Not without Chomley sculpture at Gasworks Art Park

The City of Port Phillip issued this report on their Facebook page on November 27, 2023 -
Someone has stolen part of the bronze sculpture ‘Not Without Chomley’, by artist Anne Ross from the grounds at Gasworks Arts Park. The sculpture is part of the City of Port Phillip Collection, purchased as a gift to the people of South Melbourne in 1991. We are asking for any information on the whereabouts of the single standing dog, in the hope that it is returned.  The contact details for the City of Port Phillip can be found here 

The complete 'Not without Chomley' sculpture

Image: City of Port Phillip Facebook page

'Not without Chomley' sculpture, November 2023

Image: City of Port Phillip Facebook page

The Gasworks Arts Park was established on the site of the old South Melbourne (later the Metropolitan) Gas Company works. During May and June 1991 the GAS Outdoor sculpture exhibition was held at the park and 'Not without Chomley' was one of the sculptures created for this exhibition. 

A report in The Age in May 1991 noted the risk of potential vandalism -  showing sculpture in a public place has its difficulties - the artists have been rostered on site 24 house a day not to offer guided tours but to protect the works from vandals. The City of South Melbourne purchased 'Not without Chomley' in July 1991 and it was the first permanent installation in the Sculpture Park. 

Sadly a few months later Anne Ross' sculpture fell victim to vandals. The original sculpture was of cement fondu, which was all the artist could afford at the time; this was a fragile material and it was smashed with a sledge hammer. The City of South Melbourne had it recast in bronze and it has been on display and enjoyed by many for the past thirty years.

'Not without Chomley' is  now incomplete as the little dog has been stolen. If you have any information contact the City of Port Phillip, details here.

Sources

• City of Port Phillip Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/cityofportphillip
• Grogan, Robert Gasworks to Gasworks: from an industrial complex to an Arts Park - https://www.gasworks.org.au/about-us/history
• Lancashire, Rebecca Sculptors out in the open -  The Age 22 May, 1991, p. 13
• https://www.gasworks.org.au/visit-us/public-sculptures/not-without-chomley

The theft of the Pride of Australia nugget in 1991

 An interesting Vanished Victoria story has been published on the State Library of Victoria (SLV) blog - The unsolved mystery of the ‘Pride of Australia’ written by Sarah Matthews - 

Found near Wedderburn in 1981, the ‘Pride of Australia‘ was the largest Victorian gold nugget on display in Australia. Its name was a tribute to its malformed shape, which was said to resemble the continent of Australia (albeit without Tasmania). In 1985, the State Bank Victoria forked out $250,000 to purchase the nugget to stop it falling into the hands of overseas collectors. The nugget was displayed at the bank’s Bourke Street headquarters until it was borrowed by the Museum of Victoria for a bicentennial exhibition....Once the exhibition finished, the bank agreed the museum could have the nugget on permanent loan. It was moved to the Stawell Gallery (now the Library’s Cowen Gallery) to form part of an exhibition called ‘The Story of Victoria’....The nugget remained on display in the gallery for several years until one winter’s night in 1991, a daring raid was conducted on the museum and the Pride of Australia gold nugget was stolen on Friday August 30, 1991 and has not been seen since.  Read the full story here.

The ‘Pride of Australia’ gold nugget. 

Photographer: Frank Coffa

Courtesy of Museums Victoria and the SLV blog

The Age had the following report on September 1, 1991 -

The theft of the nugget

The Age, Sunday September 1, 1991, p. 5 newspapers.com

How the nugget was stolen

The Age, Sunday September 1, 1991, p. 5, newspapers.com

Reward sought for the stolen nugget

The Age, September 7, 1991 p. 19, newspapers.com

Historic Melbourne glass negatives rediscovered

The Age newspaper published this good news story on October 14, 2023, written by Cara Waters. 

A  Mystery told through lens of History: A collection of forgotten photos found in a garage uncovered stories of the Melbourne of another time.

Louise McKenzie was cleaning out the garage after her husband died when she found a collection of glass plate negatives. The negatives turned out to be old photographs of Melbourne dating back from the 1930s. McKenzie has spent the last three years uncovering the stories behind them. The 240 negatives depict a range of moments from Melbourne’s history, from St Kilda swimmers on Christmas morning in 1933 to a fire at the Cathedral Hotel on Swanston Street in 1936.

‘‘My husband [Ian McKenzie] was a bit of a magpie,’’ McKenzie says. ‘‘He was an architectural photographer and he must have picked these up in the ’90s at a garage sale or the Camberwell Market.’’ The negatives had sat untouched in an old box in the garage for more than 20 years, and when McKenzie found them in the clean-out,  she knew she was onto something special. ‘‘They were obviously wonderful moments of Melbourne and Victoria,’’ she says. ‘‘ The photographer had scratched details on the back so I could tell where each photo was from.’’

