PIX article on the Redfern All Blacks 'Aboriginal Footballers' 1946, PIX, 5 October 1946 p28

This week is NAIDOC week, and as it happens, the decider for the State of Origin rugby league, so what better topic then the Koori Knockout and Aboriginal Rugby League?

  Listen to Mark and Julia on 2SER here 

Aboriginal players in the NRL are some of the best and most recognised players across the competition. They are household names, local, state and national captains. But this has not always been the case, and it was a long road to get here.

The NRL as we know it now began in 1908 as a break away competition from the dominate game of rugby union. No known Aboriginal players were amongst the ranks of these first teams, but it was not long before some began to appear around the margins.

By 1917 an all Aboriginal team, known as the All Blacks was playing in and around Sydney. They defeated the Port Kembla Rugby League club 13-6 in October that year.

As success came, recognition grew and by 1930 in Redfern and 1934 at La Perouse all Aboriginal teams had been established: the Redfern All Blacks and La Perouse All Blacks (1934), later changing to La Perouse United. These teams played against each other, against regional Aboriginal teams and played in the South Sydney District competition against teams in lower and junior grades.

In 1952 the first Aboriginal player known to be picked in a First Grade team was Ray Laurie, who played for Balmain. Laurie had been scouted from Casino where he had played for a number of years. In 1951, the year prior to his selection he scored 246 points, including 48 tries and 51 goals. Although he only stayed with Balmain two years, his time was a breakthrough for Aboriginal players. Still despite this the numbers were small and most players were excluded.

By the 1960s, as Aboriginal political action grew in Sydney, the All Blacks and other teams became an important component of the community, providing a welcoming community for young men arriving in Sydney from the bush and a measure of pride and success more broadly.

Finally in 1971, eight teams including the Redfern All Blacks, La Perouse, Mount Druitt and Koori United which represented Southern Sydney joined four regional teams in the inaugural NSW Aboriginal Rugby League Knockout, now known as the Koori Knockout.

PIX article on the Redfern All Blacks 'Aboriginal Footballers' 1946, PIX, 5 October 1946, p29

Bob Morgan, one of the original organisers, explained that:

Our concept at the time was to also have a game where people who had difficulty breaking into the big time would be on show. They could put their skills on show and the talent scouts would come and check them out.

The first knockout was held at Camdenville Oval in St Peters and was won by Koori United. 

When the Kempsey All Blacks won in 1975 it was decided that from then on the competition would travel, with the winning side hosting the next year. This is how the competition continues to operate with nearly 100 teams of men, women and junior players competing over a four day carnival in October.

All up more than 60 Koori Knockout players have gone on to play in the NRL competition, proving Bob Morgan was right.

Read Professor Heidi Norman's entry on Aboriginal Rugby League in Sydney on the Dictionary here: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/aboriginal_rugby_league_in_sydney

To find out more about NAIDOC events happening near you, head to the NAIDOC website and scroll down to get to their calendar of events: https://www.naidoc.org.au/

Mark Dunn is the Chair of the NSW Professional Historians Association and former Deputy Chair of the Heritage Council of NSW. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of NSW. You can read more of his work on the Dictionary of Sydney here. Mark appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Mark!

Listen to the audio of Mark & Julia here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15 to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.  

 

Leigh Straw, Angel of Death Dulcie Markham, Australia’s most beautiful bad woman

HarperCollins, 2019, ISBN 978073333966 (p/bk), pp1-312, RRP $32.99

Angel of Death is the third book by writer and historian Leigh Straw that focus on Australian women and crime. It follows on from her successful books The Worst Woman in Sydney: The Life and Crimes of Kate Leigh (2016) and  Lillian Armfield: How Australia’s First Female Detective Took on Tilly Devine and the Razor Gangs and Changed the Face of the Force (2018). Dulcie Markham (1914-1976) was neither a leading underworld crime boss nor Sydney’s first female detective but as ‘one of Australia’s most popular prostitutes’ she had a place in both their worlds as they fought to control her; Leigh to manage and profit from her work and Armfield to reform her. Dulcie Markham however, had her own agenda and agency. She was deeply fascinated by the power and the profit that organised crime offered and, wanting in on the action, was determined no one was going to stop her. Markham lived much of her working life in the seedy underworlds of Australia’s main cities from the 1920s through to the mid 1950s when she finally retreated into obscure retirement. During these decades she was well known in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and just for good measure, she had a brief sojourn in Perth in 1946 too. From teenage runaway and streetwalker to professional prostitute, she lived through the audacious flapper days of the Roaring 1920s, the bleak Depression Years of the 1930s and the lucrative era of WW2 when thousands of cashed-up yanks on R and R were in town looking for a good time. She was also a standout beauty and she used her Hollywood looks to lure her punters and to dazzle her lovers - of which she had many. As she herself told newspaper reporters in 1940,

‘I was pert, more than ordinarily pretty, and fellows took a lot of notice of me.’

