Last Nizam (9781742626109) (33 page)

The news of the wreck soon attracted the attention of local
abalone divers who collected the shellfish from shoreline platforms at the base of the cliffs, and by diving into the deep holes in and around them. The divers had established a series of rough tracks to reach the isolated abalone fisheries that lay to the north and south of the wreck and would pay Jah gate money to drive through the station.

Among those diving for abalone were three brothers from Perth: Ray, Brian and Peter Mickelberg. The Mickelbergs were the most professional divers, using planes and a helicopter to fly their catch from the rough landing strips they had built to their processing factory in Kalbarri. The brothers would later gain notoriety for their alleged involvement in one of Australia's largest robberies, the 1982 Perth Mint Swindle. In 1983, they were convicted of obtaining more than A$650,000 worth of gold bullion using forged cheques. Ray Mickelberg was jailed for 20 years, Peter for 16 and Brian for 12. All three were later acquitted, but not before stories began circulating of an Aladdin's cave containing the gold from the Perth Mint hidden on Jah's property along the Zuytdorp Cliffs.

Less imaginary was the discovery by police in May 1983 of a walled-in cellar under the Mickelbergs' home containing gold and silver bullion worth more than $86,000, as well as underwater gear and a box of ‘old Dutch coins'. Police later determined that the gold and silver were the private property of the Mickelbergs and had not belonged to the Perth Mint, but museum staff confirmed that the coins had come from the
Zuytdorp
. Ray Mickelberg told WA Museum Director Philip Playford that he had purchased the coins from a local fisherman from Kalbarri, but refused to give his name.
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In 1978 Playford approved an expedition to the wreck site led by Green in order to remove as much of the silver bullion and other artefacts as possible before treasure hunters stripped the site completely. Playford found Jah enthusiastic about helping
excavate the wreck, particularly after being told that in 1704 the
Zuytdorp
had been involved in clashes with Aurangzeb's forces at Surat on the west coast of India. Jah pitched in by bulldozing a track to the wreck site, grading an airstrip built in the 1950s for an earlier expedition and designing and erecting a flying fox at his own cost. The flying fox consisted of a massive iron tetrapod on top of the cliff and a steel cable running down to two large anchors laid out to sea. A cage was suspended on runners from the cable, which was to be used to enable divers and equipment to enter and leave the water and bring the relics ashore. It never worked. The anchors dragged, causing the cable to chafe on the sea floor. As Playford later wrote in
Carpet of Silver
, the cable broke during an unmanned test run, ‘sending the cage plummeting to the bottom of the cliff. If it had carried the diver, he would no doubt have been killed or seriously injured.'
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The airstrip did not fare much better. Strong winds blew away patches of sand, exposing bare rock which nearly caused one of the expedition's planes to crash. Even with a fully operational flying fox and airstrip, Green estimated it would take 16 days of diving time over a two-year period to extract all the coins and lead ingots. The timetable was thrown into further doubt after an arsonist set fire to the expedition's caravan. It was not until the late 1980s that the museum was able to recover the bulk of the artefacts.

For the first few years at Murchison House Station, Jah lived in the manager's cottage with its peeling paint and cracked linoleum tiles. Hessian sacks hung over the doors kept the flies out but not the wild pigs that would come rummaging for food or the snakes that occasionally made homes for themselves in the pantry. Jah was unaware of his proprietorial right to live in the main homestead where Bill Shimmons was squatting with his
family. Though he had lived in villas, palaces and expensive hotel suites for most of his life, Jah cared little for the discomfort. He was outdoors most of the time, driving his dozers into the desert. Esra was making a new life for herself in London and California. The couple had not yet divorced but neither of his children lived with him.

