Great Australian Journeys

by Seal, Graham;

  By now, though, diamonds were starting to turn up in unexpected places. One was found in the fireplace of a Broome home and another in a matchbox in a train carriage. Aboriginal people were seen with them and Chinese traders offered them for sale. Others would be found after the war, including one nestling in the fork of a tree.

  An army investigation led to Palmer and two of his comrades being put on trial in 1943. Smirnoff was called as a witness but provided no new information. All three accused were acquitted as they had—seemingly—handed in the diamonds to the authorities. Palmer then served in the army. After the war he tackled a number of business ventures and appeared to be living well for the few years that were left to him.

  Jack Palmer died of stomach cancer in 1950. A priest attending his deathbed is said to have asked him what he had done with the rest of the diamonds. Palmer insisted that he handed them in. Then he smiled.

  There are a number of other stories stemming from the medical staff who tended the dying man. They vary in detail but all end the same way. They all state that Palmer kept a mysterious bag under his bed which he hinted might contain riches—maybe cash, maybe diamonds. The day after he died, the bag had disappeared.

  Smirnoff returned to Holland after the war and continued his career as a KLM pilot. He seems never to have gone home to the USSR and died on the island of Majorca in 1956 after an adventurous life that even attracted the brief attention of Hollywood in 1944.

  Stories still circulate about the ‘Smirnoff diamonds’. As recently as 2012 a claim was made by relatives of the man who drove Smirnoff and his surviving passengers from Beagle Bay to Broome that the pilot knew the package he was carrying contained the diamonds. Whether he knew or not, only a fraction of the hoard was ever recovered. It is thought that the bulk of the cache, perhaps twenty million dollars worth, is still missing. Are they still buried in the sand along with the remains of the ill-fated Dakota? Were they found by others? Or did Jack Palmer simply take them and spend up big for the rest of his life?

  TAMAN SHUD

  On the morning of 30 November 1948, a respectably dressed man in his mid forties arrived at Adelaide station. He bought a ticket for the 10.50 to Henley Beach, then walked for fifteen minutes to King William Street where he showered and shaved at the City Baths. He returned to the station and left a brown suitcase at the cloakroom. Then he bought a ticket on a bus that had already left the stop opposite the railway station. He may have caught the bus at a later stop but in any event later in the morning he was in Glenelg, near the St Leonard’s Hotel and not too far from the home of a woman who would come to be known as Jestyn.

  The well-dressed man probably remained in the area all day. At some point he ate a pastie. Several people saw him in the evening between 7 and 8 p.m. At 6.30 the next morning the man was found dead on Glenelg’s Somerton Beach. His last journey had ended but the mystery of his life and his death remains unsolved.

  The Somerton Man, as he became known, was Caucasian with well-kept hands, broad shoulders, a narrow waist and feet and legs that, to some, suggested a dancer or perhaps a long-distance runner. He was in top physical condition but had no wallet and the labels of his clothing had been removed.

  Who was he?

  The autopsy revealed an unpleasant list of damages to the internal organs. The only conclusion the pathologist could reach was that the man had been poisoned but could not say what with, or how. The pastie was ruled out as causing his death.

  Despite an intensive local and national police investigation, and help from Scotland Yard, the Somerton Man’s identity remained a mystery. In hope that a solution to the puzzle would be found eventually, the body was embalmed on 10 December. People continued to claim that they knew his identity but subsequent investigations ruled these out for one reason or another.

  On 14 January the next year, railway staff discover what was subsequently realised to be Somerton Man’s brown suitcase in the cloakroom. It took this long because no left-luggage receipt was found on the body, another mystery itself. Inside the case were personal items that could only have been bought in America. These reinforced the American connection already suggested by some of the clothing on the body.

  The other contents of the brown case were even more perplexing. They included a sharpened pair of scissors, a cut-down table knife, a paintbrush used for stencilling maritime cargo and a variety of miscellaneous everyday objects, such as a shaving kit and a spoon. There was other clothing from which the labels had also been removed, except for three items which bore the name T Keane or Kean. Police never found anyone of that name with any connection to the body.

  Another pathologist examined the Somerton Man’s remains in June. He concluded that the victim was probably poisoned and the body may have been taken to the beach from another unknown location. At the inquest a poisons expert testified that certain drugs could kill but leave no trace in the body. He would not speak the names of the drugs because they were so deadly and, at that time, freely available from a chemist. The coroner could still not determine the exact cause of death but thought it was likely murder rather than suicide.

  Around this time the Somerton Man had a name change. Further investigation of the victim’s clothing revealed a rolled-up scrap of paper hidden in a deep pocket. On the paper were the words TAMAM SHUD. This turned out to be a phrase from the ending of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and the scrap of paper on which it was printed was apparently torn from a rare edition of a translation of the famous Persian poem. The phrase is usually translated as meaning ‘the end’ or ‘finished’, relating to the poem’s theme of living life to the full and dying without regrets.

