The
Elephant’s Tale
Almost
certainly Samuel Hodge was ending the last day of work in his trade.
He gathered his tools into their stout canvas bag, hoisted it onto
a shoulder and clambered lightly, open-handed down a long ladder to
the footpath in the street below, easily, as befitted a man who had
been doing such things for close on half-a century. According to a
yellowing entry in a "journeyman’s jobbing book" treasured
100 years later by a great grand daughter, Mr Hodge judged the job
on which he had worked for the past two years as a good one to retire
on. There was not much stone work about these days.
The
old artisan wrote that he was bound apprentice at 13 to a mason in
Yorkshire 12,000 miles away and half-a-century ago, and knew something
about buildings. This one would do, and the name had a certain ring
to it - the Albany Town Hall.
If Sam Hodge was invited to the ceremonies opening the Albany Town
Hall on June 1st, 1888, the guest lists failed to name him. The opening
was the event of the year. But it was, to quote one observer, a day
for the nabobs. And for Albany’s June weather, It rained heavily,
washing out plans for a parade — a march of the public led by
town councillors, up the main street to the new hall. "Typical",
snorted a critic, "why not do it when the weather is fine?"
There were many critics.
"Town Halls" wrote an ascerbic historian elsewhere on another
occasion, "are cliches restating the solid worth —
and sometimes the awful pretensions — of self-conscious communities.
Thank God you never see them in lines like terrace houses." Town
Halls like mothers-in-law tended to be handy foils for stand-up comics,
not to mention historians, perhaps because the buildings were indeed
representations of stability and maturity. This was the original view
of the Albany hall, the mark of a town grown beyond the status of
struggling settlement. The Mayor of Albany who declared the new hall
open, William Grills Knight, summarised the view and answered a critic,
in a speech at the time. His theme was money. Costs had risen, and
finishing and furnishing the hall would take almost half as much again
as the original estimate of construction. At a ratepayers’ meeting
not long ago we were obliged to appeal for a little extra and a gentleman
remarked that it was a white elephant but it wanted a tale. One
hundred years on this is the tale.
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No
Great Rush
There
was no great rush of investors when in 1882, the Albany Municipal
Council decided to borrow money and build a hall. In fact, there was
no rush at all and this proved embarrassing. The council's intention
to raise a loan was advertised in Perth and "the eastern colonies"
of NSW and Victoria. A design was accepted and a contract let to a
builder - only to be cancelled when the money failed to come in. Four
years later, in 1886, the money was borrowed with ease, 5,000 pounds
sterling (equal to $10,000 in today’s terms) "Could have
been 50,000"said one observer.
The
sudden elevation of Albany to the status of a town with a credit rating
was the gift of the Great Southern Railway.
A town
hall might represent civic respectability in some eyes, but a railway
in a burgeoning colony was a road to wealth for investors in the 1880's.
Railway construction began in 1886, and when, in this year, Mayor
Knight sought another 2,000 pounds ($4,000) for the hall, the money
came in within three days of advertising the loan.
Golden
days ahead, said the council.
Foundation
Albany
had known nothing so grand in scale. Nothing like the spectacle. Nothing
offering so many of what another age would mundanely call "job
opportunities". Then, the word was plain, honest and unmistakeable
"work". Work on the site, excavating, levelling,
draining, and shifting the spoil. Work in the quarries cutting and
loading the stone. Work for hauliers, for strong labourers, for masons
dressing and laying the stone. Skills would be needed from carpenters
and joiners, flooring men, tilers, brass workers, iron founders, glaziers.
And the work provided the biggest free show the town had known and
would know for years to come. Wide-eyed children watched the
sturdy drays, trays and jinkers dumping stone and timber. Mothers dragged
children out of earshot of workmen who used vivid language.
Soon,
the construction was at the point of official commemoration, the ritual
of laying the foundation stone.
Newspaper
readers in the 19th century expected and got their money' s worth,
and in this tradition, the "Albany Mail" of
December 9th, 1886 left no word unturned in recounting the big event
of the town's municipal year. And assuming a little credit.....
"In accordance with the announcement that appeared in our issue
of last Wednesday, the ceremony of laying the foundation stone of
the Albany Town Hall by the Mayoress (Mrs. W.G. Knight), took place
at 3 o'clock on the site chosen for its erection, at the corner
of Gordon and York Streets." Gordon Street long ago became Grey
Street.
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Nothing
so simple as a quick tap and a few words would do. Townsfolk and councillors
also wanted their money’s worth. At precisely two o'clock
in the afternoon a bugler from the Albany militia sounded an assembly
call. It was, a reporter wrote with a hint of tongue in cheek, heard
throughout the town. The militia the Albany Defence Rifles, "fell
in" for a parade. Men, women and children began to stream
to the construction site. The "Albany Mail"
veered as close as it ever would to the poetical... "A
few minutes before the appointed hour numbers of Albanians were to
be seen wending their way in different directions to the building
now in course of construction - a building which when finished,
will compete with any of its kind in similar small districts of the
Australian colonies."
The
militiamen were paraded and drilled on ground off Stirling Terrace,
and then formed into line, and under the command of their gallant
captain (Doctor Rogers), they marched in true step to the sweet strains
of our local band, who appeared for the second time in their new uniforms,
down Stirling Terrace and along York Street to where a large
crowd waited. Militia and band were marshalled by officials endeavouring
to place as many onlookers as possible in such a position as to enable
Mr. Sivyer to take a good photograph of the ceremony. The newspaper
in turning to 'Among those present' added a nice touch.