But her personal glamour obscured the dark-side, for her life was also firmly ensconced within the criminal, the dangerous and the often very violent. She flew with the crooks and moved with the warring gangs with their razors and pistols, as they fought for control over the illicit drugs, sly grog, prostitution and illegal betting rackets that characterised life in the dubious locales of Australia’s main metropolitan centres. As both prostitute and ‘gangster’s girl’, Straw suggests that ‘jealousy over Dulcie was behind many of the underworld shootings in the 1930s and 1940s.’ Astonishingly, at least a dozen of her lovers and husbands were brutally slashed or fatally gunned down. The first was her beau Cecil ‘Scotty’ McCormack, a 22 year old gang member, who was viciously stabbed through the heart by rivals on the streets of Darlinghurst in May 1931. Dulcie’s appearance at the coronial inquest into his violent death the following month was ‘her first public appearance as a member of Sydney’s underworld.’ Dressed in a racy blood-red dress and hat, with her perfectly coiffured blond hair and ruby lips, there was no escaping her resulting persona; to the city’s pressmen at least, this woman was the classic femme fatale. McCormack’s violent death was the genesis of Dulcie’s long and notorious career, in which her proximity to death and gangland vice was extraordinary. Whether it was sheer coincidence or treacherous collusion on her part, shootouts, showdowns and sly stabbings saw many of the men in her life taken down by the blade or the bullet. By 1940 Dulcie had lost three lovers and a husband to underworld violence, along with numerous close associates and friends. Many more would follow. Coronial inquests and court trials grimly followed all of their deaths - although the criminal code of silence would thwart the legal proceedings. By this time, the newspapers had begun to label ‘Pretty Dulcie’ the ‘Angel of Death’ and ‘Australia’s most beautiful bad woman.’ Tough, streetwise, always alert and constantly on guard, sometimes she used violence herself. Dulcie spent much of her time evading the authorities by using aliases, hair dyes and flitting between cities, or as she herself remarked, she ‘went into smoke’ - although not always successfully. She was arrested and fined on numerous occasions and also did a few stints in Long Bay Prison for vagrancy (streetwalking), prostitution, being ‘idle and disorderly’, and consorting with criminals.By the late 1940s she was living in St Kilda, Victoria, working as a prostitute and also running her house as a sly grog shop and a safe haven for Melbourne’s violent thugs and crooks. Yet the underworld was far from discerning when it came to deal with its rivals - male or female. In September 1951, Dulcie was shot three times in the leg and hip in the front room of her house. She survived, but the wounds crippled her for life. Her young lover at the time, twenty-two-year old Gavan Walsh was shot dead and his brother Desmond was wounded. Later, in 1955 she was found with severe injuries in Bondi, New South Wales. It is highly likely that she had been thrown off a twenty-foot high balcony for some sort of payback from a rival gang, although, ever the ‘moll’, Dulcie kept completely quiet. She simply insisted that she had fallen down the stairs. Yet the terrifying episode made her think deeply about her unsavoury, and potentially fatal, lifestyle, and in the mid 1950s she made her retreat and retired. By this time she had clocked up almost 100 convictions across four cities and had become ‘one of the most famous criminals to walk through Australia’s courtrooms.’ Her final years were spent quietly in domestic bliss in Bondi, married to sailor Martin Rooney who was, by all accounts, a law-abiding man. In many ways however, her death in April 1976 reflected the violence that had characterised much of her life. The once infamous ‘Angel of Death’ burnt to death in a fire which engulfed her Bondi bedroom after she had been smoking in bed. Readers au fait with the criminal history of twentieth century Sydney and Melbourne, will be familiar with many of the people included in this new book. From the notorious female criminal entrepreneurs Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, to gangsters Guido Calletti, Frank Green and Leslie ‘Squizzy’ Taylor, it is certainly a book with a colourful cast and Straw knows them and the streetscapes and locales they once inhabited remarkably well. Into this picture, she skilfully weaves Dulcie Markham through their interconnected webs of crime, corruption and murderous violence. For readers new to the history of this appalling yet enthralling era of organised crime, the book will simply astonish. But was Dulcie Markham a femme fatale? An Angel of Death? Did she deliberately lead her lovers into dangerous and deadly situations as the press so often suggested at the time? Probably not if the criminal code of violence, silence and pay back is anything to judge by. And after all, these men were already on the wrong side of the tracks. One of the main strengths of the book is that Straw leaves the reader to come to their own conclusions about Dulcie Markham. And there are indeed many silences in her story too – what happened to a daughter supposedly born in 1942? What sort of birth control did Dulcie use during her working life? Did she in fact truly love any of her lovers and husbands or was she simply in it for herself? We don’t get to really know her, despite the rich research materials that the author has mined. Yet the quiet gaps in the historical record in many ways epitomise the life of the Australian underworld itself. Secretive, shadowy and ruled by a criminal code of silence, this was Dulcie Markham’s world. That we don’t get to know her in her entirety is perhaps simply a genuine reflection of this. Dr Catie Gilchrist July 2019 Dr Catie Gilchrist is an historian at the University of Sydney. She has written for the Dictionary of Sydney and the St John's Cemetery project, and is the author of Murder, Misadventure and Miserable Ends: Tales from a Colonial Coroner's Court (Sydney: HarperCollins 2019) Visit the publisher's website to purchase or to find a sample of the book: https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780733339660/angel-of-death-dulcie-markham-australias-most-beautiful-bad-woman/  

Two whale's teeth scrimshaw c1800s, both depicting whaling scenes, Dixson Collection, State Library of NSW (SAFE/DR 40 / Item a and Item b)

Whales have been in the news of late, given that it's the whale migration season and that Japan has just withdrawn from the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, so today on 2SER Breakfast Lisa and Julia had another look at the history of whaling in Sydney.  Today Australia is a leading nation lobbying for the protection and conservation of whales. But in the 19th century, it was a different story. Listen to the whole conversation with Lisa and Julia on 2SER here You know the aphorism - Australia was built on the sheep's back. Well, whaling was the other key industry, aside from wool, that sustained the colony of New South Wales through its port, Sydney, in the first half of the nineteenth century. The first whaling ship to leave Sydney was around 1805. Initially Sydney was just a base for whalers, a safe port. Later Sydney businessmen became more directly involved in whaling. The period of peak activity was from 1820 to 1855 when Sydney whalers made 558 deep-sea whaling voyages from Port Jackson.

Whaling Station, Mosmans Bay, Dixson Galleries, State Library of NSW (DG SV1/54)

It's hard to imagine now but Mosman Bay was the location of one of the early whaling stations in Sydney which fitted out whaling ships. This was established by Archibald Mosman and John Bell. The importance of whaling to the new colony can't be underestimated. Unlike the wool industry that got just one clip a year and involved years of breeding, this was an industry that could be conducted year-round due to deep-sea whalers. Whaling involved hundreds of ships and thousands of workers. The 42 deep-sea whalers based in Sydney by 1837, for example, employed around 1,300 seamen. And these men were from many countries: Americans, Pacific Islanders, Maoris, as well as British. Local Aboriginal men like Boatswain Maroot also took jobs on whaling ships. They all contributed to the multicultural melting pot of the Rocks area. Between 1825 and 1879 Sydney was Australia's largest whaling port - producing whale oil and baleen valued at £2.6 million. This was a major export commodity - a valuable product to trade for the fledgling colony.

