The theft of Garry the Gorilla

Whilst not exactly 'high art' this is a good news tale of a well-loved sculpture that was stolen from a retirement community in St Helena, which is north of Eltham, but was found and has now been reinstalled.  The story is from The Guardian of July 3, 2024. 

Mysterious disappearance of Garry the gorilla leads police helicopter to Melbourne back yard
A month after it was allegedly stolen, Victoria police will return a beloved gorilla statue to its rightful home at a Melbourne retirement village after using its air wing to find “Garry” in a back yard. Garry, a 1.5-metre statue, was reported stolen from the Leith Park retirement village – north-east of the Melbourne CBD – on 6 June. Police said in a statement they were not willing to “cop this kind of monkey business” when the statue was reported stolen, so investigators “threw their all” into locating Garry.

After “extensive investigations”, police narrowed in on a residence in Reservoir, roughly a 20-minute drive from the retirement village. The force’s air wing was called in for the task, and helicopter pilots spotted the statue in a back yard. A search warrant was executed at the residence on Monday, and police were set to return Garry to the entrance of Leith Park on Wednesday afternoon.

Tim Nelson, the executive manager of marketing for Abound Communities, which owns the retirement village, said residents were excited about Garry’s return, with one woman even baking cookies. “One of our residents bakes cookies with her grandson and takes the cookies over to Garry, so I spoke with Robyn this morning and Robyn’s already baking cookies ready to take back when Garry arrives this afternoon,” he told Guardian Australia.

Nelson said it was a resident who first noticed Garry was missing last month. They said “G’day” to him in the morning, but when they returned in the afternoon, Garry was not there. Police said that investigations into the alleged theft remain ongoing, and anyone who witnessed anything suspicious or who has CCTV footage is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.

Garry, who is 1.5 metres high was donated to the retirement village, along with two other African animals, by Northcote Pottery.  

Garry the Gorilla

Image: Victoria Police

Update: The Herald -Sun reported on July 6, 2024 that a man has been charged with the theft of the gorilla and a number of other offences and will face the Heidelberg Magistrates Court on  August 30.

References

Mysterious disappearance of Garry the gorilla leads police helicopter to Melbourne back yard from The Guardian,  July 3, 2024, read here. 

Police recover and return Garry the stolen gorilla, Victoria Police website July 3, 2024 read here.

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

Melbourne Centenary Birthday Silver Cake Clock rediscovered

In good news, a silver clock, made in the shape of a birthday cake, to celebrate Melbourne's Centenary in 1934 has been  rediscovered on a farm in Queensland. 

Samuel Fricker, from Gibson’s Auctions, with the Melbourne Centenary Clock

Photographer: Penny Stephens / The Age

Najma Sambul, reported in The Age on 20 June 2023,  that -

It was found stashed away in a tin shed in coastal Queensland, dismantled and beginning to tarnish. But Cathy and Phillip Harth didn’t throw away the pieces of the old silver clock, which they would soon discover was a rare Melbourne artefact.

"I thought, ‘Oh, this is pretty nice to use as a pot plant’,” says Phillip of finding the clock on his farm in the rural town of Cawarral.

The clock is believed to be a second and larger version of the Melbourne Centenary Birthday Silver Cake Clock that is currently owned by the National Gallery of Victoria. True to its name, the Harths’ piece is solid silver and in the shape of a five-tier birthday cake and originally included 100 candles.

Both clocks were crafted by renowned Melbourne silversmiths James Steeth and Son, the makers of the Melbourne Cup, to celebrate Melbourne’s centenary in 1934-35. The smaller version, which is held in the NGV, was the grand prize of a competition during the centenary celebrations, but was never claimed by the competition winner.

The newly discovered clock was most likely the display version used during the celebrations. Nobody knows why it disappeared or how it arrived in Queensland. The Harths, who are from Queensland and have never lived in Melbourne, bought the 11-acre property in Cawarral last year.

