Queers of the Desert

Jimmy Bergengren (1956-93)

I first met Jimmy Bergengren in the late 1980's through a mutual friend. A younger guy named Kym who had been living with Jimmy between stints on Adelaide invited Paul and me to a dinner party at his house in Raggett Street. Kym had been dropping in to our place for a few months and telling us snippets about his fascinating but reclusive friend. Our standing welcome to all gay men in town and Jimmy's very long isolation from gay society led to the suggestion of a meeting. With some persistence Kym eventually persuaded him that they could safely entertain us at their home.

That evening was quite a memorable one. After a clumsy, slightly uncomfortable start and some prodding by Kym, Jimmy seemed reassured that we did not represent a threat and revealed himself to be a charming and entertaining host.

Jimmy's house was like a cross between a castle and a museum. There were rooms hidden behind bookcases and a cellar that was revealed by flipping the dining table onto its side, complete with lamps, carpet and floorboards, to access a set of stairs. Between the dining room and his bedroom there was a room that ran the length of the house where an indoor pool was under construction, complete with a chandelier hanging overhead, and surrounded by dozens of large statues from Papua New Guinea.

Most rooms were lined with overflowing bookcases and display cabinets. There were stuffed animals, rugs and antiques and curios from around the world. Paintings hung everywhere, and sculptures and objet d'art littered every surface. There was a display spanning several walls of armaments from diverse cultures, continents and periods in history, a good deal of Aboriginal art and a concentration of World War II souvenirs. One of these; a boy's Hitler Youth uniform, was a particular treasure that he rather disturbingly asserted had been his own.

The meal itself, laid out on the table that formed the cellar trapdoor, was a Swedish smorgasbord in recognition of Jimmy's heritage but also featuring little Australian toothpick flags to indicate those dishes of more local origin for our benefit. Jimmy entertained us before and after dinner with tales of his youth in Sweden and his 30 or so years in Alice Springs; the guys he had known and some of the events he had witnessed. His conversation was peppered with the names of several prominent local families and veiled hints of scandal.

At the end of the evening it was clear that Jimmy had enjoyed his brief contact with local gay society, but that it was also unlikely he would seek to actively participate himself. Indeed, although we often dropped in to his shop to catch up and let him know of coming activities, he never attended one, nor did we ever share another social event. It seemed that Jimmy was simply content to stay at home with his books and television.

What follows is a combination of my own recollections and an interview with Jimmy's long-term friend and beneficiary; Julie Burdis, conducted in Alice Springs on November 30, 2004.

Jimmy came from a very wealthy background in Sweden and often claimed to have direct connection to the Swedish royal family. Before leaving home he had studied chemistry at university and worked as a laboratory assistant but couldn't find fulfilment in scientific pursuits. Hoping for a life of adventure he joined the merchant marine and sailed the world for several years.

In 1956 at the age of 24 he arrived on board a ship in Adelaide and left it planning to travel overland with a shipmate and rejoin his vessel in Darwin. When he reached Alice he decided to stay for a while and never left the town again. In 37 years he didn't even make it to Uluru!

Jimmy worked in several jobs in the town over the years including a laboratory technician at the Arid Zone Research Institute and at the Memorial Club. As soon as he had the means he bought a block of land on Emily Gap Road (now the Ross Highway) and built himself a shack. His first attempt to build it using recycled bottles from the Memorial Club failed as he didn't realise that he needed foundations and just laid them on the ground with disastrous consequences. The heart of Jimmy's shack was an old iron stove on which he would prepare elaborate meals for guests at dinner parties. These normally featured multiple courses with a hand-written menu and were attended by many of the town's notable and sometimes infamous citizens. Jimmy always prided himself on his social sophistication and saw himself as a civilsed man.

When his grandfather died in Sweden he left Jimmy a sizeable fortune which assured him a continuing income and the resources to pursue some of his ideas. He started a number of businesses in town, including a camera shop which allowed him to pursue photography as a professional interest. He also opened a hobby store in the Fan Arcade and later leased a nearby building, sub-letting the shops to others. One of these was to be his last commercial venture; the House of Goodies. A cross between a souvenir shop, art gallery and junk yard; it contained a vast array of antiques, fakes and novelty items – a lot like his house. He sometimes said that he only kept it going because it provided him with storage for all the items he couldn't fit in his home. The not-for-sale tags on many of the bigger and better items apparently bore that out.

