Category Archives: Adelaide

The Easter Bilby: Enjoyed since 1993

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Hopefully the Easter Bilby will be bringing you plenty of Haigh’s chocolates this weekend. Here is the story of the Haigh’s bilby, which has indeed been Enjoyed for Generations – if only they were still life-size!

Wrapping moulded chocolate and eggs ready for Easter. Circa 1965.

The idea came from Erwin Shulten, a ranger at Bundaleer Forest Reserve at Jamestown, who asked Haigh’s and a couple of other manufacturers to create a chocolate bilby to replace the traditional Easter rabbit in support of the goals of the Foundation for Rabbit- Free Australia (RFA). Not only would an Easter bilby draw attention to the endangered status of this shy, long-eared Australian native marsupial but it would also promote a more realistic image of rabbits as destroyers of the environment rather than cute and cuddly pets. Alister had no hesitation in supporting the project, and Haigh’s supplied chocolate bilbies for the Bundaleer Forest Easter Egg Hunt for several years.

The first bilbies in 1993, almost life-size, were an instant success; stores ran out of stocks, and people even followed Haigh’s delivery van in their desperate bilby quest. Two years later Haigh’s produced a series of smaller bilbies, using a simpler, stylised design that made the chocolates easier to unmould. With demand for the miniature bilbies even greater, the chocolate bunny was abandoned in 1995 and Haigh’s made the chocolate bilby a permanent feature of its Easter range. Since 1993 Haigh’s has donated part of the proceeds of bilby sales to promote awareness of the threat to the environment posed by rabbits and to help fund research into the development of biological controls, and continues to support RFA. Twenty years after the beginning of the partnership, in 2013, Haigh’s had produced more than half a million Easter Bilbies.

Some years ago, two weeks before Easter, I was putting the sale of seven bilbies through for a lady. She told me it was her second purchase of seven bilbies in the same week. They were for her grandchildren but she had eaten the first lot. Jokingly I said I hoped she would not be back for another seven. Lo and behold, a few days before Easter she was back again. ‘The final seven,’ she told me, both of us laughing. Beverley Tripodi, Haigh’s employee

Designed by Katharine Lahn, the bilby wears a Haigh’s apron and carries a basket of brightly coloured eggs.

Find out more about Enjoyed for Generations here.

Adelaide Entertainment Royalty

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While most of Adelaide has settled down for a well-deserved nap following the end of festival season, one favourite festival venue has no time to rest. Her Majesty’s Theatre is continuing its campaign to raise funds for its major upgrade, due to be completed in 2019. In 2013 Her Majesty’s Theatre celebrated its centenary with a beautiful book, Her Majesty’s Pleasure. What better time to look back on Adelaide’s beginnings as a ‘theatre town’ and the birth of what was originally to be called the Princess Theatre?

 

In 1913 Adelaide was home to around 200,000 people; another 210,000 lived elsewhere in the state. Electricity had lit the city’s streets since 1900 and, from 1909, powered the city’s tram network. In show business jargon, Adelaide was ‘a theatre town’. The city’s long theatrical history had begun in 1838 when the ballroom of the Adelaide Tavern in Franklin Street was transformed into a cramped but convivial playhouse. Many other theatres came and went until the city’s first major theatre, the opulent Royal in Hindley Street, opened in 1878, replacing two earlier, smaller theatres on that site. It established Hindley Street as the city’s main entertainment hub.

The Royal catered for the city’s thirst for ‘legitimate’ fare, hosting touring productions of drama, light opera, grand opera and pantomime. Meanwhile, minstrel shows and vaudeville found a home in what had originally been White’s Rooms in King William Street. In 1900 the Sydney-based vaudeville entrepreneur Harry Rickards transformed the 44-year-old venue into Adelaide’s first Tivoli Theatre, presenting there the same parade of international stars and upand- coming locals that were a staple of the other theatres on his busy Australia-wide circuit.

