HUMOUR NOT LOST

A TERRITORY mayor may have altered royal protocol. Former Darwin lord mayor, Ella Stack, was guiding the Queen and Prince Philip around Darwin four months after Cyclone Tracy destroyed the city on Christmas Day 1974, as revealed in her recent book, ‘‘Is there anyone alive in there’’?. But Dr Stack was unconventionally hatless and gloveless for the occasion in the stinking April humidity. She showed the remains of her Fannie Bay house, with the roof still displaced 50m away, to the royal couple, to which the Queen said after a few moments of silence: ‘‘You must have lost everything.’’ Dr Stack wrote: ‘‘This was my chance to square off.’’ ‘‘Yes Ma’am. I lost all my hats and gloves,’’ she said. Dr Stack says the pair laughed for the next few kilometres of the tour. And she said protocol was changed several years later, absolving women of wearing hats and gloves.