The House of Goodies gave Jimmy a great vantage point from which to watch the town go by, and he could usually be seen sitting inside the window quietly observing the passing parade between reading one of his thousands of books. A trademark feature of the shop was the skeleton he hung in the door each night in his idiosyncratic approach to issues of security, confident that the most likely burglars would be too scared by the image of death to break in.

One of the less obvious items he sold from his hobby store and later, the House of Goodies, were condoms. For many years a substantial number of the town's young men knew that Jimmy was a discreet source of an item in high demand, but one that they were often reluctant to obtain from pharmacy staff who knew them or their families. On this basis Jimmy was privvy to the secret lives of a good many local young men. And, according to him, this bond of confidence meant that some were also prepared to disclose conduct that was not always on the straight and narrow.

Concerned with keeping up his own appearance, but also wanting to fulfil an ambition to have children, Jimmy attempted to get married on three occasions. He proposed to three women who all refused him and was proposed to another three who he refused. A friend's suggestion that he find a wife from south-east Asia to meet his needs was rejected by him on the basis of his very conservative beliefs about racial purity.

Before the introduction of television to Alice Springs Jimmy was a very active member of the community, at one stage belonging to 17 different clubs and societies including the Alice Springs Show Society. He had strong interests in history and art as prime markers of culture, but he was contemptuous of those he perceived as false intellectuals and enjoyed sending up anyone he considered the least bit pompous. One clear sign of this was his entry in an art competition of a small armless female figurine carrying an empty Milo tin which he titled Venus with Milo, just to put a cat amongst the judging pigeons. But television, when it arrived, absolutley fascinated Jimmy and quickly took over his life. Obsessed with the stream of information available he quickly became reclusive, preferring to observe rather than participate on life.

Julie Burdis described Jimmy as a boy who never grew up. He often seemed to prefer fantasy to reality, and wanted to live in the past. The clearest indication of this was his obsessive desire to turn his house into a castle, including ramparts with slots for defence purposes, many aspects of which he claimed to have copied from his father's. However, as Julie pointed out, along with the authentic and valuable items in his house, there were also many fakes.

 Jimmy died on July 26, 1993 as a consequence of a malignant melanoma which could not be cured. He waited too long to seek treatment, finally leaving town for the first time too late to save his own life. Knowing that his death was imminent he went about systematically destroying his private records.

He always maintained his relationship with his family in Sweden and one of his brothers came to visit him before his death. His funeral was very well attended by many who considered him a good friend or simply wanted to mark the passing one of the town's identities.

Jimmy was always quite generous and gave often to various charities about the town. After his death many of the collected objects in his house were given to the local RSPCA for fund-raising purposes.

His passing was marked by the following article in the Centralian Advocate.



Centralian Advocate, July 30, 1993
Centralian Advocate:
July 30, 1993
© News Ltd: used with permissio

Old character leaves behind happy memories

One of the old "characters" of Alice Springs was laid to rest this week.
Jimmy Bergengren, who died last Wednesday from melanoma at the age of 69, was buried on Monday.
Swedish-born Mr Bergengren arrived in Alice Springs in 1956 with just 20 pence in his pocket.
In later years his shop "House of Goodies" in Todd Mall became well known, but he closed it down in 1991 because it was losing money.
In its profitable days the House of Goodies sold everything from wooden elephants made in Thailand to trumpets from Tibet or cedar chests from India.
A friend, artist Julie Burdis, described Mr Bergengren as "a very quiet, private person, but absolutely eccentric".
She said he was "a great procrastinator". He had finally had the melanoma removed last September, but it was too late.
"He started a lot of different businesses and at one time had quite a few shops going," she said. "He was also the original photographer in town.
"He arrived here in 1956 and he never left the town until April this year when they flew him to Adelaide because of the cancer. He never saw Ayers Rock.
"He had 10 000 books and probably read for six hours every day of his life.
"Before TV he was a member of 23 clubs in town, and he was very active in all of them.
"He was very generous. We've found letters from the youth centre, the RSPCA, the hospital, numerous places thanking him for donations nobody knew about.
"He had a very ramshackle tin shed on Emily Gap Road where he used to have very exotic candlelit dinner parties with handwritten invitations."
Julie recalled at one early stage in the 1950s he bought a Lend Lease ute from the army. Eventually it could only travel in reverse, and Mr Bergengren drove to his job at the Arid Zone Research Institute in reverse for three weeks. "His family were all overseas and he never married," she said. "His brother came out from Spain to visit him recently. They hadn't seen each other for 44 years."

Tell me more!

1 1