Trade card: J. White. Lamp contractor. The Blazing Star, National Gallery of Australia (Accession No: NGA 86.1488)

In our article on Sydney's Whaling Fleet, author Mark Howard makes the point that: "Casks of whale oil were a welcome cargo on trading vessels sailing to Britain, as they helped to deadweight the vessel so that little or no ballast was needed. The rest of the hold could then be filled with a lighter cargo, such as wool." The industry was a broader stimulus for the maritime economy. Ship-building flourished around Darling Harbour and Johnstons Bay. The whaling industry provided work for a host of other professions as well. Coopers, sailmakers, dockyard caulkers, anchor smiths, block-makers, shipwrights, ship chandlers, mast-makers, clothing outfitters, insurance agents, wharfingers and warehouse owners all catered to the trade. Sydney butchers and bakers supplied sea stores, and local ropewalks made whale lines and rigging for the ships.

South Sea Whalers boiling blubber c1876 by Oswald Walters B Brierly, Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales (DG 366)

Whaling also had a big impact on popular culture in Sydney. Sailors from around the world brought their culture to Sydney via the whalers. There was even an area down at The Rocks called Maori Town, due to the prevalence of Maori seamen. Artists were inspired by the scale and brutality of the industry, producing paintings of the whaling fleet. There are even popular songs from the 1850s connected with whaling!! After a sperm whale skeleton was acquired by the Australian Museum, local composer George Strong wrote the Catadon Polka and dedicated the dance music to the curator of the museum.

Whale off Manly November 12, 2011 by Christopher Eden (via Flickr) (CC BY 2.0)

Whaling generated considerable wealth for Sydney and supplied the colony with a major export commodity. Whaling stations developed up and down the coast. In Sydney the industry dwindled from the 1850s (the gold rush put a big dampener on things). There was a resurgence in the 1870s, due to a spike in the price of whale oil, but really by then other whaling stations up and down the coast had taken over the trade. Australia finally stopped whaling in 1979. To read more about the provisioning of the whaling fleet and some of the key players in this early industry,  check out the Mark Howard's Dictionary entry on Sydney's Whaling Fleet  and some of the other content we have under the subject term 'Whaling'.       Dr Lisa Murray is the Historian of the City of Sydney and the former chair of the Dictionary of Sydney Trust. She is a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales and the author of several books, including Sydney Cemeteries: a field guide. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Lisa!  You can follow her on Twitter here: @sydneyclio Listen to Lisa & Julia here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20 am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.

Frank Butler, alias Frank Harwood, alias Frank Ash, Darlinghurst Gaol Photographic Description Book 4 May 1897, Pic: State Archives & Records New South Wales (2138_a006_a00603_6061000098r)

This week on 2SER Breakfast, Tess talked to Dr Rachel Franks about the 'al-fresco murderer' Frank Butler, who was possibly Australia's first serial killer.   Listen to Rachel and Tess on 2SER here  Of all the different types of criminals, it’s the serial killer that frightens us the most. Serial killers are those murderers who commit at least two homicides, in separate incidents with an interval between their acts of murder. Other marks of the serial killer include how they generally murder in one-on-one situations, how there’s often a noticeable “modus operandi” or method of killing and how these killers often leave a 'signature' during, or after, each murder. There are several candidates for the terrible title of Australia’s first serial killer. From murderer and cannibal Alexander Pearce (1790–1824) who committed dreadful crimes in Van Diemen’s Land in the early 1820s through to John Lynch (1813–1842), the Berrima Axe Murderer, who confessed to ten murders before he was hanged in April 1842. The best candidate though, is Frank Butler. Born Richard Ashe in Dorset, England in 1858, he adopted numerous aliases as he travelled the world, arriving in Australia in the early 1890s. In and out of prison, on and off the gold fields, Ashe found himself in Sydney in mid-1896 as Frank Butler Harwood. Tired of a life as a forger and thief he embarked on another, much darker, career: murderer. Butler placed advertisements in Sydney newspapers under the name Harwood, seeking men to accompany him to search for gold. The man - labeled the 'al-fresco murderer' by The Bulletin - selected three respondents for his brutal scheme. Butler took these men west, told grand stories of mines worth thousands of pounds, made his companions dig their own graves (telling them they were digging for gold), before he shot them, robbed them, buried them, and then moved on. Butler’s known victims, all recruited in Sydney, were Charles Burgess, Arthur Preston and Lee Weller. Butler certainly fills the common criteria of the serial killer. He murdered at least three men, with a clear interval between each murder. He killed each man alone. The pattern of murder, conning men into digging their own graves, and then shooting them, is a very deliberate modus operandi while his signature, of leaving men in their shallow, unmarked graves, is consistent across these three victims as well.

wp-image-16270https://home.dictionaryofsydney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/SLNSW-e00328_0077_c-SMLR.jpgGrave [Linden, Glenbrook] made by Frank Butler (murderer) 1897, Dixson Library, State Library of NSW (DL PX 180, 74) 375271/> Grave [Linden, Glenbrook] made by Frank Butler (murderer) 1897, Dixson Library, State Library of NSW (DL PX 180, 74)

Sensing his luck was about to run out, Butler, using Weller's identity, secured passage to San Francisco by taking a job as a seaman on the Swanhilda. The vessel, with its cargo of coal and a ruthless killer onboard, arrived in the United States on 2 February 1897. Butler was right about running out of luck: tip offs and solid detective work back in New South Wales had made him a person of interest. Authorities, including a small contingent of New South Wales Police, greeted the Swanhilda and took Butler into custody. After a huge fight put up by Butler’s American lawyers, he was sent back to Sydney to face trial. (The New South Wales government received a bill from American authorities for £6,000, or US$28,000, to cover the cost of Butler’s US-based incarceration and legal fees.  After some disputes, the colony eventually paid a reduced claim of £4,418.) The trial of Frank Butler for the murder of Lee Weller (the strongest case) commenced at Darlinghurst Courthouse on 14 June 1897. The court was overrun and those who turned up to watch were not disappointed. The proceedings were spectacular. The selection of the jury saw an attempt by the defense to exclude anyone employed by a newspaper. The Chief Justice refused, stating that being a journalist was not a cause for disqualification. Half a dozen men were fined for failing to present themselves for jury duty. Butler himself had a hand in jury selection when he calmly stood up in the dock and challenged the selection of 19 potential jurors. There were numerous witnesses and a stunning array of evidence, including photographs of the crime scene at Glenbrook, clothing of the victim, a knife, and a rifle, as well as personal items belonging to Weller.