Though he enjoyed the isolation of the Australian outback, Jah rarely went anywhere alone. Paranoia about his own security (he claimed to have been the target of two assassination attempts) combined with an upbringing where he was always surrounded by relatives, guardians and servants made solitude anathema. The closed confines of palace life had given Jah very little opportunity to make real friends. ‘Companions' were chosen by his parents or more often than not by the old Nizam to create a mirage of normality in his school and home environment. Those closest to Jah say he was extraordinarily generous, witty and courteous, but also quick-tempered, moody and introverted. They felt their loyalty was being tested constantly. For his part, Jah was suspicious of the motives of anyone who tried to get too close. Though he once told an interviewer, ‘I have not met a single person in the 12 years I have been [in Australia] I did not like', Jah found it hard to forge genuine friendships.
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In 1976, Jah met David Weinman, who was working as guest relations manager at Perth's Hilton Hotel. Weinman was a burly-looking Sri Lankan Burgher, whose father had been the zookeeper in Colombo. He grew up looking after animals and when only 14 had played the role of a mahout in the Kenneth Hume feature film
Elephant Boy
, starring actor William Holden. After arriving in Australia Weinman worked as an apprentice at Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo but was sacked after seducing the superintendent's daughter in the gorilla enclosure. His idea of a practical joke was putting a deer penis in a south Indian curry and telling his unsuspecting guest it was a duck's neck. Jah liked
Weinman's larrikin streak and lack of snobbery and made him his private secretary.

Weinman worked on and off for Jah for the next 20 years, accompanying him on business trips to India and Switzerland, on tropical island holidays and on his frequent visits to Murchison House Station. ‘Jah had a saying: “You don't shit in your home town”. It was his excuse for constantly travelling.'
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Weinman found his new boss to be a stickler for routine. Breakfast, consisting of butter mixed with honey on toast followed by cups of black coffee, was served at 11.30 and would sometimes stretch for two hours as Jah issued his daily instructions to lawyers and staff. Dinner would be either at the upmarket Ruby's in Perth's old Sebel Hotel, or the Silver Dollar, a cheap Italian restaurant in the seedy suburb of Northbridge. But the order would always be the same: prawn cocktail, grilled steak and crème caramel washed down with Diet Coke. ‘Even if he went to the most famous and expensive restaurants in Europe he would order the same thing,' Weinman recalls.

Weinman also saw that spending money for its own sake gave Jah little joy. ‘When money is no obstacle, money becomes a barrier. He needed to constantly amuse himself. There always had to be a certain amount of intrigue.'
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Jah liked to set Weinman impossible tasks, such as purchasing a fur coat on a Sunday when all the boutiques in Geneva were closed because a female friend had arrived from Australia without warm clothes. As Jah took his partner to the movies, Weinman was left staring at the fur coat in the window of the boutique and at the ‘closed' sign on the door. When no one was looking Weinman took some toilet paper, lit it with a match and shoved it under the door of the boutique, setting off the fire alarm but causing no damage to the shop. The fire brigade arrived, as did the shop's owner. After the owner unlocked the shop, Weinman followed him in, offered to help find the vandals responsible for the fire, pointed to the
A$22,000 fur coat and told the now-confused shop owner he wanted to buy it. When Jah and his girlfriend emerged from the cinema, Weinman was waiting with the coat wrapped in a parcel. ‘He made me repeat the story to his friends many times. He would have loved to have put the paper under the door and lit it by himself. He loved taking the chance of being caught.'

Weinman also remembers Jah's pathological dislike for the rich and powerful. In the 1980s Perth was riding high on the back of a property and mining boom. Alan Bond, then Australia's most successful and colourful businessman, had just won the America's Cup. The Labor Premier, Brian Burke, had come to power on the promise of boosting economic growth and lowering taxes. Burke, who later became the first head of government to be convicted of a criminal offence since Federation in 1901, wanted to harness the expertise of the business community to make the state's public sector more efficient. He promised to make available millions of dollars to the private sector for investment in sunrise industries such as tourism, finance and high technology. When the world's sharemarkets crashed in 1987, most of the deals Burke had brokered were exposed and ruined.

