1936 1st AUSTRALIAN Winter Olympian

1947 1st International Figure Skating GOLD Medallist

1960 1st Australian Olympic and World Championship ICE HOCKEY Teams Squaw Valley California USA

1961-2 2nd AUSTRALIAN Ice Hockey World Championship Ice Hockey Team Colorado USA

1963-4 2nd OLYMPIC Qualification ICE HOCKEY Team Tokyo Japan

1987 1st International Ice Hockey MEDAL Perth Australia

2008 Ice hockey World Championship PROMOTION TO DIVISION I Newcastle Australia


. . . Ice-skating differs from other active sports in several respects. . . . It is about ten times as difficult as any other game; the difficulties of a perfect niblick stroke from a hopeless bunker are nothing at all compared with the difficulties of a perfect outside forward rocker or outside back counter. It is unique in being the one sport in which style counts; in cricket your style may be rotten, but your power counts four; in competitive skating your tracing may be perfect, but if your style is bad you lose marks. And its examination standards are higher than in any other study. University examinations are a fool to it. There is only one way to learn, by hard work, intelligently directed. . . ice- skating is a life-long study and "before excellence the gods have placed much sweat".

— Barney Allen, NISAA President and Vice Master, Ormond College, 1915 – 1953. "To the Serious Student", quoted In Memoriam from Allen's introduction to the Handbook of the National Ice Skating Association of Australia by David Kennedy Picken (1879 – 1956), second master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. Picken noted the end quote was from Hesiod and the full introduction included: "discourse on the three skating "tests" of the Association on which Allen ranked as one of the Australian judges who could have gone to Scandinavia as a 1934 World Championship judge". —The Ormond Chronicle, University of Melbourne, 1949. [467]

The First Builders

From Federation on...

ANY EARLY ORGANISERS OF ICE SPORTS in Australia were from the Associated Public Schools of Victoria (APS), a group of eleven independent schools that is similar to the Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools of New South Wales. Of the eleven, Melbourne Grammar (South Yarra), Scotch (Hawthorn), Wesley (Melbourne, Elsternwick), Xavier (Brighton, Kew) and Geelong Grammar have been competing in sporting competitions since 1900, and they were joined soon after by Haileybury (Brighton), Caulfield Grammar, and Brighton Grammar. These eight schools existed long before the advent of ice sports in Australia, and for well over a century they have supplied Australian sport with many of its International and Olympic athletes, and a notable proportion of its AFL and test cricket teams. They were attended by many of the first ice skaters in Melbourne, and others lived in their vicinity and may have attended.

For example, Barney Allen, president of the National Ice Skating Association of Australia, and vice-president of Melbourne University Ski Club, went to Scotch, Haileybury and Melbourne University; the Grices and Howard-Smiths to Melbourne Grammar and Wesley; and the Luxtons to Melbourne Grammar and, in Lewis' case, Cambridge University. Athletes such as ice hockey player, Hector Kendall, who married Victoria's second women's ice hockey captain, was educated at Wesley and then Melbourne University; Muriel Wallach, who represented New South Wales in women's ice hockey, matriculated from Melbourne Girls Grammar School in South Yarra, and completed a Bachelor of Science at Melbourne University; Ada Molony, sister of Ted Molony, graduated with a Diploma of Education from Melbourne University in 1924; and Cyril MacGillicuddy became a surgeon there.

This was not hugely different to elsewhere in the British colonies where there were invariably similar schools modeled on the English public school system, but it was particularly pronounced in Melbourne due in part to its unique beginnings and rapid development as a free enterprise. Melbourne was founded by free settlers at a time when other Australian colonies (States) were still essentially penal settlements. It took Governor Bourke in Sydney three years to reverse his view that the first settlers of Melbourne were trespassers. This gathered new momentum during the world-renowned Victorian gold rushes, which boom-built Melbourne as the "jewel of the colonies". It escalated further when a majority of Australians, except New South Wales, voted for a federation of States with a central government, but independent State governance of internal affairs. These tensions sailed ever onward, into a new millenium of countless other trade, sporting and political rivalries. Yet, through it all, Melbourne had the ear of the parent country, and often independent of colonial authority in Sydney, due to some of its more successful globe-trotting merchants and civic leaders. Among them were Robert Reid, the uncle of Henry Newman Reid; Richard Grice, father of Sir John Grice; and Sir Simon Fraser. They were old colonial hands who sought liberal independence locally, but rooted deeply, very deeply, in English cultural values. Their opinions were valued back "home", and others like them followed, well into Melbourne's term as the temporary Federal capital (1901–27), which they had helped raise from dust in just 65 years.

