Going on a recent lively conversation at an Alice Springs Turf Club event , the next election in the Northern Territory will see more whipcracking
and billowing bulldust
clouds in the Dead
Centre than were seen in the
stirring 1946 movie The Overlanders.
The film starred Chips Rafferty , Daphne Campbell and
two Aboriginal stockmen , Clyde Combo and Henry Murdoch, from Palm Island, and others . The British Ealing
Studios movie told
how during WWll a
large herd of cattle, under the threat of Japanese
invasion , was driven from Wyndham , Western Australia , right
across to Queensland
, shot in Sydney,
Alice Springs and the
Roper River. There was
much dust , cracking of whips
and cattle stampedes.
At a special Young Guns meet
held at the Alice race track near the
end of last month , it included bands , gallops and high temperatures. Some of the
young and older
guns felt the heat
and said more shade should be provided at the
course.
Straight from the horse’s mouth, our
dehydrated man at the
track , who came away with just enough money to buy a pith helmet to protect his pate , heard this
interesting story. Seems various Territory racetracks applied for a
special grant from the government for shade cloth tents for hot
days – but the Alice Springs Turf
Club missed out. Why ?
According to stable gossip, it
was because the club’s chairman is the husband of Robyn Lambley
, who resigned from the Country Liberal Party government , where she
had variously been the Deputy Chief Minister ,Treasurer and Health Minister, became an
independent and threatened to stand against the Chief Minister , Adam Giles, at the next
election. In media reports , she applied the spurs and riding crop with
scathing comments about the CM and the party’s “boys' club”.
Before getting
involved in the CLP , Ms Lambley
and husband ran Mad Harry’s retail store, which one would think should have
helped them cope with the mad goings on in the CLP government...failed coups , leasing out the port to a Chinese company, a failed attempt to remove the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, who had herself resigned from the CLP , the Attorney-General saying he would like to slap a female , then announcing he is going to quit politics... another former Health Minister failing to get pre-selection...
FOOTNOTE : As a result of The Overlanders, Chips Rafferty went on to become a well known film star here and overseas . In the case of Daphne Campbell , this was her first film which led to possible Hollywood tests , but she married WWll air ace , Sam Calder , who was Connellan Airways chief pilot in Alice Springs, later a member of the House of Representatives, founder of the NT Country Liberal Party and favoured the idea that the Territory should have nuclear energy .
FOOTNOTE : As a result of The Overlanders, Chips Rafferty went on to become a well known film star here and overseas . In the case of Daphne Campbell , this was her first film which led to possible Hollywood tests , but she married WWll air ace , Sam Calder , who was Connellan Airways chief pilot in Alice Springs, later a member of the House of Representatives, founder of the NT Country Liberal Party and favoured the idea that the Territory should have nuclear energy .