Jah shunned the limelight, turning down invitations for breakfasts with then Prime Minister Bob Hawke and lunches with Bond. Weinman remembers Hawke asking to meet Jah on one of his visits to Perth. ‘Jah told me, “What are you so excited about? What's the point of meeting him, I've seen him on TV.” I said, “He's the Prime Minister of Australia and he may be able to help you one day.” Jah's response was: “Then I don't want anything to do with him.”'
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Jah could not ignore the Burkes and Bonds of the world completely, given the way his Australian property and business interests were structured. Sitting neatly between Perth's powerful political and business circles was David Michael. Michael
variously described himself to associates as an ex-SAS colonel, a commander of British naval intelligence and a lieutenant in the British Army. In one or more of those guises he stumbled on a lost temple to the Queen of Sheba while working on a top-secret hearts-and-minds campaign in Yemen in the 1960s. He also claimed to have been jailed in more Middle Eastern countries than any of his contemporaries in the spying game.
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Michael came to Perth in the early 1970s, worked as an aide de camp to then WA Governor Sir Douglas Kendrew, followed by a stint as a salesman with Rolls-Royce. Jah claims they met at Sandhurst in the mid-1950s, where Michael was being trained in ‘cloak and dagger stuff'. Michael says he met Jah in 1978. Both agree, however, that they ‘hit it off from day one'. Like Weinman, Michael would fall in and out of favour with Jah. When Michael left to work for Alan Bond in 1985, Jah said to him: ‘I see you have left the tents of a prince to lead the camels of a merchant – a very wise move.'
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It wasn't. By the end of the 1980s Bond's business empire was going under and Michael would soon be back with Jah – minus the camels.

For a while the tall, cultured Englishman with a permanent suntan, slicked-back hair and a fondness for single-malt whiskies became a permanent addition to Jah's entourage at Murchison House Station, much to the bemusement of the locals. ‘I remember Michael phoning up some bloke in Singapore telling him how he'd driven a dozer when all he'd done was to walk the thing 300 metres,' says White. He also remembers the day Michael had a head-on with a vehicle belonging to a drilling team. When Jah heard the news he was furious. Jumping in his Toyota Land Cruiser he drove back to the station but ran into a ditch, knocking out the radiator. ‘Suddenly there was mad panic everywhere. There was only one car left on the station and it was the manager's.'
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Michael was given the unenviable task of putting some order
into Jah's affairs, but was frustrated at every turn. ‘We're not a company. We don't go on votes. We're not responsible to anyone. All your wages, bonuses, houses and cars come out of this pocket here,' said Jah, summarising his business ethic to a meeting of his advisors, accountants and executives in the mid-1980s. ‘This whole exercise is to keep me comfortable, to look after me. It's not a vast corporation. It's not a Monopoly game. I'm not trying to make money. Why should I? I want a nice quiet life and a chance to work with my hands and get them dirty.'
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Jah's problem was that too many other people in his circle were also getting their hands dirty. While Esra was around she had acted as a brake on some of the worst excesses being committed by Jah's administrators in India. Now that she was out of the picture and Jah was spending less time in India, the plunder of his properties and possessions was reaching epidemic proportions. Rashid Ali Khan, a classmate of Jah's at Madrassa Aliya and at Ootacamund, and his private secretary from 1964 until 1967, believes that most of the valuables Jah left behind in India had disappeared or been sold off by the mid-1970s. Like most people in Hyderabad who were once close to Jah, Khan says he knows of people who acted dishonestly, but is reluctant to name names.

The three men most closely associated with Jah in those early days, Zahir Ahmed, the chairman of the Nizam's Private Estate, Asadullah Khan, his General Power of Attorney, and Sadruddin Javeri, his financial advisor, are all dead. Unable to defend themselves from the grave, their names arise most often in discussions of how one of the largest fortunes in the world disappeared so quickly, but it seems impossible that singularly or together they could have perpetrated such a massive fraud. The only discernible paper trail relates to Jah's final years in Australia when Javeri forced the liquidation of his Australian assets over a relatively insignificant A$2.3 million debt. Concerning the tens, if
not hundreds of millions, that left Jah's estate over the decades to pay for his own lifestyle, run Murchison House Station, pay his tax liabilities in India and other expenses, there are no reliable records. How much lined the pockets of corrupt administrators and how much was simply wasted through bad advice will probably never be known. It had always been beneath the dignity of a Nizam to look at a paper before signing it. Jah had some catching up to do.
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