The first organisers of ice sports in Australia were sons and daughters, and grandsons and grand-daughters, of some of Victoria's first families. They had asserted equality with Sydney way back then, and not idly. They helped to produce the spectacular wealth needed to fill Melbourne's "Golden Mile", its speculative street grid, until Sydney was largest no longer. Some were, of course, closely associated with the Victorian goldfields and towns such as Ballarat; home of one of the first stock exchanges in both Victoria and Australia, co-founded by John Goodall's grandfather in the 1860s. Others were descended from pioneering Western Districts squatters, master mariners, business leaders, educators, churchmen, city mayors, State Premiers and Federal senators. More than a few moved to the suburbs around South Melbourne and St Kilda, birthplace in 1906 of the first competition ice rink and athletes, and it was these same suburbs, and these same schools, that also produced the second Federation Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin, and Stanley Bruce two decades later; Australia's first Prime Minister who was not associated with Federation. Against this background of colonial enterprise, the public school contribution to Australian ice sports at the turn of last century, was not so much a result of the economic means of those who attended which, in any event, was variable. It was more a result of their links to the parent country, particularly the Church of England (even for many Scots and Irish-Catholics); their long-standing traditions and history; their highly developed social and sporting networks; their field hockey and lacrosse clubs; and their links to winter sports, particularly through the University of Melbourne.

Victoria's earliest public schools were among the first schools in Australia to develop independently of the New South Wales education system, which was imposed on Melbourne townspeople until 1851. The first four were assisted with State funds from 1853, with "the money voted arranged to be distributed to the heads of the four principal recognised denominations, according to the census of 1851." [252] The denominations were Church of England, Presbyterian, Methodist (Wesleyan) and Catholic. The University of Melbourne opened soon after in 1854 modeled on the best European schools, particularly Oxford, but it was secular and forbidden from offering degrees in Divinity. The churches could only establish colleges along the northern perimeter, and the people of Melbourne largely rejected the supposed elitism of its professoriate, favouring teaching of 'useful' subjects like law, over those they deemed 'useless' in the city's context, like Classics. The townspeople won this debate over the more conservative ruling council, and law was introduced in 1857, followed by medicine and engineering in the 1860s, and the admission of women in 1881. The university colleges and the public schools were closely associated, and they are still characterised by their church origins, and the English public school system on which their founders usually modeled them.

Prior to 1905 in Victoria, all other secondary schools were privately owned, although they were usually assisted by mechanics institutes, the government, or the church, just like the "public" schools. There were a few dozen located throughout most of Melbourne's suburbs of the time, including East St Kilda Grammar School, Hawthorn Grammar School (Professor Martin Howy Irving, head master), Kew High School (John Henning Thompson), and Carlton College (Alexander Sutherland). There was simply no other choice for the generation that included the young Reids; the generation that followed was the first with broader options. The opening of the Melbourne Continuation School in 1905, marked the beginning of secondary state education in Victoria. It was shunned by some to begin with, because it was co-educational and secular, but the idea was supported in a very short time, and the Continuation School was renamed to Melbourne High School in 1912. By 1919, it had the greatest number of students from any school at Melbourne University, and it increasingly began to supply Victorian ice sports with a new generation of young male and female athletes, such as Victorian ice hockey player Winnie Williams. She was a qualified music and theatre teacher at Melbourne (MacRobertson's) Girls High in the early 1920s, and vice-president of Old Palladians, its Old Girls association, from 1930. Victorian ice sports were given new impetus by secondary state education after the first world war and, within a decade, athletes from government schools far exceeded the number of public school participants.

