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Royce Dunbar Research Paper

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Royce Stewart Dunbar took his first name seriously. As a kid, he collected Matchbox Rolls Royce's and dreamed of owning a real one. It seemed fitting he should own the prestige car emblazoned with his name. He never lost that ambition. Over time ambition became obsession and Royce eventually became proud owner of a Rolls Royce. Born in 1943 in Western Australia, Royce joined the Royal Australian Navy as a stores assistant, a month before his 18th birthday, and found himself posted to the HMAS Voyager, where he introduced himself as Roy, probably a more suitable name for the blokey surrounds of the Australian Navy. On the evening of 10 February 1964, the Voyager, a destroyer, performed exercises off Jervis Bay with the HMAS Melbourne. During …show more content…

Roy Dunbar, though not due for discharge until 1970 nevertheless obtained early discharge because by 1968 he is recorded back living in WA as a civilian, and again known as Royce. Active in the Perth gay community, in 1984 he wrote an article for the national gay magazine Campaign about the gay rights movement in Western Australia under his own name, still a courageous act at that time. By the early nineties, he lived in Darwin, where he worked for a time at the Northern Territory AIDS Council and acted in amateur theatre productions. He continued to collect Matchbox versions of Rolls Royce cars, still hoping to one day own a real …show more content…

Royce plonked Restaurant Royce on Reservoir Road, a major arterial road, next door to a takeaway chicken shop, and situated midway between a notorious street of public housing, and the precinct of cheap apartment blocks known as Lego Land. Not quite an oasis of elegance and aspiration. God knows how he protected the Rolls on the street. Perhaps armed guards... or a reinforced underground bunker. Despite visits from popular celebrity chef Bernard King, the restaurant proved less than successful. In the knockabout Cairns of those days, a place where people complained about needing to buy black thongs for formal events, where the stretch limos all over the place conveyed, not locals, but Japanese honeymoon couples, very few residents would risk ridicule by taking a piss-elegant drive in a urine-coloured Roller. (There's been a marked increase in that demographic since though.) On quiet nights, or after closing time, Royce cruised the Esplanade in the roller, and on Saturday nights he motored to Rusty's to party there. Although the restaurant proved unsuccessful, Royce could still pursue other ventures. He owned the car, and his bank account still contained a sizable amount of cash. But he had achieved his

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