McKenzie took the negatives into the East Melbourne Library to start the process of digitising, scanning and printing the photographs and trying to discover who had taken them. McKenzie, along with history lovers Ernie Ward and Fiona Collyer, signed up as City of Melbourne volunteers and joined forces with the council’s libraries’ community heritage team leader Linda Longley and local history librarian Fiona Campbell. They spent more than three years trying to unlock the mysteries of the negative collection.

‘‘I wanted to be involved as I didn’t want them to end up in the tip,’’ McKenzie says. ‘‘ When we started to do the scans it was just so exciting because they were of an era that I could still relate to.’’ The first negative they scanned was of the RMS Orford ship leaving Station Pier in Port Melbourne with streamers flying from the deck and crowds lining the shore to wave goodbye.

‘‘It was a fascinating time because it was the Melbourne Centenary in 1934 and 1935 and it was also the Depression and between the wars,’’ McKenzie says. ‘‘In the pictures that show children there are often some with shoes and some with bare feet. Contrast that with the marvellous electric lights put up in Melbourne for the Centenary, which were spectacular.’’

Many of the photographs have interesting stories behind them, which the team uncovered by going through newspaper archives, including those of The Age. ‘‘ The Orford was carrying our Test cricket and Davis Cup tennis teams to the UK, including Sir Donald Bradman,’’ McKenzie says. ‘‘The press were on board and radioed reports daily of the various activities including who got seasick. Joan Hartigan, the Australian Open winner, was reported as discarding her bright blue shorts for bright blue bathers and being first into the swimming pool.’’

A photograph of the dedication of the Shrine of Remembrance stands out because of the few women standing at the back of a sea of men in suits. ‘‘They are facing away from the Shrine and are holding up their powder compacts like a periscope so they can see over the backs of the men,’’ McKenzie says.

A photograph of a women’s golf match at the Royal Melbourne Golf Course in 1934 between Australia and Great Britain sheds light on a ‘‘huge controversy’’ at the time about women wanting to play golf without wearing stockings. ‘ One of them developed liquid makeup for legs so they looked nice and brown but it contained titanium so they had to abandon it in the war effort,’’ McKenzie says. Eventually, women were able to play golf wearing socks rather than stockings.

One of the newly discovered images

Source: https://whatson.melbourne.vic.gov.au/things-to-do/newsworthy-melbourne-in-photographs-1933-1936

An ongoing mystery was who had taken the photographs. ‘‘It took a couple of years but we finally tracked down the photographer,’’ McKenzie says. ‘‘I always thought he would have to be someone involved with the media or the press because of the number of significant events captured.’’ McKenzie and her team got in touch with The Age’s librarian, Michelle Stillman, who found one old page of the newspaper that featured three photos from McKenzie’s collection. They found more and more of the photographs in The Age’s archives and realised the photographer was the masthead’s first full-time photographer, Hugh Bull.

‘‘He had a job on Fleet Street [in London] but the company folded, so he came out to Australia with his wife, children and his camera, and within three days, he got a job at The Age,’’ McKenzie says. Bull arrived in 1927 and was initially put on probation at The Age for three months, but his status changed to full-time after he demonstrated his worth during a day at the races. Bull and the other photographers assigned to cover the meeting had limited visibility because the ‘‘foul’’ Melbourne weather made it difficult to photograph. While the others aimed their cameras and tried to take shots, he panned his camera in time with the horses passing by.

Bull was the only photographer to return with usable images of the winning horses that day. He ended up working as a photographer for The Age for 31 years. He produced a dynasty of press photographers – sons Dennis, Peter and Geoff all work in the trade and grandson Colin followed in their footsteps. Son Ken worked as a photo engraver. Bull passed away in his late ’90s.

Stillman says when The Age moved from its building in Collins Street to Spencer Street in 1969, any negatives from before the 1950s, which included Bull’s glass plate negatives, were discarded. ‘‘The new building at 250 Spencer Street was purpose built, and supposed to be the dawn of a modern age, where we didn’t need bulky old glass plate negatives cluttering up our new-beaut building,’’ she says. ‘‘The decision makers didn’t consider the history the collection represented, just the space they took up. It’s heartbreaking to think of the lost history on those glass plates.’’

Stillman says she was astonished to find out about McKenzie’s collection of negatives. ‘‘Considering people chuck out photo albums of their own family history, to have ... heavy but fragile glass plate negatives of unidentified images survive is amazing,’’ she says. McKenzie says the process has been a labour of love and is a great example of the joy of volunteering. ‘‘Whenever we showed anyone these photographs they got so excited about it so we thought we’d do an exhibition,’’ she says.

The exhibition, which has been named the McKenzie Collection, is being held at the East Melbourne Library and includes 50 photographs with some printed in silver gelatin, which was a commonly used process at the time. McKenzie says subsequent garage clean-outs have uncovered an old grandfather clock, but not much else. ‘‘I doubt I will find more,’’ she says. ‘‘But I will keep looking.’’

The exhibition, Newsworthy: Melbourne in Photographs 1933-1936, is on at the East Melbourne Library, 122 George Street and runs until December 10, 2023.  https://whatson.melbourne.vic.gov.au/things-to-do/newsworthy-melbourne-in-photographs-1933-1936