Nonethless, public schools were dominant to start, and sons and daughters of ice sports patrons and organisers had attended them for reasons similar to their fathers, and their father's fathers before them. A few had left huge bequests, the product of their life's work, to the churches to which these schools belonged, where it was partly used to finance sporting and educational infrastructure. As a result, each successive generation shared interests in social circles, in business, and in municipal affairs, which often continued on long after they had left school; the enduring legacy of their pioneering forefathers. It has been said that Melbourne Grammar's student body was exclusive from the start, originally consisting only of boarders catering to the young gentlemen of rich immigrant English and squatter families. This probably also applied to other Victorian public schools and even the university tended to attract students drawn from affluent backgrounds in the 1920s, with a few opportunities for gifted scholarship students, partly because the Council by then consisted of more businesspeople than professors. But not everyone who attends these schools is affluent, and certainly everyone born before 1893 who pursued secondary education in Victoria had done so at a non-government school. Moreover, the arts and sports have long been reliant on patrons with means, enterprising or otherwise, without which they may not have excelled. More than a few of Australia's first ice athletes and organisers came from a business or professional middle-class and some, like John Goodall and Doris Armytage, had inherited outright wealth. Yet, enterprise, not money, was their real inheritance, and it was largely this that defined many of them. Unlike Europe and North America, ice sports in Australia did not just happen. They had to be designed.

Privately-owned schools and Victoria's first government school participated, but Australia's first ice sports were led by Victorian "public" schools in the English tradition — for men and for women; for juniors and seniors. Scotch College football team learnt to skate at Adelaide Glaciarium the month after Melbourne Glaciarium had opened. [372] And this was no different to the founding of Australian Rules football by two of the same schools in 1858 (Scotch and Melbourne Grammar). Both sprang from a uniquely Victorian culture, and this was always very different to the New South Wales experience, from the moment Melbourne was born — from that defining moment when "free" traders disembarked the schooner 'Enterprise' from Launceston in Tasmania, and not the colonial governors from Sydney. Which is why laying claim to the foundations of ice hockey in Australia — through Dunbar Poole, the first Life Member of the first ice sports association in New South Wales — [2] is as silly as Sydney laying claim to the foundations of the Australian Football League. Figures, racing and hockey, Sidney Tange claimed it all for New South Wales, [2] and this resonates well with the kind of ruthlessly guarded ownership that characterised New South Wales "custody" of the Goodall Cup in the 1930s, even when they didn't win (see Ted Molony). Together, they well-demonstrate what becomes of competitive sport when it loses due regard for others. When it institutionalizes its own myths. When it becomes a stranger to defeat. We might laugh or we might cry. Or we might right the record, in letters 12-feet high. Too late for Leslie Reid, but perhaps not for future athletes and administrators.

Myths such as these have been picked-up and perpetuated, even by respected organisations such as the Society for International Hockey Research (SIHR). Another of the more memorable on record is an assertion that Victorians were not competitive in Goodall Cup ice hockey, until Canadians like Hugh Lloyd took over in 1937 and showed them "how to play the blue-line game correctly" (see Ted Molony). The SIHR lifted this little gem from the usually reliable History of the Goodall Cup, [1] but without any critical analysis. They call this "Global Hockey Facts" but, like Tange's "Facts and Figures", [2] it contains precious little verifiable source material, even though they altered it from the original. Bunk like this has been allowed to define the modern world view of Australian ice sports for quite some time, particularly ice hockey. It is wrong but, like all myths, it is more potent and persistent than fact, and it is probably time Australian ice sports dispensed with its crippling sense of inferiority, its cultural cringe, if only because it is unfounded.

Ice sports in Australia were indeed as remote as could be from their International counterparts and centres of excellence. Yet it was this that made them unique, because isolation and the requirement for engineered ice forced a kind of fierce self-sufficiency and ingenuity which was simply without precedent in Australian sport. There were no frozen ponds; the first rinks and their organisations were born of necessity, and before the International Ice Hockey Federation had even existed. They were world-class, multi-functional arenas, brilliantly conceived as publicly-listed companies, and it is doubtful there was anything quite like them anywhere else in the world. International visitors gazed upon them in wonder. Amateur ice hockey in Australia was small in scale, but it was still comparable to anywhere else, and it was also progressive and innovative by world standards. Australia's first International Skating Union judge was a former ice hockey captain of Victoria. Australia's first International and Olympic winter sports athletes emerged from the combined administration of Australian ice hockey and speed skating in the 1920s, and this was no small feat. In Britain, speed skating had been combined with figure skating and controlled from the Cambridge headquarters of the National Skating Association (NSA) since 1880. It remains that way still today in the International Skating Union which the NSA helped set up, even though it was separately recognised in North America in 1914, where the new wave of Victorian administrators increasing sought inspiration for their innovations (see Leslie Reid, Robert Jackson and Ted Molony). For these reasons alone, wrestling control of speed skating in Australia off Dunbar Poole had required consummate political skill.