At the same time, Adelaide was quickly falling in love with the movies. Soon flickering films – silent, of course – were unreeling in any available hall, in tents, skating rinks or, in the warmer months, in the open air. One of the first al fresco venues was the Hippodrome in Grote Street, where movies were supplemented with vaudeville acts. Situated next to the markets, it was operated by entrepreneurs Lennon, Hyman and Lennon. In 1908 the American showman T.J. West leased the Cyclorama and transformed it into West’s Olympia, with seating for 2248 patrons. It was reborn in 1913 as the Wondergraph, the first of Adelaide’s grand picture palaces. It dominated Hindley Street, providing a provocative challenge to the Theatre Royal across the road.

There were new live theatres, too. In 1909 Lennon, Hyman and Lennon replaced their open air Hippodrome with a vaudeville theatre, the Empire, though it soon concentrated on films. Another vaudeville venture, the King’s in King William Street, opened in 1911, but it was an uncongenial venue, plagued by poor sightlines and inadequate ventilation. Meanwhile, the venerable Theatre Royal was looking decidedly shabby.

A spread from ‘Her Majesty’s Pleasure’ shows some of Adelaide’s theatres in 1910.

Clearly the entertainment business was booming – a fact not lost on Edwin Daw, a local identity best known as the man behind the city’s fish market and the associated ice-works. Mr Daw was the lucky owner of a large vacant site on the corner of Grote and Pitt Streets, directly opposite the markets and the Empire Theatre. A small stream meandered through the property, which became a favourite place for market stallholders to tether their horses and park their carts. In even earlier times a certain Richard George (better known rather unfortunately as ‘Flash Dick’) lived in a two-storey house on the site, and had stables there.

In those days the market didn’t just sell produce. There were amusements such as shooting galleries, hoop-la stalls and dart competitions, and a handsome first floor assembly room for weddings, balls and community gatherings. The market not only drew large crowds, it also attracted more shops, hotels and cinemas to the area. Canny Mr Daw realised that his empty block was an ideal site for a grand picture palace.

Daw discussed the idea with Albert (‘Bert’) Lennon, one of the trio running the Empire. Business there was booming, and the ‘House Full’ sign was out front most Friday and Saturday nights. A couple of years before, Lennon had gone into a new partnership with another showman, Bert Sayers. Sayers and Lennon Ltd were running successful shows in Broken Hill and were keen to expand to Adelaide. Daw offered the partnership a 30-year lease of the Grote Street site for the development of what was to be Adelaide’s finest cinema. The deal was signed in May 1912.

Three months later there was a change of plans. In August Adelaidians learned that the site was not to be used for a 2500-seat cinema, but for a 3000-seat live theatre to be built, they were assured, ‘on an elaborate scale’.

After that, things moved rapidly. By early October the partnership had commissioned designs from the prominent Adelaide architects David Williams and his brother-in-law Charles Thomas Good. Both South Australian born and trained, they designed everything from private homes to offices and warehouses – and the Majestic and King’s Theatres. Their other notable commissions included part of the Queen Adelaide Club in North Terrace, and St Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Wakefield Street. William Essery and John Hennessy were appointed contractors.

On 14 October 1912 Mrs Bert Sayers laid the foundation stone for Adelaide’s grand new theatre. She proudly announced that it was to cost £31,000, and that it was to be christened the Princess.

The architects’ elevation for what was originally to be called the Princess Theatre. A century later, the elegant Edwardian façade remains virtually unchanged. [Performing Arts Collection of South Australia]

Her Majesty’s Theatre is looking to raise $3 million to complete it’s renewal; you can donate here. Find out more about Her Majesty’s Pleasure here.

Five fascinating facts about the Adelaide Park Lands

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Think you know all there is to know about the Adelaide Park Lands? Think again! Here are five fun facts from The Adelaide Park Lands by Patricia Sumerling.

