A MUDDY PLACE IN THE SUN

Many and varied are the  items and yarns  which  come the way of  this  blog.   Just arrived  is  this original artwork  cartoon  of  journalist  Ian  Mackay , on assignment in New Zealand , dressed as  a  Maori . It is a souvenir from his  days at  Melbourne's  Sun News-Pictorial (said to be  Australia's largest circulating newspaper for more than  50 years )  where for several years he  wrote the  daily column, A Place in the Sun (APITS for short).  It was the newspaper's longest running column , the first  written by  Keith  Dunstan .

 

 "It  was the lot  of  a columnist to be  frequently  humiliated in  the  pursuit of a meagre contribution  to  his  daily measure, " Ian said . "  Hence , I  was   depicted   sinking in  a bubbling, volcanic  mud  pool  at   Rotorua's  Whakarewarewa  by   cartoonist  Neil  Matterson ."  Compensation  for  the  humiliation  included  heaps of  Bluff oysters  and whitebait fritters  down south in Invercargill .

Matterson , also an artist and  illustrator , resigned  several times from the Sun Pictorial  following  rejection    of  his political cartoons  after the dismissal of PM Gough Whitlam on November  11 , l975 , his resignations not  accepted. One of the  strips he invented  was  Cliff, a talking  Koala , who like an archetypal  Australian  could  not  win .  In 1996 he won first prize  in the open theme  section of  the Rotary National  and International  Awards   for  a  Princess  Di gag . 
 

Ian  now has a leafy  place in  the  sun  on  Magnetic Island, complete with nesting   Sunbirds  fore  and  aft .