Australian ice athletes and administrators have worked side-by-side with Internationals for over a century, and they have certainly learnt much from them. But Australia also produced its own Internationals; many dozens in the first generation alone. Some stayed at home and coached Australian and New Zealand champions. Some went overseas and coached the champions of other countries to National, International and Olympic success. Victorian-born Tommy Dunderdale, the first Australian inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, represented Canadian pro teams from 1906 in the National Hockey Association, forerunner to the NHL. One of the first players to join the Pacific Coast Hockey Association founded in 1911 by the legendary Lester Patrick (1883–1960) and his brother, he was selected six times to the PCHA First All-Star Team, and scored more goals than anyone else in his twelve years in the league. He turned to coaching and managing teams in Los Angeles, Edmonton, Alberta, Winnipeg and probably Chicago when his playing days were over. Robert Jackson, the first ice hockey captain of Victoria in 1909, was an instructor in New York in 1917, the year the NHL was formed. Jimmy Brown represented England, Scotland and Great Britain against Canada, France, Germany and Switzerland, and Ken Kennedy turned pro in England for years before returning home. Canada doesn't promote it, but the skaters who won Canada's first ever world crown, and Canada's first ever winter Olympic medal were coached by Australians (see Enders and Cambridge). It was not a one-way street. So why promote Australian ice sports world-wide as being dependent on others? The first centre for excellence for ice sports in the southern hemisphere was founded in Melbourne over a century ago. It brought professional instructors from Europe and North America from inception, and sent plenty of its own around the globe soon after.

Character is an important aspect of competitiveness, and sports men and women everywhere need their heros. The first builders and champions of ice sports in Australia did enough to inspire their successors for another century. Yet, even the achievements of the longest-serving ice hockey captain and coach of Victoria are now all but eclipsed by Canadians, including professionals and an NHL one-gamer. Beneath this hype, his spirit still shines like a beacon through the thick mists shrouding Australian winter sport history. He wasn't born in Winnipeg like Lloyd, and he had no pro-quality expatriate like Montréal's Kendall to train and mentor him. He didn't represent Canada like Dunderdale, nor Britain like Kennedy and Brown, and certainly not Sweden like Poole. He was home-grown, and he had learnt through bitter defeat, and always against the odds. These are the same qualities that gave birth to the ANZAC legend. When the skates he had made for himself were hung up for the last time in 1936, Ted Molony forgot to turn the light off. Ice sports in Australia could do worse than use it to chart their course.

St Peter's Eastern Hill | 1854 | Federal Parliament | 1901 |
R W E Wilmot: "The Public Schools Foundation and Development" | 1926 |
Wilmot with old school footballers, photo | 1924 |
R W E Wilmot, other writings: "Football. The Australian Game" | 1926|
"Cricket. International Contests. Pioneered by Victorians" | 1926 |
"Lacrosse. 'A sport for thoroughbreds'" | 1929 |


REGINALD WILLIAM ERNEST WILMOT (1869 – 1949), former Essendon footballer, sports journalist and author of "The Public Schools" and other articles above, was a student of Melbourne Grammar School; honourary secretary and president of the Old Melburnians Society; and father of broadcaster Chester Wilmot. Reginald Wilmot was a leading sports journalist in Melbourne during the early 20th century when ice sports were first established there, and well known for his writing on cricket, Australian rules football, and sport in general. Along with Hugh Buggy, Wilmot was believed to have coined the term 'bodyline' during the 1932–33 Ashes Test cricket series. He also wrote several books on cricket including "Defending The Ashes 1932–33", which gave a rare Australian perspective on this historic and controversial series. He later became heavily involved in the organisation of amateur sport in Melbourne, and often used his newspaper columns to promote the value of school sport, particularly as it was played in public schools. He supported amateurism in school sport strongly because, as he commented in an article on professional coaches in 1914, ‘the professional very often misses the spirit of sport in his desire to gain’. His strongly held loathing of professional sport carried over to his love of football. In 1915, when he was vice-president of the Metropolitan Amateur Football Association, he used his position as The Argus football scribe, "Old Boy", to launch an attack on the mercenary nature of professional football, arguing that it did not improve the calibre of man, and did nothing to improve the sport and, as such, was of no value to the community. [252]

