One of the joys of book addiction is that you never know what you are going to discover hidden in the text in volumes you lug home from a trawl . For example, this scuffed and dog-eared proof copy spoke to me at a Townsville church fete. It told me , doctor, to buy it and I would get a big surprise .
Sure enough , it contained information about Darwin , the crusading editor of the Northern Territory News , ASIO . Author Gillian Nicholson began her career as a cadet reporter on the NT News , edited by "Big Jim" Bowditch.
She was 18 years of age when she and a sister lobbed in Darwin in 1966 from Brisbane . This blogger was 20 when he landed there from The Sun newspaper , Sydney, in 1958 , to work at the News , with a letter saying accommodation would be provided within the old tin bank building , described as primitive.
Nicholson succinctly describes Darwin ; Bowditch is tiny, wiry, pugilistic, grizzle-haired, hard drinking , ex-Z Force , defender of the underdog , the downtrodden , the Aborigines . Author Frank Hardy and Tall Tale Tex Tyrell are mentioned along with pubs, fights, Greek and Chinese families, the Gurindji and the Wave Hill strike .
Then she runs her own secret ASIO file which said she was about to leave Darwin and take up a new job on the The Australian newspaper in Canberra. The report states that while she was in Queensland she had been connected with the Queensland Youth Peace Committee , Eureka Youth League ,Youth Campaign Against Conscription and Society for Democratic Action.
In Darwin , however, she had been " relatively quiet politically ", identified with anti-Vietnam and peace demonstrations. ASIO said her father had been president of the Queensland branch of the Australia-China Friendship Society, her mother secretary of the Queensland Peace Committee for International Cooperation and Disarmament .
Commenting on the ASIO report , Gillian flippantly said it was a good thing ASIO kept a watch on her from unmarked cars and tapped her telephone because all that demonstrating against war and singing about the brotherhood of man could have turned her into a (gasp-our expression ) Greenie .
Naturally, Bowditch had a large ASIO file , outlined in the extensive Little Darwin biography. Recently, Melbourne journalist and author Kim Lockwood , who knew Bowditch so well that he provided him with a pair of his own shorts when Big Jim arrived at his residence in his underpants , having lost his trews in Cyclone Tracy on Christmas day 1974 , suggested the Bowditch saga should be turned into an e-book. We shall see.
While this blogger was again making his body available for the advancement of medical science in the mature aged (decaying) male sphere , at Townsville General Hospital, another book for sale spoke to him from one of two trolleys there laden with reading material , mostly wretched novels . Entitled , The Lighthouse Keepers , by Stuart Buchanan , it shows Bowditch enlisted in the lighthouse service ( at Cape Moreton, off Brisbane) in 1948 , with his first wife.
And then the name E. Janes , 1968 , jumped out. None other than another Darwin journalist of note , Eugene ( Gene ) Janes , closely associated with Bowditch, who had also worked on a lighthouse , in the Torres Strait, starting in 1968. See WINE AND WATERMELON AT NEWSPAPER STRIKE HEADQUARTERS in Little Darwin blog.
In London , Janes, a young aspiring writer, employed as an office boy at the BBC , applied to join the Talks Department , headed by the Russian spy Guy Burgess, who defected to Russia with Donald Maclean , followed soon after by Kim Philby.
Burgess told Janes he might be another Shakespeare , but he was too young for Talks Department and had a long way to go. Janes informed this writer that British Intelligence should have been suspicious of Burgess because he wore a Russian hammer and sickle badge on his lapel.
After serving in the war, Janes came to Australia , aged 22, and wrote short stories and radio scripts ; he was also commissioned to write many pulp fiction novels dealing with the army, navy and airforce, detective stories , romance and mystery , one, about the Z Force, made into a film . He, like Bowditch, is buried in Darwin.
Nicholson and her husband , on impulse, bought a banana farm on the NSW north coast.
Nicholson and her husband , on impulse, bought a banana farm on the NSW north coast.
