End brings to
mind similar events . Cyclone Tracy battered the Darwin powerhouse and
for a long time afterwards there
were intermittent power
cuts . Appointed the head of the
Darwin Reconstruction Commission , after
the first chief , Sir Leslie Thiess , departed , the
dynamic former Brisbane
Labor Lord Mayor, Clem Jones ,
was about to enter a lift at the
Travelodge in the city
when the power suddenly went out.
He asked the head of the NT Department of
Works (and Jerks ), who had been in Darwin for
many years, responsible for the
running of the powerhouse , why the blackout . He was told it was the Wet season and things
like this were to
be expected. Why ? Clem insisted. The Wet. This
constant
theme of blaming the Wet
annoyed .
Irritated
, a man of action , Clem drove with the
Works bod to the powerhouse and began
to question the
staff . What he heard and saw did not impress
him. However, the power
supply problems continued for a long
time. Some parts of the turbines
had to be imported from Scandinavia .
In
one episode , the power
kept cutting in and out during
a Supreme Court hearing into charges
connected with the arrival of a boat in Darwin from Asia loaded to the gunwales with bales of
marijuana . Reporter John Loizou , who ended up owning
and living on
the boat , with typical
gusto , told me how the
sweaty judge, sitting in the gloom, had
finally told the bar
table they would
just sit there in the dark, glaring at each
other , waiting to see if the power came back on .
The
blackouts were so frequent
the situation was debated in the
NT Legislative Assembly as a matter of
urgency before
a packed public gallery, which included the one and only “White
Hunter” - Alan Alexander–Stewart .
Obviously a lateral thinker , convinced
that the pollies had no solution to the problem, he jumped up and
electrified the gathering when he said the obvious answer was to
get a submarine to come to Darwin and run
a long cable from its generator
to the powerhouse. At that stage, the
Speaker ordered the White Hunter
to be removed ; he limped out. So, following
up his brilliant , untried solution , we
sincerely suggest that when
President Obama gets off the
phone to Putin, he send a spare
nuclear submarine to
Darwin with a long
extension cord to guarantee that
the lights go on all
over the Top End so that the Marines are not
plunged into darkness during joint exercises
.