Group at Inquest into a Frank Butler victim - Probably Glenbrook, NSW Pic: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (At Work and Play - 00330)

There were also re-enactments. One of the police officers testifying was asked to lay on the floor of the courtroom and show the jury the position that Weller was found in. Even more dramatically, there was a demonstration for the jury at the request of Butler’s defense - showing the pistol in different positions—to determine if it was possible that Weller had shot himself in the back of the head. There were attempts to control the crowds. There were delays. There was also, on one of the occasions when the prisoner was led through the tunnel that connected the gaol to the courthouse, a violent scuffle. After losing his fight with police, Butler appeared in court, his coat was buttoned up high and tight, covering up a self-inflicted injury. There was another delay when Butler collapsed in the dock. A guilty verdict was inevitable and the death sentence was carried out on 16 July 1897 in Darlinghurst Gaol. Hangman Robert Howard (aka Nosey Bob) was in attendance, as he had been for decades. The noose was put into place around Butler’s neck and it was reported he impatiently ordered Howard to: 'Let go!'. The lever was pulled and Butler fell '7ft 5in, or 7ft 6in'. He died instantly and the last great criminal case of the Australian colonial era came to a close.     Dr Rachel Franks is the Coordinator, Education & Scholarship at the State Library of New South Wales and a Conjoint Fellow at the University of Newcastle. She holds a PhD in Australian crime fiction and her research on crime fiction, true crime, popular culture and information science has been presented at numerous conferences. An award-winning writer, her work can be found in a wide variety of books, journals and magazines as well as on social media. She's appearing for the Dictionary today in a voluntary capacity. Thank you Rachel!  For more, listen to the podcast with Rachel & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning to hear more stories from the Dictionary of Sydney.   References An Interview with Butler, Australian Town and Country Journal, 1 May 1897, p32 Berrima, Australasian Chronicle, 28 April 1842, p2 Butler and the Pressman, Kalgoorlie Miner, 24 April 1897, p17 Butler Bill, The Mercury, 23 August 1897, p4 Butler Case, The Australian Star, 20 October 1897, p6 Butler Described, The Evening News, 28 April 1897, p2 Butler’s Return, The Evening News, 23 April 1897, p5 Execution of Frank Butler, Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 24 July 1897, p203 Extradition of Butler, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 August 1897, p5 Foster, Jason K, The Dark Man: Australia’s First Serial Killer, Newport: Big Sky, 2013 Glenbrook Murder,  Sydney Morning Herald, 15 June 1897, p3-6 Glenbrook Murders, Weekly Times, 12 December 1896, p20 Pearce, Alexander, A Confession of Murder and Cannibalism 1824, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (ML MSS A 1326) Personal Items, The Bulletin, 23 January 1897, p13 Pinto, Susan and Paul R. Wilson, No. 25: Serial Murder, Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 1990 Scerra, Natalie, Serial Crimes in Australia: Investigative Issues and Practice, Doctor of Philosophy: U of Western Sydney, 2009 Travers, Robert, Murder in the Blue Mountains: Being the True Story of Frank Butler One of Australia’s Most Notorious Criminals, Richmond: Hutchinson Australia, 1972

Dancer Paula Pratt and snake expert George Cann at La Perouse 1947, PIX, 22 February 1947, p8

This week on 2SER Breakfast, Tess talked to Minna Muhlen-Schulte about George Cann, the 'snake man of La Perouse'.

  Listen to Minna and Tess on 2SER here 

For just over 100 years, down at the ‘La Pa Loop’ snake men could be seen draped in Australia’s deadliest creatures; red bellied black snakes writhing over their shoulders, the head of a black Tiger snake inside their mouth and venomous fangs sunk into the flesh of their cheek. The most well known was George Cann who became a fixture in La Perouse for 45 years. George was born in Newtown rather than La Perouse but he roamed the coastline as a child and got to know a local character called ‘Snakey George.’ Together they would wander through the bush and collect specimens. By 12 years old, George Cann had captured his first Red-bellied Black Snake and set up his first snake show in Hatte’s Arcade, Newtown. At 16 years old George was travelling the carnival and show circuit from Hobart to north Queensland. A show required more than just one hook for the audience so George learnt juggling and trick rifle shooting as well. World War One intervened and took George far into the fields of Western France, where he survived several mustard gas attacks. But on his return to Australia he saw Snakey George who suggested he take over the vacant pitch at the La Perouse loop for snake shows. He continued to tour Australia and soon met and married Essie Bradley, a young snake-woman, who had herself been entertaining crowds as ‘Cleopatra’ from 13 years old and had successfully avoided ever getting bitten.