In July 1935, the Victorian Football League (VFL), forerunner of the AFL, presented Wilmot with a mahogany log box for 46 years service to football as a journalist. Wilmot had lived at 189 Toorak Road, South Yarra, and died at Parkville in Melbourne in 1949 at the age of 79. He was inducted to the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996, with a citation reading: "Writing for The Argus in 1935, he was given an award by the AFL for 46 years of journalism. His work was characterised by authority, wisdom and generosity". In 1998, he was inducted to the Melbourne Cricket Ground Rogues Gallery with a citation reading: "Wrote as "Old Boy" for The Argus and the Australasian from 1902 until the mid 1930s. Correspondent for the London Times and Observer and The Times of Ceylon. Author of Defending The Ashes in 1932–33". The Wilmot family were well known to the Goodall family, and to many of the people profiled below (see John Goodall).

Notes:
[1] Old Melburnians Ice Hockey Club was first established in the VIHA league in 1908. One of the original four ice hockey clubs in Australia, it was founded twelve years before the Old Melburnians Football Club (1920), which records its history as follows: The "father" of Australian Rules Football, and no doubt the OMFC (Old Melburnians Football Club), was H C A Harrison (photo with Wilmot) who was born in Picton NSW on the October 16th, 1836. When he was one year old, his father decided to take up land in the newly opened up country of Port Phillip, later to be known as Victoria. Young Harrison grew up in Melbourne and attended the Diocesan Grammar School. The Headmaster was Mr Richard Budd, M A of Cambridge. When Mr Budd died in 1854 the school was closed, however, in 1858 a Church of England school was re-opened under the name of the Melbourne Church of England Grammar School, with Dr Bromby as its headmaster. His cousin, T W Wills, a former captain of cricket and football at Rugby Public School, had been invited to coach the Victorian Cricket Team as they had lost to NSW in 1856 and 1857. Wills believed that the Victorians would never win until their fitness improved. Soccer was not yet an organised sport (1863) and rugby was hardly the answer.
Over at Scotch College, a master named Harvey, who had also come from Rugby, had six footballs sent to him from England and he encouraged the Scotch boys to learn how to kick them and they practised the difficult art at Fitzroy Gardens. H C A Harrison and Wills were looking for a sport which would resolve their cricket problems and watched these non-organised games with interest. On August 7th, 1858 an advertisement appeared in the Morning Herald, "It is announced that a grand football match will be played between Church of England Grammar School and Scotch College near the Melbourne Cricket Ground, commencing at 12.00 noon, with an interval for lunch". When the two teams lined up to do battle they numbered forty players a side. The match started on the afternoon of the August 7th, 1858 and did not finish until nearly a month later. The match was played on the Richmond Paddock between Wellington Pde and the MCG. The goals were over a half a mile apart! Prior to the start of the game it was decided that the winner would be the first team to score two goals. After playing on three Saturday afternoons and with the score at one all the match was declared a draw because it was time to turn to cricket. This was the inauguration of Victorian Public Schools football. It was also the beginning of the Australian Rules game. In 1920, the Old Melburnians Football Club was formed.

[2] Alfred Deakin played an important role in Federation and completed a vast legislative program that makes him, with Labor's Andrew Fisher, the founder of an effective Commonwealth government. Stanley Bruce's appointment as Prime Minister marked an important turning point in Australian political history. He was the first Prime Minister who had not been involved in the movement for federation, who had not been a member of a colonial Parliament, and who had not been a member of the original 1901 federal Parliament. With his aristocratic manners and dress — he drove a Rolls Royce and wore white spats — he was also the first genuinely "Tory" Australian Prime Minister.

