Me on the Front Page of Perth's Daily News
In my travels as an antique dealer I cruised the auction rooms like a white pointer seeking prey in the ocean. I was always looking for the unusual and valuable in the faint hope that the auctioneer or valuer had failed to identify a valuable piece. Then I could make shit loads of money, which in this capitalist little world we live in seemed to be the game, whoever dies with the most toys wins. I am not really a material person, which is unusual for an antique dealer with a love of museum pieces. I have nothing but an ipod player, a TV and a collection of Australian Carters Antique Guides.
One subject I loved was the Vietnam War. I had found a zippo lighter once and it was battered and scratched as if it had been in a war zone. That is because it had been in a war zone. Inscribed on the face of it, on one side was “Don’t tell me about the Vietnam War, I have been there”, on the other face was “Vietnam 1966-68”. That lighter was valued at about $2000, it belonged to an American GI, but they say giving gives the most pleasure, and I gave it to a lawyer mate of mine who admired it so much I knew he would treasure it. Alas the capitalist in me was weakening and 20 years on, this mate has now been disbarred as a lawyer and is serving time in jail somewhere.
For those of you who don’t know, the Vietnam War was the first war to be televised into our lounge rooms. It was also a war that Australia participated in during the late sixties and seventies. It was controversial, because young men from Australia were sent to the war against their will. Your birthdate was drawn by means of a numbered ball picked out of a barrel, if your number came up, off you went to fight and maybe die. There were angry protests in the streets of all capital cities where draft dodgers burnt their draft cards and fought with police, and it wasn’t really our war. The Yanks had started it in their paranoia against communism, yanks are like that. The tactics used in the war were also dirty, and you could be spiked or booby trapped by any number of ingenious methods that the Vietcong had dreamt up to kill you.
Because of all this history and controversy, any military artefact associated with the Vietnam War is collectible and valuable, especially rare items, and I was always on the look-out. One day my dreams would come true beyond all of my expectations. It was a find that had me eating lunch with the Ambassador of Argentina Sir Rex Hunt, no not the Australian fishing guy, that is his real name and he exists, do a search on Wikipedia and you will see his history.
I was at Kenwick Auctions in Royal Street, Kenwick in Western Australia. The auctioneer was Richard Holmes and I had cause to talk to him as I had seen an interesting item on the floor of the auction room coming up for sale. It was a cast iron coat of arms and it was original. It was the British Royal Insignia and it was about 500mm x 500mm or about 2 feet square. I asked Richard what the provenance of this piece was. Richard told me that the bloke that bought it in got it from the tip. This bloke had been at the tip when he saw a car with a trailer next to him back up, the driver, another bloke got out of the car and dragged this coat of Arms out of the trailer and threw it out. So he says to the guy can I have what you’re throwing out and asks the guy where it came from.
It seems that the person discarding the piece had it in his back shed. He got it from his father who did not want it. His father had been an SAS warrant officer in the army. He served in the Vietnam War and was stationed at the British Embassy in Saigon. When the North Vietnamese finally entered Saigon and it was obvious they were going to attack the Embassy, the Warrant Officer took the Coat of Arms off the gate with an angle grinder and sent it back to Australia in an ammo box. This was all done as a prank to piss the British off. The North Vietnamese eventually took control of the Embassy as the staff had escaped earlier. Most of this was televised and in some old footage the gates in question and the coat of arms can be clearly seen.
One of the British diplomats, a High Consul at the Embassy was Sir Rex Masterman Hunt from Britain. He eventually became The Governor of the Falkland Islands and was there when the Argentinians attacked the Island in the early eighties. He was in fact taken prisoner and was released later. He wrote a book about his experiences called “My Falkland Days” he was was also portrayed by Ian Richardson in the 1992 BBC television drama "An Ungentlemanly Act", depicting the 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands He then became the High Commissioner to the British Antarctic Territories and was knighted. I didn’t know it them but I was to meet him.