  In July, an unidentified man came forward with a copy of the same obscure edition of the Rubaiyat translation lacking the section containing the fateful words. He had allegedly found the book on the rear floor of his unlocked car, which had been parked in Glenelg around the time of the mysterious death. He did not make the connection until the mysterious roll of paper was mentioned in the press. Not only has this man’s name never been revealed, neither has the reason for its suppression. The Somerton Man now began to be called Taman Shud (though the correct form is Tamam; Taman is a newspaper misprint that stuck).

  In the back of the book brought forward were two telephone numbers and some indented pencil lines believed to be a code of some sort, though cryptographers were unable to decipher whatever message it might have contained. One telephone number was a bank, the other belonged to a 27-year-old woman living in Glenelg. When police tracked her down they showed her a plaster cast of Taman Shud’s distended face. According to the attending officer, she was shocked near to fainting but denied knowing the man.

  Despite a complex and murky series of revelations and investigations which continued until 2007 when this woman died, her real name had always been suppressed, though it was known to researchers on the case. She was known only as Jestyn, a rendering of the signature ‘Jestyn’ written in another copy of the Rubaiyat which she gave to an admirer in 1945 while training as a nurse in Sydney. That alias was abandoned when her real name was finally made public on a 60 Minutes television show in 2013. Her married name was Jessica ‘Jo’ Thomson, previously Jessie Harkness. After 1947, she was known as Jo Thomson. Researchers have discovered that she had a son with some physical features very similar to those of Taman Shud. Recent DNA testing suggests that this now-deceased son had some American heritage.

  Efforts to locate other copies of the unusual edition of the Rubaiyat have turned up more intriguing mysteries. It seems that there was no officially published edition of the book in which the final words had been omitted. Investigators were unable to establish where the editions found on the dead man or in the car at Glenelg came from. Nor could the edition of the copy given to Thomson’s admirer in Sydney be traced. A New Zealand publisher did have an edition of the particular translation but it was in a different format to that found in the parked car.

  Even more strangely, in June 1945 another d
ead man was found at Mosman (New South Wales) with a copy of the Rubaiyat near his body. This book was marked as the seventh edition produced by a well-known London publisher. Yet it seems there were only ever five editions of the book produced by that company.

  With complex and unexplained dead ends like these, the disappearance of evidence over the years and ongoing public fascination, it is not surprising that the Taman Shud case has remained open since 1948. What is possibly the world’s most intriguing cold case has been re-investigated many times by police, journalists and researchers of all kinds and is still an active issue.

  Solutions to the riddle abound. They include a Cold War link to the American Project Venona espionage program and the foundation of ASIO, as well as a possible connection to the then top-secret Woomera rocket facility less than 500 kilometres north-west of Adelaide. Or maybe he was just a common crook. Whoever Taman Shud was in life, most now seem to accept that the man on Somerton Beach died from an undetectable dose of the poison digitalis. It may be possible to identify the body through genetic testing if the corpse can be exhumed.

  Whichever theory appeals, or not, the last journey of Taman Shud is probably Australia’s most mysterious. It will probably remain so.

  ROAMING GNOMES

  Fantastic journeys undertaken by garden gnomes have joined the canon of modern legends. As the stories go, garden gnomes have been going missing for decades, if not longer. It seems that these prized ornaments often disappear in the middle of the night. Some time later, maybe days, weeks or months, their disconsolate owners receive a letter or email from a distant holiday location informing them that their gnome or gnomes are having a great time. Usually there is a photograph of the gnome reclining by the pool or beside the sea. Then, sometimes years later, the vanished gnomes may mysteriously reappear in the gardens from which they disappeared.

  The disappearing gnome story might have originated in the practice of stealing gnomes from gardens and placing them in unexpected locations, such as a freeway verge. This was reported, in a post to the Museum of Hoaxes blog, to be happening in Sydney in 1978. This prank seems to have evolved into stealing gnomes then demanding a ransom for their return. Some time around the middle of the 1980s, reports of gnomes simply disappearing on holidays began to circulate.

  Gnome roaming has now moved onto the internet, where there are innumerable reports of their antics to be found. The roaming gnomes have made it into the movies, such as the French film Amelie. And it’s not just the gnomes who have taken to travel. All manner of garden ornaments take off, including flamingos, rabbits and frogs.

  Is it all an elaborate international prank, another urban legend or something much more sinister?

  In case your gnome has taken an unscheduled trip to Bali or elsewhere and has not returned, help may be at hand. The enterprising residents of the Dardanup area in the Ferguson Valley of south-western Australia have created Gnomesville, ‘the magical home to over three-thousand gnomes who have migrated here from all over Australia and around the world’. A whole roundabout is full of miscellaneous gnomes who, for whatever reasons, have not returned to their homes.

  So, if you’re wondering what happened to your gnome, take a trip of your own to Dardanup and see what you can find. Even if your gnome is not on the roundabout there is a shop, so you could always give another lump of coloured concrete a good home.

  TIGGA’S TRAVELS

  The tale of a globetrotting ginger cat entertained the world’s media and social media for some months in 2015. Tigga was his name, although he was rechristened Ozzie near the end of his adventurous life.

  Tigga’s rise to global stardom began in mid 2015 when he was found in a garden in County Armagh, Ireland. A cat protection volunteer took him to the vet for a check-up. To everyone’s surprise, Tigga’s microchip revealed that he was from Australia.