Here and there among the dignitaries were "A few white-headed
pioneers of this district." They were neither named nor
quoted - to the frustration of later historians who could only
guess that the old-timers may well have been survivors from the beginnings
of white settlement in Western Australia, less than sixty years earlier.
The
Mayor and Mayoress were fashionably late.
Workmen
had rigged a tripod crane of 'sheerlegs' to hold the foundation
stone above its place over a cavity in the wall. A bottle, nicely
covered in leather, containing several new coins and a copy of the
Albany Mail, and a notice "tastefully
printed in bronze" giving details of the ceremony, were placed
into the cavity by the mayor. The 'notice' named the mayor,
the architects, the builders, the clerk of works, the councillors - Robert Muir, Edward Hume Innes, John Ince, Edward George Sydney
Hare and Nathaniel William McKail, and Town Clerk Peter Monaghan.
Queen Victoria "In the 49th year of her reign"
was added. A mayoral speech, brief by the standards of the day, ended
with hopes that the construction would be completed on time, and with
an arch invitation strongly advising the ladies to prepare
their ball dresses without delay to be ready for the opening ceremonies.
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The workmen
lowered the foundation stone in to place. One of the partners in the
builders firm,
Mr Harrison, bobbed, lifted his hat, and handed a polished trowel
to the mayoress, and, according to the Albany Mail, Mrs
Knight having tapped it three times with the handle of her trowel
in first-class style, said "I pronounce this stone to be well
and truly laid." The mayor then called for three hearty cheers
for the contractors, which was given in good style, the band playing
"Old England Still."
Multi-racial
modern Australia with a population descended from about 100 nationalities
has moved a long way beyond the British Australia of the 19th century.
The Britishness then was unquestioned. More, it was a yardstick against
which all other things were measured - at least, on the level
of officialdom. The cheers over, Cr. Muir called for another three,
for the mayor and "his amiable wife", and the
response from the crowd was "one in true British style."
The
mayor gave thanks, the Albany Defence Rifles were drilled again by
their relentless captain, and "...this ended the proceedings
of a day that will be long remembered by all."
Queues
and Questions
Thanks
to the hall, entertainers 'discovered' Albany. A
typical offering reported by local press in the early years was a
touring company booked into the town hall for a week, and presenting
four plays. The Taylor Carrington Company pleased the "Australian
Advertiser", ancestor of the "Albany Advertiser",
which reported...
"We
were favoured with a good house when Hugh Conway's popular romance
"Called Back" was staged. Gilbert Vaughan the blind witness
was well represented by Mr T.J. Ennis, that vacant stare peculiar
to the blind being remarkably well shown. The difficult and interesting
character Macan, the Italian conspirator and assassin, was given due
force and prominence by Mr Taylor. The traits of this villain were
so well defined that a number of the audience could not refrain from
booing as he made his appearance on the stage."
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A
bitterly cold stage in winter
Signor
Clampetti the vocalist, who has been touring the Australian colonies
the past few years was the star of a concert at the town hall. He
could not stop shaking. "Nervous?" someone asked.
No, he was freezing. The violist Campeotti was luckier half a century
after the frozen Clampetti, in being able to huddle over an electric
fire in the wings of the town hall stage, thawing out his fingers
between performances. John Farnsworth Hall, conductor of the West
Australian Symphony Orchestra, at the hall in 1963, summarised the
question of climate. "No place for a thin feller in winter... you feel like greasing your limbs, like a long distance swimmer."
Professional
productions attracted a following but, perhaps, the biggest attendances,
the longest queues, were for "popular" entertainment,
much of it home grown. This was an era of amateur talent "doing
turns" at community events, of glee clubs, melodramatic
monologues, choral and orchestral societies, brass and silver bands,
children's dance groups, amateur theatricals, variety shows
and musical reviews. An age of debating clubs, election campaign
speeches, and lecture tours. Magic lantern shows, specialists in various
fields of medicine, and a man described as a "dentitionist"
rather than a dentist, were among the users of the hall in the year
or so from 1888.
The
late 20th century principle of "The User Pays" was old policy
in the 19th, and brought complaints that charges for hiring the hall
were making entertainment too costly. Seat prices could range from
one to three shillings (ten to thirty cents). But not all of the showmanship
was in the shows. Businessmen could be salesmen. "Having lately
arrived from England, and being appointed agent for the principal
English, American and Continental Watch, Clock and Jewellery Manufacturers,
I beg to inform Albany that I have started business in the Town Hall
Chambers ..." said an advertisement by the modest Jas. K. Buckley.
There
was a display of "Mr. Singer's new domestic machine only
ten pounds" ($20). An alleged doctor offered "syrups,
cordials and stomach bitters, and a cure for corpulency."
A local doctor complained about quacks at the town hall, but was ignored
— the council "had on occasion warned Dr Smith about jumping
his horse over street drains and riding on footpaths. He had complained
in return that an ordinance against his riding habits would debar
the use of the animal in visiting the sick." The famous
Marquess of Queensberry "recognised patron of England's
prize ring", author of the boxers' Queensberry Rules, equally
recognised in his own country as a brutal bully, reached Albany and
disembarked from the liner "Liguria", and was shown
the new hall.
The
rich brew left its memories caught in old notices, old posters, old
newspapers.
Excerpts
taken from "Heart Of A Town" by Les Johnson
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