The Adelaide Park Lands by Patricia Sumerling

  1. The Elder Rotunda comes from Scotland – Patricia says: While the Torrens Lake was fringed with promenades and walkways, there were few grassy places to have picnics, listen to bands or linger and chat. Sir Thomas Elder, sojourning in Scotland, read about the forthcoming opening of the lake in his most recent batch of Adelaide newspapers and noted that the corporation intended to beautify the banks of the river by laying out several acres of ground for a place of recreation and a promenade. He saw it as an opportunity to donate something worthy for the site and informed them of a ‘trifling gift’ of a rotunda bandstand, which he had shipped to Adelaide. The rotunda duly arrived from MacFarlane’s Saracen Foundry in Glasgow and was erected; its columns were painted in bronze, with the remainder picked out in grey and blue. The rotunda was officially opened on 28 November 1882, more than a year after the lake. A piece of music, the ‘Rotunda March’, composed for the event, was played by the Adelaide City Council Brass Band.The Adelaide Park Lands by Patricia Sumerling
  2. Botanic Park had its own Speakers’ Corner –  Patricia says: Speakers’ Corner in Botanic Park became one of Adelaide’s most popular attractions, particularly for the ‘sensation loving public’ on Sunday afternoons. The only rule was to abstain from making personal attacks. In February 1895 a variety of speakers were on offer. Three or four individuals who had ‘the call’ took it in turns to promote the scriptures, while regulars were ‘for the most part gathered around the soldiers of the Salvation Army, who worked with unflagging energy despite the heat’. The Army was conspicuous for ‘blaring trumpets and the thumping of the drum’. Nearby speakers Stewart and Osborn ‘fired off’ slanderous statements about employers and capitalists. By 1912, Barney, a celebrated veteran preacher, had braved winter rain and summer heat for nearly 30 years to convert in a ‘divine sense’, mostly ‘young men and maidens’. Sometimes he was dressed in a long sheet decorated with antediluvian drawings.The Adelaide Park Lands by Patricia Sumerling
  3. The Park Lands had their own morality police (well, in a sense) –Patricia says: During the First World War the police force appointed its first two policewomen, Kate Cocks and Annie Ross, who began work on 1 December 1915 in time for the forthcoming summer. Kate Cocks was famous for her vigilance on the Park Lands, using her cane to separate lovers, who were often unaware of her approach. Finding lovers locked together she used her catchphrase ‘Three feet apart!’ In March 1916 courting couples came under the spotlight of the Advertiser again: ‘During the last few years it has become the fashion among people to do their courting lying down. It is now the practice for them to lie down so closely together as to appear immodest but many of them are respectable.’ Kate Cocks was not amused, commenting that the ‘police were powerless to advise couples to sit up’.
  4. The Park Lands had their own air raid shelters during World War II – Patricia says: It is not generally known that several miles of pipe were laid and trench air raid shelters built in the city’s squares, in children’s playgrounds and on the fringes of the Park Lands and along North Terrace during the Second World War. Generally not used for the purposes for which they were intended, they existed from January 1942 to around August 1944, when they were filled in by a bulldozer from the Highways Department. The Hume cement pipes, which had been used for shelters, had a second life in drainage works and in the children’s playgrounds.The Adelaide Park Lands by Patricia Sumerling
  5. Large sections of the Park Lands were for many years ‘Cows Only’! – Patricia says: One of the most enduring images of the Park Lands until the end of the 1960s was that of the signs dotted around bearing the words ‘Cows Only’. In 1963 there were well over a thousand livestock grazing on the Park Lands. However, in 1972 the last two dozen cows in Park 27B, next to the North Adelaide Railway Station, were banished, while 60 odd horses still grazing in several parks were brought together in Park 6 off Lefevre Terrace in North Adelaide. Today the long tradition of horse agistment, begun in the 1850s, continues, creating a delightful rural character in a capital city.

 

To learn more about the Park Lands, click here and take a look at Patricia’s well-loved history of this area.

The Adelaide Park Lands by Patricia Sumerling