  But not by direct flight, it seems. The microchip also indicated that Tigga had been residing in London during 2004. He had turned up as a stray at a veterinary clinic there, though how he travelled from the English capital to Australia and then to Ireland was a total mystery.

  Even more curiously, according to the electronic data on Tigga’s microchip he was born in 1989, making him an incredible 25 years old. Cats are mostly long gone by then, so this one was probably the oldest living feline ever.

  How did Tigga get from London to Australia and then to County Armagh? And how could he be so old?

  The puzzle persisted while Irish cat protectors looked after Tigga and began a search for more information. Carers waited anxiously for news of the tomcat’s background. Eventually social media provided the answer to the riddle.

  Tigga belonged to a well-travelled couple who frequently moved between Ireland and Australia. They left their pet with friends in Armagh but he ran away and lived rough on the streets and in the gardens of the locals until he was picked up in June.

  It also turned out that he was not as old as he seemed. A misprint in the original records meant that he was born in 1999, not 1989.

  Sadly, this tale has an unhappy ending. Despite gaining an extra ten years of youth, Tigga became ill while in care. An untreatable liver condition took him away before his owners could be reunited with their roving pet. He died without fear or pain ‘and surrounded by love’, members of the Armagh cat protection group wrote on Facebook.

  Tigga’s ashes made the long journey back to Australia, ending his unusual life of travel, adventure and global stardom with one last trip.

  5

  COMING AND GOING

  Australian history is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer . . .

  Mark Twain on his visit to Australia, 1895

  PLATYPUS DREAMING

  Lovesick, homesick and seasick, a young Charles Darwin sailed into Sydney Harbour aboard HMS Beagle in January 1836. He was nearing the end of a four-year scientific quest that had taken him and his companions around the world collecting specimens and observing perplexing natural phenomena. But now Darwin was ready for home, even though it lay at the other end of the world. He looked forward to Sydney as a little bit of England that might help assuage his longing for home and bring a respite from the mal de mar that had afflicted him across the Pacific ocean. But there was nothing he could do about his love life. He had just found out that the girl who had been waiting for him could wait no longer and had married another.

  At least he had the consolation of studying the young British colony and following up the puzzling things he had read about its plants, animals and landscape. Unfortunately his first impressions were not good. Drought was devastating the country and emancipated convicts were becoming wealthy and too democratically inclined for Darwin’s upper-class attitudes. But his gloomy outlook would soon change as he took a trip across the Blue Mountains to Bathurst. This journey was to have momentous consequences for the world; then, now and, it’s to be expected, long into the future.

  At first Darwin was disappointed with the drab carpet of eucalypts that hid the shape and structure of the mountains: ‘The bark of some of the Eucalypti falls annually, or hangs dead in long shreds which swing about with the wind, and give to the woods a desolate and untidy appearance.’ He was expecting the dramatic scenery of the Alps. But when he saw the cascading water at Wentworth Falls and ‘the most stupendous cliffs’ of the Jamison Valley he sensed he was looking at something of great significance, though the fully realised thought remained just out of reach: he surmised the plunging valleys must have been carved by water flows. It would be some time before the geological process of erosion was understood.

  Riding on down Victoria Pass to Wallerawang Station, then more or less at the frontier of settlement, Darwin observed and collected as he went. His amazement increased with every new discovery. The crucial moment came one evening as the young naturalist walked along a stream near the sheep station. He saw several platypuses; duck-billed, egg-laying mammals, or m
onotremes, with a poisonous back claw—biological impossibilities that appeared to defy the natural order.

  Pondering these peculiarities for hours, Darwin began thinking in a way that would end up many years later in the world’s most revolutionary and controversial idea: the origin of species and the theory of human evolution. He tentatively wondered how there could be such differences between various species of animals and how an anomaly such as the platypus fitted into the traditional Christian account of Creation. The implications of his thinking were heretical to Christian theology and he quickly dismissed his musings: ‘the one hand has worked over the whole world’, he wrote in his notebook.

  Darwin would not present the radical implications of his platypus musings to the general public for another two decades. In the published account of his mountain journey all those years earlier, Darwin simply calls it ‘a most extraordinary animal’ and moves quickly on. But his Australian sojourn, which also included visits to Tasmania and Western Australia, was the start of a long interest in the country’s natural history. One of his assistants on the Beagle cruise, Covington Symes, later migrated to New South Wales and continued to provide Darwin with specimens over the years as he developed his revolutionary idea. Others also continued to provide him with information about the antipodean landscape and its often perplexing features, including Sir Thomas Mitchell, surveyor-general of New South Wales.

  Ultimately this all fed into the great theory Darwin was developing. Finally published in 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection ignited enormous controversy and debate among scientists, theologians and the educated middle classes. Was the world and its wonders the six-day creation of an all-powerful being, as the Bible taught? Or was nature the result of a biological process of evolution and selection over millions of years? Charles Darwin’s summer encounter with Ornithorhynchus paradoxes near Wallerawang caused those questions to be asked and answered.