Harold Bellingham HOWARD-SMITH

(1860 - 1935)

BORN ABOUT 1860 IN ST KILDA, VICTORIA, the son of master mariner and ship-owner, Captain William Howard Smith (1814–1890) and his second wife Agnes Rosa Allen (1820–1902) of Henstridge in Kent, England. [194-7] Harry was chairman of directors of Melbourne Ice Skating & Refrigerating Co, originally established by Henry Newman Reid, which managed Melbourne Glaciarium from its inception in 1906, until it was sold in 1923. He was preceded by Reid and probably Emil Frederick Thonemann, father of James Thonemann of the first Australian ice hockey team of 1906. Howard-Smith was succeeded by Old Melburnian and businessman, Sir John Grice, Dr Cyril MacGillicuddy, and later Molony and Gordon. This family reached Melbourne from Hull in England on July 7th, 1854 in William's 186-ton schooner-rigged steamer, Express. William returned to England in 1861, and then sailed back to Launceston in 1864 with his family. [198]

The Howard-Smiths lived at Moss Villa (later Caenwood) in Tennyson St, St Kilda, not far from the Goodall and Thonemann families. Moss Villa was "one of the oldest of the better class houses of the suburb", built before 1864 by master mariner and businessman, Captain Archibald Currie (1830–1914). Currie was the founder of Archibald Currie & Co shipping line, the Australian Lloyds, Australian Mercantile Union Insurance, and owner of Australian Paper Mills. [262] He had early links with Canada, having purchased his 256-ton brig Isabella in 1864 from Scottish shipbuilder, merchant, banker, and politician, Angus McMillan (1817–1906), of Prince Edward Island, which he sold to Grice Sumner & Co in 1870. [198] Businessman, barrister and politician Arthur Bruce Smith (1851–1937), and ship-owner Edmund Edmonds Smith (1847-1914), were two of Harry's seven brothers, and it is likely that he was educated at Melbourne Grammar School, like his brother Edmund. He lived at Namarong from 1910, on the corner of Dandenong and Hampden Roads in Caulfield. It was formerly Upton Hall owned by billiard table manufacturer, Henry Upton Alcock (1823–1912), the father of electrical engineer and inventor Alfred Upton Alcock (1865–1962). [262]

Howard-Smith and three brothers were joint managing directors of Howard Smith Ltd, the shipping company their father had established in Melbourne in 1854. It became a huge commercial success, and a pioneering fleet of the Australian Merchant Navy, but it had started from humble beginnings many decades earlier. Originally operating a regular inter-colonial (interstate) passenger and cargo service between Melbourne and Sydney, services had been extended to Newcastle in New South Wales by 1868, and regular services operated to Maryborough, Adelaide, Brisbane and Rockhampton by 1880. Its incorporation in 1883 in Melbourne, gathered under one company banner seventeen ships; sixteen steam and one sail. By December 1914, it had become the parent company of Australian Steamships Ltd, operating a fleet of thirty-seven ships of 200 gross tons or more. During the war, its vessel Canberra trooped between the Mediterranean and the Far East; its ship Era was sunk in the Mediterranean in May 1918; and the Cycle was bombed in 1916, but survived. The rest of the fleet had served largely in Australian waters.

Between the wars, coal, sugar, cement, steel, machinery and general cargo were its staple trades, and only Canberra operated a passenger service. At the outbreak of the Second World War the fleet numbered eighteen ships, fewer than at the first war, but of greater average tonnage. From head offices in Market Street, Melbourne, near the original Custom's House opposite the Yarra turning basin, this company owner-operated or managed more than a hundred sail and steam ships over the years, including ore carriers, coal colliers, tankers, passenger ships, CSIRO research vessels, paddle steamers and tugs. [198] By 1930, Howard Smith Ltd had a paid up capital of £2,250,000. It was taken over by Wesfarmers Ltd in 2001, almost 150 years after it was founded.

