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On 7 October 1939 Ida married Roy Edwards who owned his own aircraft and flew for the Aerial Medical
Service. As the public service did not employ married women there was no alternative but to resign from her
position. The war emergency followed soon after. She was in Darwin for the bombing on 19 February 1942 and
as her husband’s aircraft had been destroyed she was evacuated by train and then truck with some of the hospital
staff.
During the war she worked in a private nursing home in Melbourne. Afterwards, she returned to Darwin but her
health began to deteriorate and over the next few years she developed crippling arthritis and became housebound.
She died in her home in Marella Street, Larrakeyah, on 30 October 1961.
Ida Ashburner made a considerable contribution to Darwin Hospital and to the establishment of nurse training.
All who worked with her held her in high regard.
Registrar, Births, Deaths and Marriages, Qld and NT; AA, ACT; personal communications from Guy Ashburner (brother) and Jill Currie
(niece).
ELLEN KETTLE, Vol 1.ATKINSON, CARL (1913–1985), engineer, adventurer, salvage diver and businessman, was born in Melbourne
on 14 February 1913, son of Enoch Atkinson and his wife Frances. Nothing is known of his early life and
Carl encouraged the mystery. Rumour also had it that he might have been born in Germany or Canada.
He moved to Darwin in 1945 with salvage rights obtained from the United States Foreign Liquidation
Commission for USS Meigs and USS Moana Loa, vessels that had been sunk in Darwin Harbour by the Japanese
in 1942. In 1946, however, the Commonwealth Disposals Commission claimed that under a blanket deal with
the United States Government it had gained sole rights to all the cargoes in all the wrecks in Darwin Harbour
and that included the many army vehicles that Carl had planned to salvage. Carl’s solicitors in turn wrote to the
Disposals Commission saying that Carl intended suing it for storage fees of one penny per cubic foot per day for
the four years that the Disposals Commission cargoes had spent in Carl’s ships. The Commission decided it did
not want the cargoes after all! Carl’s plans to salvage the cargo from the ships were then thwarted by the Customs
Department, which demanded prohibitive and unrealistic duty on any goods landed. Carl was in his element
when he salvaged several trucks from Meigs and despite their years under the sea, he was able to make one truck
mobile. He did a tour of Darwin in the vehicle. The ongoing battle between Carl and Customs continued. Customs
pounced; Carl could not afford to pay the duty on the vehicles so he promptly took them out into the harbour and
dumped them. Eventually, in 1949, the decision to charge duty on the cargoes of the vessels was reversed.
Later Carl was able to add Zealandia and the United States destroyer Peary to his ‘fleet’. The location of
Peary was unknown and although he sought help from survivors and anyone who might have had an idea of
her whereabouts, it was by spending many hours walking the floor of Darwin Harbour that he finally found her.
Peary was reported to have been carrying a large quantity of gold pesos brought out of the Philippines, but Carl
always claimed she was ‘the poorest ship in the United States Navy’. He found several rings in a safe on board and
was able to return these to their owners or families. The ships were sold to the Japanese in 1959 for scrap.
Up until the early 1950s Carl’s diving was done in a cumbersome suit, complete with hardhat, shoulder weights
and weighted shoes, all of which required attendants to work with him. Later in the 1950s he converted to diving
in overalls with a leaded belt, a facemask and an air hose connected to his compressor, which he used mostly,
unattended. He felt his destiny was then in his own hands and not those of crew.
Huts of an ex-air force Catalina base at Doctors Gully were Carl’s home for many years and his bedroom was
appropriate for the outgoing personality Carl was, with a huge mango tree growing through the middle. ‘Sammy’
the snake would entwine itself around the rafters, while ‘Cuthbert’ the crocodile languished in his pen outside.
Various greatly loved dogs were in residence over the years.
Carl was renowned for his ability to be able to repair or make parts for ships’ engines, fix geiger counters,
open safes whose owners had lost their keys, and because of his knowledge of the tides and the harbour he saved
many a boatman and swimmer lost in Darwin Harbour. On one occasion a man working on a wharf extension in
Darwin dropped his pay packet into the water, and it floated away. Carl was called some time later. By dropping
a like-weighted envelope into the water and tracking that, he eventually came upon the pay packet drifting down
the harbour. On many occasions he kept the presses rolling when the then antiquated machinery of the Northern
Territory News broke down, and the Editor would send out an urgent SOS for Carl to come to the rescue.
An explosion occurred in Carl’s sheds at Doctors Gully in 1953 and Carl’s close friend, Paul Becker, was
killed. Carl suffered severe shrapnel wounds and his eardrums were shattered. This put paid to his diving for a long
time. His working life had to take a different turn. He was a good cook, and for many months while he recovered,
he took over the running of the kitchen and dining room of the Don Hotel.
Carl had had a recompression chamber built for his own use while diving on the wrecks, which he could
operate alone and from inside. A pearl diving fleet worked out of Darwin in those days and Carl spent many
(unpaid) hours saving the lives of 16 pearl divers in his—by today’s standards—rather primitive chamber. The last
of these rescues was in 1959 when an Okinawan diver who had been working in 54 metres of water was brought
in with the ‘bends’. Many hours were spent working with the man, and although they were making good progress,
there was a crisis when the diver was able to turn off an air pressure valve inside the chamber. However, despite
this setback, his life was saved. Divers suffer ‘bends’ when the dive is too deep or they are brought to the surface
too quickly and nitrogen that has been absorbed into the bloodstream forms bubbles which block arteries and cause
excruciating pain. In simple terms, the function of the recompression chamber is to ‘take the diver down’ to a depth
at which he feels comfortable, then gradually, often over many hours, bring the pressure inside the recompression