George Cann, eyeball to eyeball with a black snake at La Perouse 5 September 1934 , by Ted Hood, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Home and Away - 392)

The Canns found a house at Hill 60, one of three camps that became home for hundreds of unemployed people who moved to La Perouse during the Depression. George began shows again at the Loop from 1926 and Essie would also fill in as show woman when he was away on tours. He finally stopped touring in 1938 with the offer of a job as curator of reptiles at Taronga Zoo. George’s resilience was like few other snake men. He survived an estimated 400 snake bites, temporary three-day blindness from a Tiger snake bite and was routinely phlegmatic in his treatment of poison in his body drinking only cold tea. After 1.3 metre tiger snake at Taronga Zoo bit his Achilles’ heel he refused all offers for treatment merely remarking “Don’t tell the Missus.”[1] John Cann described his father as ‘short..nuggety and for all his knocking about surprisingly quiet.’[2] He was someone remembered by his friends for his honesty with the exception of selling fake antidotes during the 1920s. George died of a stroke, unrelated to snake bites, at Prince Henry Hospital in 1965. During his last days he managed to escape the hospital bed and have one last roam through the La Perouse scrub where he and Snakey George had first caught snakes half a century earlier.   Listen to the podcast with  Minna & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.  Further reading:  The Canns of La Perouse blog: http://cannsoflaperouse.blogspot.com/ John Cann, Snakes Alive: Snake Experts & Antidote Sellers of Australia, Kangaroo Press, 1986, Peter Hobbins, Venomous encounters Snakes, vivisection and scientific medicine in colonial Australia, Manchester University Press, 2017 Julia Kensy, La Perouse, Dictionary of Sydney https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/la_perouse Notes: [1] Cann, J ‘John Cann, the last Snake Man of La Perouse, tells a story with bite in new book, Sydney Morning Herald, January 24 2018, https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/john-cann-the-last-snake-man-of-la-perouse-tells-a-story-with-bite-in-new-book-20180124-h0nf6q.html, accessed on 19 June 2019. [2] Cann, J Snakes Alive: Snake Experts & Antidote Sellers of Australia, Kangaroo Press, 1986, p134.

Wyoming Chambers, Sydney's newest skyscraper 1911, Building Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 45 (12 May, 1911). p45 via Trove

In the latest census data available, Sydney has over 450,000 flats, units or apartments making up 28% of the domestic buildings. This is nearly double the state average. Another 54,000 are expected to be built in the next year alone. In certain areas there are more flats then there are houses, and in some suburbs there are now more flats than people as new buildings stand empty. They are so much a part of the city landscape that people hardly notice a new one. Of course, this was not always the case. 

  Listen to Mark and Tess on 2SER here 

Curiously, the first apartment blocks in Sydney were built not so much as space savers but as time savers. The decline in the number of women working in domestic service from the 1890s onwards, made looking after large mansions in Sydney increasingly difficult and expensive. Modern flats or apartments could be kept easily and cheaply; they were self-contained homes in miniature. The first purpose-built flat building in Sydney was The Albany, completed in Macquarie Street in 1905, combining medical and dental chambers on the first two floors and then five stories of residential apartments above. The buildings proximity to the Parliament, Macquarie Street doctors and the law courts meant that it attracted an elite range of residents including Sir Samuel Griffith, Chief Justice of the newly formed Supreme Court of Australia. The Albany was soon joined by others along Macquarie Street and nearby city addresses, the sole survivor from this first phase being Wyoming completed in 1909. One of its selling points was hot water to all flats. In Potts Point Kingsclere (1912) boasted a lift, electricity to all apartments and an internal intercom known as the 'telephonette'. Apartments were soon adopted for public and affordable housing (as we call it now) with the first public housing flats, Strickland Flats in Chippendale, completed by Sydney City Council in 1914. The boom in apartment construction came through the 1920s and 1930s. Modern art-deco apartments rose over the heights of Darlinghurst and Kings Cross and apartments such as The Astor (1923) in Macquarie St became hot property, while at the same time public housing was built throughout Waterloo, Pyrmont, Alexandria and Erskineville. Heading west and south, flats followed the railway lines into the growing commuter suburbs.

Finding a flat, Kings Cross, March 1940 by Alec Iverson, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (ACP Magazines Photographic Archive ON 388/Box 025/Item 087)

In the 1920s a large number of these were built in the City of Sydney area and of those more than half were in Kings Cross or Potts Point, making up one quarter of all apartments built. The transformed not only the skyline of the suburb but the density of its population. A European style of living attracted arriving immigrants, who in turn opened cafes, restaurants and delis like they had at home, contributing to Kings Cross’s blossoming bohemian scene. Between 1900 and 1940, flats went from 0% to 20% of Sydney’s building stock, appearing in just about every suburb. From the high rise monsters in Surry Hills and Waterloo, to small scale 1930s blocks in Roseville to art deco masterpieces in Potts Point, Bondi, Manly and Coogee to the new flat pack towers in Green Square and Homebush and the high rise suburbs popping up around the new metro and along the train lines. Over a century of development they have become part of the landscape and for many the only affordable option for living in the city.  

Mark Dunn is the Chair of the NSW Professional Historians Association and former Deputy Chair of the Heritage Council of NSW. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of NSW. You can read more of his work on the Dictionary of Sydney here. Mark appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Mark!

Listen to the audio of Mark & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15 to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.

James Dunk, Bedlam at Botany Bay

NewSouth Books, 2019, 244 pp. (plus notes, select bibliography and index), ISBN: 9781742236179, p/bk, AUS$34.99

