Category: Eccentric Characters

Ronny Hudson

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From interview with Geoff P.
GP: No, I mean you can’t see a croc. No, they seem to be losing their fear. It’s that long ago since, you see Port back in the ’50s and ’60s, there was very intense croc shooting. Four or five blokes moved out of Port. Charlie Taylor, old Ronny Hudson, the bloke that I found dead up in his camp at Stoney’s

SC: And who was the bloke, the bloke who you saw who died?

GP: Ronny Hudson. I found him dead up in his camp up Stony Point. But yeah, they did some maximum croc shooting round the area and before them there were quite a lot of blokes, transients….it was big money back in those days. So the crocs thinned out and the ones that were there kept a very low profile, but that was what ’75 or ’74 or whatever it was. It was made illegal. So over the years…when we first went there the wharf was still there. It wasn’t until the navy blew it, but there was one big croc….I think he might still be there because I’ve seen him when I’m up on the hill. He does a transit. He’s a pretty big lizard, maybe four metres plus. He obviously goes back to the days of the war. If you watch him….say he’s coming north, he’ll come through the channel between Rocky and he’d come up to within 100m, he’d be on the edge of the reef and he’d go. He’d disappear for 10 minutes or so and then pop up…..even the wharf on the pier is all long gone he just decides…..he must associate that area with guns or humans or bad experiences.

Slack Dick

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Alan Lucas talks about people getting blind drunk on that or being on the jetty or something and then being stacked horizontally onto a trailer behind a tractor and then driven out and then rolled off the trailer at their house. And Resto Dave reckoned it was Slack Dick, whose unfortunate nickname…
BV: Richard Carmody.
SC: Yeah, who could quote Shakespeare or great buckets loads of Shakespeare?
BV: No, he was an educated guy. So….
JP: Richard (Slackdick) Carmody’s father was secretary to Prime Minister Curtin.
SC: Okay.
BV: He was skilled in engineering. He was sent to public school in London. He was educated, he was well read.

Slack Dick
Slack Dick (centre on the bench) courtesy John Pritchard

BV: Once during a drug raid the cops had Slack bailed up in his shack and as others searched two of them sat and chatted to Slack. When they thought they had him in an unguarded moment they slipped in the question “Slack old mate how do you get your dope to cairns” Slack immediately told them his MO ” I fax down the dope and they fax back the money”

“And he famously, on his deathbed, he ended up with liver cancer – he was only in his fifties. My sister Mary was friendly with him. She used to go down and visit him in hospital when he was dying. But the end’s near and everyone’s packed around his bed, he props himself up on one elbow and he looks at them, he says. Well he said…and he was talking with his loud voice; ‘if I’d have known that I was going to live this long I’d have looked after myself a bit better’.”

“JP: Mitch was his mate, they were good mates. He knew that if he left any beer, Slack was going to drink it when Mitch went away….so in order to ensure that there was something to drink when he got home he would stash some beer in the fridge, in the crisper, under something. He knew that Slack would never look in the crisper under any circumstances for anything.”

Barbara Holdsworth

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Sandie H: “She was our mother, if you signed her visitors book, you became one of her children.”

Barbara Holdsworth photo credit - Aust Geographic Magazine
Barbara Holdsworth photo credit – Aust Geographic Magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barbara’s collection of plaster casts of purported to be footprints of big cats includes one that greatly resembles the Thylacoleo, a marsupial Lion reportedly extinct 20,000 years ago, Barbara was known as an eccentric and believed many undocumented species lived around Portland Roads.

My (Seamus) brother-in-law (Col) worked on the boats up this way many years ago and fondly remembers going to Barbara with an extremely painful migraine one day. She prescribed a tin foil pyramid hat – Col at that stage was willing to try anything – but now cannot remember whether the hat worked or not.

We met some yachties (world travellers who were in Portland Roads 30 years ago), who also had fond memories of Barbara and her cats. They remember she “had at least 50 cats – they were every where, on the seats, and every rafter had 3 or 4 cats”.
“She’d say ‘sit down’ and you’d say ‘where?’ There were cats on all the seats you know”

These yachties gave us some star sand that Barbara had given them.

Barbara Holdsworth photo credit Aust Geographic Magazine
Barbara Holdsworth photo credit Aust Geographic Magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[We have many photos of her writings and plaster casts as well as people to get more information about her from]

Richard Leo Bradbury “Kirky” Kirk

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“Fellow eccentric Richard Leo Bradbury “Kirky” Kirk (above) glances past his latest painting ……………”  – credit: Australian Geographic October – December 1999, PP 108 – 109

Kirky - photo credit Aust Geographic Magazine
Kirky – photo credit Aust Geographic Magazine

Geoff P: “No, old Dick Kirk….Kirk and Lizzy used to live out there and herb hill out on the way to Jimbo’s old place. He was from Cedar Bay old Dick. Richard Leo Bradbury Kirk. He got his name from his mother … he was a really bad epileptic old Dick.
Everyone who had a house in Portland Road District had had Kirk chucking a wobbly and I mean he even used to have grand mals – they’d go for four hours. Yeah, that was old Dirty Dick.
He was actually a likeable bloke, but he was dreadfully obnoxious when he got on the booze and he wouldn’t take his epileptic medicine. So he’d have these grand mal fits. But yeah, a few times Billy Mitchell used to have a tray back and load Kirky and Lizzie and various other odds and sods onto the back because they would always deliver up there…..Jimbo’s, the ringers. Yeah, I don’t know if they had a tractor or a trailer. That could have happened earlier.”

Brian V and John P: “Young Kirky. Kirky was in the first world war.  He was a bit of an artist. He was an accomplished artist, but he always had a morbid streak if you looked at any of his work. All his faces. People know him for painting fridges, there was many a fridge he painted.
Yeah, he painted fridge doors.“