Banking on history
A recent story in this august journal questioned the origins of the name Anketell, which is the proposed site of a new Pilbara port.
Now we have the answer, thanks to keen reader Ron Manners, who alerted us to the moniker’s birth via an excerpt in a book entitled Kanowna's Barrowman – James Balzano, which he co-authored with George Compton.
It seems that Roebourne’s reputation as a rough place may go back at least as far as 1889 when two employees of the Union Bank, Messrs Anketell and Burrup, were murdered in their sleep.
According to the scene provided in the book, the pair had been dispatched brutally by someone who had been unable to work out how to open the safe after the dirty deed had been done.
Conjecture until the 1930s put the murderer as either a passing German vagrant, later hanged for another murder, or a local pastoralist who was heavily indebted to the bank. The Note realises it takes a lot to name a future landmark or two after a bank manager, but a gruesome murder seems a high price to make it into history.
The bar stripped bare
The Note has always been perplexed by the odd world of liquor licensing and these entertainment conditions imposed on a new CBD outlet called the Print Hall in the old Newspaper House simply adds to our confusion.
“The licensee or manager, or an employee or agent of the licensee or manager, shall not:
(a) be immodestly or indecently dressed on the licensed premises;
(b) take part in, undertake or perform any activity or entertainment on the licensed premises in a lewd or indecent manner; ...”
And on it goes about displaying classified ‘R’ moving pictures, immodest entertainment or other lewd activities.
Forgive us for thinking Kalgoorlie was a long way away from Perth’s civilised heartland – or is the mining industry just too close?