  Looking at the great corpus of works that exist on Australia's colonial history, there are so many available to inspire (and inflame) readers that it would be easy to assume that the colonial-focused archives documenting New South Wales have been exhausted. Yet, new interpretations of these records can still rattle some of our assumptions. Such narratives are invitations to look differently, or much more closely, at the past. There are books that we cannot imagine not having access to, like Grace Karskens’ 2009 work The Colony, and those that pick up a particular thread and pursue it relentlessly, for example Meredith Lake’s The Bible in Australia from 2018: books that not only allow us to know our past but are essential in helping us to understand that past. The archives have been cajoled into giving the careful investigator something new. James Dunk’s new book, Bedlam at Botany Bay, is an excellent addition to this list. The matter of madness has certainly not been ignored by previous scholars but Dunk has taken on this important topic and delivered a text of scale and scope that compels us to review the role of madness in colonial Sydney. “Madness is a beguiling and bewildering idea clothed in an expansive and unwieldly word” (p. 5). The archive, clearly, has many more stories to share. Indeed, as Dunk writes: “If we slow down […] and listen closely we find that doubt, anxiety, grief, and despair intrude into these familiar stories. Some became irrational and could no longer govern themselves, or be governed by others. They erupted in mania, or lost themselves in memories and delusions. They cried in fury and tore at the walls of their cells, or stared slack-eyed into the distance” (p. 2). The trauma of mental illness—for the sufferer, their families, their business partners and their workmates as well as for the budding society, including the men responsible for law and order—could be hidden behind closed doors or on full display in the public arena. This suffering was also unpacked in graphic detail at Commissions of Lunacy, basically a trial in which a person was “examined for lunacy or idiocy” (p. 57). The afflictions of such illnesses have long-lasting and wide-ranging ramifications. In colonial Sydney one of the more obvious impacts was reflected in the question: who would pay? Someone needed to cover the costs of repatriating madness back to its point of origin or in facilitating local incarceration of some type. Conversations of professional and sympathetic care were had but administrative ambitions and cash available were rarely in neat alignment. Madness can be mildly disruptive or absolutely brutal, and this is a difficult issue to address either up close or from a distance. To his great credit, Dunk has produced an extraordinary book that offers sufficient light on the subjects within Bedlam at Botany Bay to disrupt the confused and ever-darkening shadows that are generated by madness. One way in which Dunk has made these complex stories accessible is his choice to present his research as a suite of essays, allowing the text to be read as presented or out of sequence. The prose is exceptional. There is a clarity of expression that allows the reader to engage deeply with the chaos that is so central to our conceptions of madness, but also to sit to one side and review the interactions madness has with family and society, with medicine and the law as well as with the economics and politics that are so essential to the storytelling of Sydney. There is also a sense of the conversational as Dunk routinely cites the observations and research of others in a way that introduces a great number of scholars into the text (instead of being relegated to an endnote). This works well and really serves to orientate the reader with the archival voices, the work of various historians and Dunk’s analysis all easily distinguished. This multitude asserts an important truth: madness was, and remains, an issue for all of us. There are extensive notes and a solid index. There are, unfortunately, a few copyediting errors and these will distract some readers. My only genuine complaint about Dunk’s work is that it is too short. More essays on different aspects of madness and those who were, obviously, mad but also incredibly influential during Sydney’s formative years. For example, Robert Lowe and John Knatchbull challenged commonly held ideas about madness in 1844, when Knatchbull killed a Sydney shopkeeper with a tomahawk and Lowe based his client’s defence on the concept of moral insanity (the great lawyer’s initiative failed and the murderer met the hangman). There will, hopefully, be more scholarship from Dunk on this topic for madness “is a subject which never loses its relevance because these fault lines still run around us like scars, the outward signs of an endemic disorder which reaches not only down into the belly of who we are but back into the paths we followed to get here” (p. 8). Bedlam at Botany Bay will comfortably share shelf space with the classic Australian histories that we all (re)turn to. Reviewed by Dr Rachel Franks, June 2019 Visit the publisher's website: https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/bedlam-botany-bay/

Madame Franzina, bicycle performer 1876 , courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (PXA 362/v3/28r)

Monday just been (3 June) was officially World Bicycle Day. You say you've never heard of it? Well, neither had I until the Dictionary of Sydney tweeted about it on Monday! Sure enough, it is a relatively new international day declared by the United Nations. (It was only adopted by the General assembly on 12 April 2018). The aim of the day is great - to encourage the celebration of the bicycle, which is about 200 years old, as a simple, affordable and equitable form of mobility and transport that also fosters environmental sustainability and better health. While cycling has grown to be a major form of transport and recreation in industrialised countries, riding a bicycle was something of a novelty in the 19th century which led to a number of theatrical bicycle acts, and Sydney certainly saw it's fair share.

Listen to the whole conversation with Lisa and Tess on 2SER here

On the right is a studio photograph from the State Library's collections of Madame Adela Franzini (or Franzina), a bicycle performer, that was taken in 1876. Madame Franzini travelled widely on the colonial theatrical circuit, appearing in Sydney and other centres around the country from the 1870s to 1890s. A reviewer in a New Zealand paper in 1876 said the bicycle she used was 'of the ordinary description, except that the wheels are toed with indiarubber bands so as to prevent rattle or noise'. They also pointed out that: 'We need hardly say that she rides on one side, and therefore only uses one foot with which to propel the lever'.[1] Her ladylike riding style not withstanding, her appearance in Ballarat in the same year caused 'a sensation among a certain section of the Ballarat clergymen'.[2] Another review of her theatrical appearance in Calcutta in 1890 was also very enthusiastic: 'The most striking feature of the performance given in the Theatre Royal (in Calcutta) on Saturday (March 1) night consisted in the feat of Madame Franzini on the bicycle. The lady is by no means a stranger to Calcutta, having made her appearance some years ago in one of the circuses, but since then she has reached the height of perfection as a bicyclist. The feats she executes are astonishing, especially when we consider her weight and the dexterity required to manipulate the machine in the performance of difficult and fantastic evolutions. The best item in the programme, which as far as her portion goes was far too short, was her circling through a maze of lighted bottles without touching one or being in the least inconvenienced by the serried flames.'[3]

Henri L'Estrange, The Australian Blondin 1876 by George Willetts, courtesy of the State Library of Victoria (H96.160/2603)

Funambalist Henri L'estrange was another showman who sometimes rode a bicycle on a tightrope as part of his highwire acts. You can read all about his exploits in the Dictionary here. L'Estrange is quite the character!

Final heat of the Grand Bicycle Steeplechase - the water jump. Anniversary Day sports at the Albert Ground, Redfern 26 January 1870, Illustrated Sydney News, 17 February 1870 p344

Apart from theatrical and circus shows, there were bicycle tricks performed at dance pavilions and sporting grounds across Sydney, usually part of larger fetes and celebrations. There was even a bicycle steeplechase as part of the celebrations of Anniversary Day at Redfern back in 1870. The development of velocipedes and bicycles that were both easy to manoeuvre and reliable taxed the minds of many engineers. Sydney's famous engineer Norman Selfe, was a leading light who invented a number of contraptions. One of his early inventions was a velocipede that had four wheels and was like a mechanical horse carriage. By 1870 the velocipede was considered ungainly and outmoded, being pushed aside by the bicycle.

