Derham Groves

From time to time I’ll transcribe Peter E. Sayers’ travel diary:

Monday, February 9th, Sydney Got up at 5.00 am. Arrived Sydney outskirts 9.00 am. (At this time I should have been at Mr Hill’s office.) I proceeded to Dunkley Hat Mills, Waterloo (makers of Stetson hats in Australia) where I met the tour party for the first time. We were each given a hat after which we were shown over the mill. At 11.00 am we were received by the NSW Premier (J.J. Cahill) at his office. At 11.30 am we had a look at MLC building & had lunch with directors in the cafeteria which occupies a whole floor along with other staff amenities. 3.00 pm visited Harbour Bridge pylon (compliments of MLC). 3.45 visited ‘Unilever House’ (the building in front of where the new opera house is to be built). Tea in basement of Martin Hall with Mum & Dad.

Thursday 12th Went to Ford plant in the morning at Homebush, went to Marion’s in Russell’s car and saw their round the world slides plus Les’ New Guinea slides. Les took us home to Martin Hall.

Friday 13th Met Mayor Ald. Jensen at Town Hall. Later in afternoon Dad & I returned to Town Hall to say goodbye to Ted Holesgrove, he showed us over the place & I sat in the chair the Queen used in the Mayor’s room.

Earlier this year I bought a little notebook for $1 at a flea market in Geelong, which had belonged to J. Davies, a student at the Gordon Institute of Technology. Davies had used it to record information about a trip he made to Western Australia in 1965. He made several extensive and very puzzling lists, including this one describing the things he ‘Brought back in kit-bag: money belt; 2 (white & fawn) tennis shirts; 1 underpants; 1 socks; camera & exposed film; 2 grey & 1 navy shorts; 8 unused & 5 self-washed handkerchiefs; hat; 2 books; 3 brooches & a pin (gem stones); large packet of diverse documents & papers; arch supports; raincoat (plastic); mosquito net (& fly veil); file; small kit-bag with snorkel & rope; bag of dirty laundry; bag of toilet articles.’ He then went on to list the contents of the latter two bags. ‘Dirty laundry returned: 1 socks; 3 underpants; 5 handkerchiefs. Toilet articles: toothpaste & brush; shaver; torch; repellent — fly rid; wart goo (Satd Na2Ca3.10 H2O); pad & envelopes; bayonet plug; bandaids; string; cotton wool; buttons, needle & thread; Vaseline; Savlon; toothpics; Aspro; Kwells; matches; cellulose tape.’ The notebook also contains a few rough sketches, including the following one showing how to fold a jacket:

Television was introduced in Australia in 1956 and remained a ’novelty’ for about 10 years. Even Australian crime fiction fell under its spell. In The Cold Dark Hours (1958) by A.G. Yates (a.k.a. Carter Brown), an advertising agency executive devises an ad campaign to sell defective TV sets; in the series of pulp novels by W.H. Williams featuring Marc Brody, he starts out as a newspaper crime reporter and ends up as ‘TV’s on-the-spot crime reporter’; in Who Dies for Me? (1962) by S.H. Courtier, people are secretly monitored by means of tiny TV cameras placed inside light globes; and in Make-up for Murder (1966) by June Wright, a popular TV show host is threatened with murder. Does anyone know of others featuring TV?

Danish de Luxe was a furniture company founded by Neville Askanasy, John Westacott and Borg Gjorstvang, which operated in Melbourne, Australia, between the late 1950s and the early 1990s. They made some wonderfully comfortable and stylish chairs, including the Adeena chair (pictured), which was the company’s version of an Eames Lounge chair. Recently I purchased a pair of these chairs. As well as manufacturing furniture for domestic consumption, both in Australia and overseas, Danish de Luxe also manufactured chairs for the Australian Pavilion at EXPO 67 in Montreal, the Australian Academy of Science building in Canberra, and the Sydney Opera House. Danish de Luxe deserves more credit and recognition than they have received. .

Along with S.H. Courtier, I am also currently reading and researching the Melbourne-based crime writer, June Wright (b.1919). June wrote six crime novels between 1948 and 1966. The last three, Reservation for Murder (1958), Faculty of Murder (1961) and Make-up for Murder (1966), all feature her detective, Reverend Mother Mary St. Paul of the Cross (a.k.a. Mother Paul) — Australia’s ‘Father Brown’. Well worth reading.

The Ghosts of My Friends is a kind of autograph book that was published around the turn of the 20th century. The directions inside it state: ‘Sign your name along the fold of the paper with a full pen of ink, and then double the page over without using blotting paper.’ The resultant smuges sometimes looked like ghostly or supernatural figures. My copy of The Ghosts of My Friends originally belonged to Lysle Davey of ‘Cullen House’ Bendigo. Following are the signatures of two of his friends, Ethel Kick and Fred H. Milvain.

This photograph of Graham Kennedy and Panda Lisner in a buggy and Joff Ellen on a horse was taken by C.P. Goodall of Ballarat in the late 1950s or very early 1960s. On the back of the photograph Mr Goodall wrote: ‘Graham and Panda head off on their drive at a smart trot. Graham tries to make it not too smart.’

Whenever I come across a used autograph book, diary or journal going cheap, I usually buy it. This Collins Architects and Builders Diary of 1961 appears to have belonged to a delivery van driver, whose run took in the NSW towns of Auburn, Blacktown, Blackheath, Blaxland, Camellia, Concord, Chullora, Faulconbridge, Homebush, Katoomba, Mascot, Medlow Bath, Penrith, Pyrmont, Revesby, Rosehill, Rozelle, St Marys, Sidcombe, Springwood, Sydney, Villawood, and Woodford. On some days he’d drive delivery van FYT 084 and on others FYM 479.