Plumber Pikey bowled over by flush with fame

Mike 'Pikey' Pike with an englared version of the photo of him and his funny dunny taken in the 1980s. It had hung in the Perth offices of The Daily News until it shut in 1990.

To the unknowing observer it's just a picture of a man and his unique thunderbox, but when you delve deeper it is the tale of what could quite possibly be South Hedland's first tourist attraction.

The search to find Michael Pike and his toilet letterbox began when Pilbara News journalist Peter de Kruijff got into an argument with colleagues about just how much toilet was too much toilet to show in the newspaper.

Hoping to prove a point, de Kruijff delved into the WA News archives searching for toilet images and up came "this black and white cracker taken by The West Australian photographer Bill Hatto".

De Kruijff said he had once been on a ride-along with Hatto when the photographer had told him about his stint in Port Hedland in the 1980s.

"So I figured this gem must have been taken all the way back then and had a good laugh and sent it to you guys at the North West Telegraph," he said.

Not put off by Hatto's warning that the photo was taken sometime around 1985 when he worked for News of the North, the North West Telegraph tracked Pikey the Plumber down to a property in South Hedland with a little help from social media.

Laughing about the photo's reappearance almost 30 years after it was published, Pikey said the idea for the distinctive letterbox started with a conversation about junk mail.

"It was a bit of a conversation between myself and a bloke called Peter Withers; we were talking about all the crap mail you'd get ... and that it really should get flushed down the dunny," he said last week.

A plumber, Pikey belted together a toilet and cistern he had removed from a property and his mate Mr Withers created the sign, "Mail in here, C..p below", stuck to the front.

Read the original here:
Plumber Pikey bowled over by flush with fame