After realising the clock was a birthday cake and had the nameplate of Melbourne’s centenary emblazoned on it, the couple spent six months trying to uncover its origins. “For the first two months, no one believed we had it,” Phillip says. “People were coming back saying, ‘It’s not the one in the museum [National Gallery of Victoria] and that there isn’t a second one’.” 

It took dozens of calls to museums, valuers, auctioneers and even the granddaughter of James Steeth to receive confirmation that they were in possession of the original clock. “The curator of NGV was the missing link,” Phillip says. “The NGV told us a clock was missing.”

Melbourne Centenary Clock

Photographer: Penny Stephens / The Age

The clock was restored by Gibson's Auctions of High Street, Armadale and was very nearly complete, just missing eight candles. It was estimated that it would reach between $30,000 and $50,000 when it went to auction in July 2023, and it sold for $48,000*.

Read the full report, Centenary cake a slice of Melbourne’s history found on Queensland farm by Najma Sambul, in The Age, here. Gibson's Auctions https://www.gibsonsauctions.com.au/

* https://www.gibsonsauctions.com.au/auction-lot/the-sterling-silver-centenary-of-melbourne-birthd_52D4511BF4

Anzac Soccer Ashes Trophy rediscovered

Some good news, as reported by the Guardian newspaper in April 2023 -
After vanishing 69 years ago an Australian sporting treasure has been discovered in mint condition in a suburban garage.

The small wooden trophy – housing a silver-plated razor case carried at Gallipoli – was contested by the Socceroos and New Zealand’s All Whites until it mysteriously disappeared in 1954. Inside it are ashes of cigars smoked by the Socceroos captain Alex Gibb and the All Whites skipper George Campbell after the first trans-Tasman match on Australian soil in June 1923.

The Soccer 'Ashes' Trophy

Image: Football Australia 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-25/anzac-soccer-ashes-rediscovered-after-almost-70-years/102263154

The razor case belonged to Private William Fisher, who later became the Secretary of the Queensland Football Association. The trophy was discovered when family members were sorting through the belongings of the late Sydney Storey, who was involved as an administrator in Australian Soccer at a national level from 1922 until 1966.The trophy, made of New Zealand Honeysuckle and Australian Maple, is in perfect condition. 

This good news story gives hope that other important and interesting items that vanished  years ago may one day be rediscovered. 

References

ANZAC Soccer Ashes Trophy recovered. Football Australia, 24 April, 2023, read.
Anzac ‘Soccer Ashes’ trophy found after vanishing for 69 years. The Guardian, 25 April 2023, read.

‘Soccer’s Ashes’: How a suburban garage clean-out solved a 69-year Anzac mystery by Vince Rugari. The Age, April 25, 2023, read. (may be behind a pay-wall)

ANZAC Soccer Ashes trophy rediscovered in suburban garage after almost 70 years by Samantha Lewis. ABC News 25 April, 2023, read

Sundial on the bank of the Elwood Canal

In May 2022, a sundial on the bank of the Elwood Canal was stolen from its bluestone plinth. The sundial had been donated to the people of Elwood by local children's author, Celeste Walters.  

Ms Walters donated the sundial and plinth in 2017 after receiving a generous bequest from a friend to encourage learning. “I wasn’t sure what to do until one day I saw a mother and child studying a sundial on an octagonal plinth. This is more than a beautiful monument, I thought - it’s a tool for learning. Until it was stolen, the sundial was studied by Elwood College science students and admired by passers-by.*

In some good news, a replacement sundial was installed on 10 November 2022 and this will hopefully continue to delight children travelling to and from school along the Elwood Canal for decades to come.

The replacement sundial. 

Image: © VanishedVictoria

*Brazen Bronze thefts in Port Phillip. City of Port Phillip media release.
https://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/about-the-council/news-and-media/brazen-bronze-thefts-in-port-phillip