Norman Selfe (with beard) and Edmund Wolstenhome on velocipede invented by Selfe c1870s, courtesy of the Deer Family

His velocipedes and bicycles participated in several races at sports grounds in the 1860s and 1870s. By the 1880s the bicycle had developed enough that adventurous men began forming cycling clubs. Groups of cyclists would ride on the roads or compete in short course races on sports grounds. The Sydney Bicycle Club was formed in 1879, one of several around in the city. However, as Richard Cashman's article in the Dictionary on Sport points out: 'it was not until the development of the pneumatic-tyre safety bicycle in the 1890s that there was a cycling boom, with the sport appealing both to men and women. A number of cricket grounds, including the Sydney Cricket Ground, included cycle tracks around their perimeters.' By the early twentieth century, cyclists were forming themselves into a bicycle union, to lobby for better roads and cycle ways.

George Street, near the GPO c1900 By Kerry & Co, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (PXA 448, 9)

Bicycles had also become a major form of transport, as any photograph of Sydney's streets will show. This photo of George Street in 1900 shows a cyclist front and centre, making his way among the trams, wagons and carts.

Billie Samuels at Martin Place on the Malvern Star bike before riding to Melbourne, 4 July 1934, by Sam Hood, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Home and Away - 4237)

Let's finish by celebrating another early woman cyclist. In 1934, young Victorian cyclist Billie Samuels became the first woman to ride from Sydney to Melbourne on a bicycle, breaking the women's cycling record of 3 days 7 hours. She rode a Malvern Star. Happy World Bicycle Day from the Dictionary of Sydney!     Dr Lisa Murray is the Historian of the City of Sydney and the former chair of the Dictionary of Sydney Trust. She is a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales and the author of several books, including Sydney Cemeteries: a field guide. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Lisa!  You can follow her on Twitter here: @sydneyclio Listen to Lisa & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20 am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.  Notes: [1] The Thames Advertiser, November 13, 1876, p1 [2] The Herald, 28 August 1876, p2 ; MDLLE. FRANZINI AND THE CLERGYMEN, The Ballarat Star, 26 August 1876, p3 [3] Ranabir Ray Choudhury, Early Calcutta advertisements, 1875-1925, Nachiketa Publications, 1992, p272  

Edward Smith Hall, 1852, by Charles Rodius, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (P2/7)

This week on 2SER Breakfast, Dr Rachel Franks and host Tess Connery talked about the founders of one of Sydney's earliest newspapers, Edward Smith Hall.   Listen to the audio of Tess and Rachel's conversation on 2SER here  Newspapers have long been an important feature of Australian life. Since the publication of Sydney’s first newspaper, this type of media has influenced (or at least has tried very hard to influence) how Australians feel about the major issues of the day, how we think about important policies such as crime and punishment, and, have — since the Parliament of New South Wales was founded in 1824 — worked tirelessly to influence how we vote at elections. Big personalities have always driven the machinery of mass communication. The Monitor was founded by Edward Smith Hall and Arthur Hill in Sydney in 1826. Hall was a particularly large character in colonial Sydney. Born in London in 1786, Hall arrived in Sydney in 1811 and died in his adopted city in 1860. He was a banker, a coroner, a farmer, a merchant and, most memorably, he was a newspaper man. Hall’s most significant legacy for Sydneysiders is his founding, in 1813, of the New South Wales Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and Benevolence, known today as the Benevolent Society. Hall’s philanthropic attitude was seen in print, over a decade later, when he openly took up the causes of convicts and the poor (though his motivations were questioned and he was accused of publishing controversial material to court readers and make a profit). The newspaper he founded, The Monitor, was very popular with the criminal and working classes and it said that assigned servants would travel up to five miles to have access to the paper. Even if people could not read themselves, there were opportunities to be read to.

A 1940s depiction of Edward Smith Hall writing in his gaol cell, The Sun, 13 June 1948, p7 via Trove

Hall fought hard for some of rights we take for granted today such as representative government and trial by jury (causes often associated today with men like William Charles Wentworth). Fiercely political, he never entered politics but his opinions were numerous and loud and he irritated quite a few politicians as one of early Sydney’s longest serving newspaper editors. Examples of defamation can be found throughout colonial Sydney’s history. Slander, comments made that could negatively impact upon someone’s reputation or livelihood, were common and led to the odd scuffle and long-held grudge. Libel, putting defamatory comments into print was really serious and rarely ignored. Hall did not shy away from saying what he thought and he was the first man in the colony to be charged with libel in 1828. Over time Hall was prosecuted seven times for libel, but nothing stopped him, he wrote for The Monitor even if he was locked in a gaol cell. The early media landscape in New South Wales was sparse. The first newspaper title appeared in 1803 (The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser) and the second in 1824 (The Australian). Hall's newspaper was the third published in the young colony and was known as The Monitor from 1826 until it underwent a masthead change in August 1828 and was published as The Sydney Monitor. In October 1838 there was another masthead change (and an editorial change, Hall stepping aside for Francis O’Brien and Edwyn Henry Statham) which saw the paper published as the Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, a title kept until the last issue came out at the end of 1841. These re-branding exercises were more common that you might think. For example, our oldest newspaper started out in 1831 as The Sydney Herald and only became the Sydney Morning Herald in 1842.