Now that I knew where the coat of arms came from I decided to buy it if I could. It went up for auction and I was there. When it came time to sell the Coat of arms, there was no interest. This was too good to be true, nobody saw its obvious value and it was knocked down to me at $380! This was an absolute bargain. The reason for this was the fact that this was not in an antique auction, it was a general sale and the buyers were not there, the piece had been sold in the wrong forum. My gain there pain.
I took the heavy coat of arms home and started to do some research on it. From what I had been able to glean from local Perth Museum staff, this was before the days of the internet, the British had cast about 200 of these pieces in the 1700’s sometime, to send out to the various British Embassies around the world to be fixed to their gates, usually in pairs. That made it very rare with the fact that it was associated with the Vietnam War. I advertised the Coat of Arms for Sale in the Perth weekend paper the Sunday Times. The ad read. “Cast iron Coat of Arms off British Embassy Gates at fall of Saigon- Vietnam War. Offers considered.
I had many enquiries but I got an unusual call from the Perth Tabloid paper The Daily News, who had a daily circulation of around 200,000. Some female reporter wanted to know where I got it and its history, when I explained it, they wanted to come and photograph me with the Coat of Arms as they felt it was a good story. I agreed and you wouldn’t believe it, the story with the photo made the front page! (see above)
Suddenly everyone in Perth knew who I was and as I cruised the auction rooms, the other antique dealers would shake my hand or pat me on the back. They all wanted to talk about what I found. So I decided to capitalise on all the publicity and use it to sell the thing. I auctioned the piece at Gregson’s auction room in Beaufort Street Perth, but before it had a chance to go up for auction an anonymous buyer made me an offer I could not refuse. $25,000! A few weeks later I was in the Duck Inn, a posh pub and restaurant in the affluent suburb of Subiaco partly owned by Alan Bond and the Coat of arms was in there. It had been bronze coated and framed and it sat proudly, taking pride of place on the wall above the fireplace, and beside it was the front page of The Daily news with my picture on it also framed.
It seems Alan Bond, the winner of The America’s Cup in Fremantle in the 1980’s had bought the Coat of Arms. Bugger me, I was the only man to ever rip Alan bond off, usually it was the other way around, as hundreds of thousands of Bond Corp directors can attest. Bond was convicted and jailed for stealing 16 billion dollars from BondCorp and was also convicted of thieving the famous painting La Promenade by Claude Monet worth 160 million dollars. He served six years. I met him a few years later in jail, but I only got to talk to him for a couple of hours, we were both in the lock up and waiting to go to court and I forgot to ask him about the coat of arms, I had other things on my mind.
The story does not end there though. Let’s go back to Sir Rex Masterman Hunt once the British Ambassador to Argentina. The current High commissioner of the British Antarctic Territory. It seems that one of the British diplomats to Australia drank at the Duck Inn in Subiaco. He happened to know Sir Rex Hunt who was in the Embassy in Saigon when the Coat of Arms was taken. He was coming to Perth on holiday and wanted to know if I would have lunch with him. The coat of Arms by now had been sold to Geoff Ogden of Ogden Hotels and Restaurants fame. He had moved the piece to pride of place in the Lounge bar of the Elephant and Wheelbarrow Hotel and Restaurant in Northbridge and this is where I had lunch with Sir Rex Hunt.
Sir Rex bought his son along, he was an airline pilot and was a friend of Princess Diana, having attended school in the same class as her. Sir Rex was a fascinating character and he told me many stories regarding his exploits during the Falkland’s war and also stories about the Queen and Princess Diana, both of whom he counted as friends. At one point I tried to persuade him to give me the Queens private number but he wouldn’t play the game. Out of deference and respect to Sir Rex Hunt I cannot recount any of his stories here as they are quite private. Truth can be stranger than fiction can it not? The story of this meeting was also covered in the paper by the Sunday Times but this time there was no picture.
Sir Rex Masterman Hunt