The Monitor, 19 May 1826, via Trove

Like many early newspapers across the Australian colonies, production was erratic. Paper supplies, qualified labour shortages and the never-ending work of seeking subscriptions all took a toll on the men driving the early newspaper industry in Sydney. Cash flow was a consistent problem. Unlike today you could not go to the corner store, newsagent or supermarket and just buy a copy of the local paper. People subscribed to newspapers which were printed and delivered. Unfortunately, many subscribers (just like many advertisers) did not pay their fees making for many cash-strapped newsmen. Indeed, in The Monitor’s last issue it was lamented that: Times alas! are not as they used to be, and the expenses of a publication three times a week, are such as printers only know. Subscriptions are fish which may be patiently angled for, but are with difficulty caught, and if our good friends are constantly behind in their payments it is no wonder that we consign them so frequently and with many a sigh to the ——* Devil! The Monitor started as a weekly paper, coming out Fridays, just in time for weekend reading (and tried a Saturday publication day early in 1827). In June 1827 there was an effort to come out three times a week but this did not work and the following month the paper had settled for publishing twice a week (trialling different days, occasionally publishing extra issues and publishing tri-weekly when possible). Reach and saturation are essential components of any influencing strategy and so a regular tri-weekly schedule was attempted again in October 1836. An ambitious printing program saw the paper published daily (except Sundays) from July 1840 until December that same year, and it returned to a tri-weekly schedule for its final twelve months of operation. This week it is the 193rd anniversary of the first issue of The Monitor, which was first offered to Sydney's newspaper readers on Friday, 19 May 1826.     Dr Rachel Franks is the Coordinator, Education & Scholarship at the State Library of New South Wales and a Conjoint Fellow at the University of Newcastle. She holds a PhD in Australian crime fiction and her research on crime fiction, true crime, popular culture and information science has been presented at numerous conferences. An award-winning writer, her work can be found in a wide variety of books, journals and magazines as well as on social media. She's appearing for the Dictionary today in a voluntary capacity. Thank you Rachel!  For more, listen to the podcast with Rachel & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning to hear more stories from the Dictionary of Sydney. Notes: Anon 1841 ‘L’Envov’ The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser 29 December 1841, p2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/32191868/4262196 viewed 19 May 2019 Osbourne, Mike nd ‘Edward Smith Hall’ The Australian Media Hall of Fame, http://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/article/edward-smith-hall viewed 21 May 2019 Ihde, Erin 2014 ‘Hall, Edward Smith (1786–1860)’ A Companion to the Australian Media Bridget Griffen-Foley (Ed) Kew: Australian Scholarly Publishing, p200 Prisk, Max 2014 ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’ A Companion to the Australian Media Bridget Griffen-Foley (Ed) Kew: Australian Scholarly Publishing, pp451–53 Walker, RB 1976 The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803-1920 Sydney: Sydney University Press Young, Sally 2019 Paper Emperors Sydney: NewSouth Books        

Looking down the McElhone Stairs from Victoria Street towards Cowper Wharf Roadway, Woolloomooloo 1960, by Geoff Paton, Courtesy of City of Sydney Archives (SRC21844)

Surely few stairways in Sydney have seen as much drama as the McElhone Stairs. Constructed in 1904, the 113 sandstone stairs loom over Brougham Street and the naval base below in Woolloomooloo. It soon became a well-worn path for everyone from sailors, residents, prostitutes, business people and tourists moving between the lively hubs of Wolloomooloo and Kings Cross.

Listen to the audio of Minna and Tess on 2SER here 

The hive of human activity on these stairs over the decades has inspired artists, writers and filmmakers to try and distill its essence. In 1944, Sali Herman won the Wynne Prize for his landscape painting which was swept up in the ‘drama of a formidable staircase [and] how it can diminish human scale’ 1 while John Olsen tried to capture the  ‘the urban pulse of the steps as a transitional zone where sailors, soldiers and drunks made their way to the bright lights of Kings Cross’.2 However perhaps one of the most intriguing uses of the stairway was its role in a Cold War espionage case. In 1962 Ivan Fedorovich Skripov, First Secretary of the Russian Embassy in Australia, concealed an aluminium message container in one of the balustrades. It was meant to be collected by another operative ‘Sylvia’. Skripov had already used other Sydney public spaces to plant messages for her, including at a water meter under Sydney Harbour Bridge and a grave in one of Sydney’s cemeteries. Written with invisible ink, the messages had to be developed using a solution based on chemical crystals contained in pill capsules. Copies of the messages leading to the McElhone Stairs are held in the National Archives, with one reading: "Glad to have your answer in time. Urgently need your help. Please collect container on the first landing of the McElhone Stairs on the way from Victoria Street to Cowper Wharf Road, Woollomooloo (Repeat – McElhone Stairs)."

Developed secret writing on reverse side of letter dated 17th September, 1962 that was given to ASIO agent by Ivan Fedorovich Skripov, First Secretary, Russian embassy , courtesy of National Archives of Australia (A432, 1963/2272, Photo 11A, Barcode: 8162303)

Unfortunately for Skripov the operative “Sylvia” was in fact double agent Kay Marshall from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). 3 The contained was seized and Skripov and his wife given seven days to leave the country. Today its more common to see McElhone Stairs used by Sydney’s residents as they punish their bodies for fitness by running up and down the 113 risers, earning the stairway its other name the ‘Stairs of Doom’ or ‘Stairs of Death'. Architect Jennifer Preston wrote a fascinating suite of entries about some of the stairways in Sydney for the Dictionary, and you can read these, along with her entry on McElhone Stairs, here: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/contributor/preston_jennifer Minna Muhlen-Schulte is a professional historian and Senior Heritage Consultant at GML Heritage. She was the recipient of the Berry Family Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and has worked on a range of history projects for community organisations, local and state government including the Third Quarantine Cemetery, Victorian War Heritage Inventory, Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (M.A.D.E) and Mallee Aboriginal District Services. In 2014, Minna developed a program on the life and work of Clarice Beckett for ABC Radio National’s Hindsight Program and in 2017 produced Crossing Enemy Lines for ABC Radio National’s Earshot Program. She’s appearing for the Dictionary today in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Minna! Listen to the podcast with  Minna & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.  1 Daniel Thomas, Sali Herman, Sydney and London: William Collins Australia Ltd, 1971, 20 2 John Olsen, McElhone Steps 1964, Art Gallery of New South Wales DA9.1964, https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/DA9.1964/ viewed 23 January 2018; Peter Emmett, Sydney Metropolis Suburb Harbour, Sydney: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2000,109 3 ‘Legal Resident’, Virtual Reading Room, National Archives of Australia http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/records/?tab=about&ID=25376