In June 1915, Howard-Smith wrote a letter to The Argus in support of arrangements made by Lady Stanley, president of the Victorian Red Cross, to meet the demands on it from wounded soldiers. He and his directors undertook to subscribe £3,000 on condition that 47 other companies, firms or individuals each subscribe not less than £1,000. [202] Although organised ice hockey did not resume in Australia until 1920, Melbourne Glaciarium operated throughout the war, and it had assisted the wartime Red Cross effort with proceeds from ice skating carnivals from August 1915, two months after Howard Smith's public offer. John Grice was honourary treasurer of this 1915 Victorian Red Cross Appeal, which had raised £105,420 by August 14th. [151]

From 1918, the year after Henry Newman Reid left Melbourne for Sydney, The Argus newspaper in Melbourne regularly published Howard-Smith's reports from the annual meetings of the publicly-listed Melbourne Ice Skating & Refrigerating Co and Melbourne Glaciarium. [201] It is likely that he also played a significant role in the financial arrangements of Sydney Glaciarium, since its company secretary was based in Melbourne until at least 1921. [188] Howard-Smith was also chairman of directors of allied companies of Howard Smith Ltd, including Australian Steam Ships Pty Ltd, and Caledonian Collieries Pty Ltd (1883–1966) which held interests in the South Maitland coalfields in the Hunter Valley of NSW. He resigned from the latter in 1921, and in 1928 he became a director of Australian Iron and Steel Ltd, which was formed that year to finance the construction of the new steelworks at Port Kembla, NSW. This company was controlled by BHP from October 1935. Edwin "Teddy" Flack (1873–1935) was a director of both this company and Howard Smith Ltd. He was a highly-regarded accountant who trained with Price Waterhouse in England, but he is best remembered as the first Australian to win a gold medal at the Olympic games. He was the only Australian to compete at the first of the revived Olympic Games at Athens in in 1896, at which Australia was not officially represented. Edwin competed for Old Melburnians Athletics Club, and wore the club singlet when he ran at the Olympics. He held a senior position with Old Melburnians from 1899 to 1924, and was made a life member.

A member of the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria (RYCV), Howard-Smith berthed his cruiser-yacht, Bona, at Williamstown. On April 9th, 1925, John Goodall sailed with him from Port Phillip Bay to Sydney. It was a pleasure cruise under the charge of Captain J R Ditreitch and also among the amateur crew were Goodall's cousin, Elwood Huon; Essendon ice hockey club's Harold Hoyne; Queen Street architect, yachtsman and RYCV commodore, architects Arthur Peck and Gerart Soilleux, and two paid hands. [193] Still to this day, a number of RYCV yacht racing events are named in honour of Elwood Huon, whose family were the purportedly aristocratic French branch of the Doughartys, to which John Goodall's mother, Ada, belonged. They lived at Elwood House in Elwood, adjoining St Kilda, the third earliest terrace surviving in Melbourne.

The business activities of Howard-Smith were closely related to these early Melbourne families, and to the coal trade in Newcastle, NSW, long before the BHP steelworks were established there, with Jim Kendall as Chief Engineer. Captain William Howard-Smith was a pioneer in the coal trade between Melbourne and Newcastle in the 1860s, the home port of collier Captain Robert Croll (1837–1881), father of Sydney Croll. During the 1916 coal strike in New South Wales, Howard Smith Ltd paid-off officers and crew of some of their ships, and the The Argus reported that Sydney Glaciarium was seriously affected having £12,000 of perishable goods on hand, and a normal requirement for 200 tons of coal per month. The rink in Melbourne was not powered by electricity until 1932. It had been powered by coal for a quarter of a century. [145]

Henry Newman Reid had no interest in Melbourne Glaciarium by 1923, when it was sold as a result of voluntary liquidation. John Grice, a patron of ice sports in Melbourne, was on holiday in Great Britain and Europe for the entire year, [176] and the shareholders decided the Glaciarium was financially irrecoverable, when problems arose soon after Grice had left. Howard-Smith was approaching 65 by then and he may or may not have agreed but, either way, the rink complex fell into the hands of an unrelated commercial company which had no interest in ice sports, and it was in very real jeopardy of conversion to some other use. John Grice intervened, and the facility was eventually returned to the core group of Melbourne ice sports organisers, in what could only be described as a commercially risky and remarkably heroic gesture, if not just plainly charitable. However, it was vindicated by the commercial and sporting success that the Glaciarium went on to achieve, under the management of MacGillicuddy and Molloy, and later, Molony and Gordon. Without Grice, the story would have been very different, yet ice sports in Victoria will also be forever indebted to Howard-Smith's acumen and standing in the business world, because it was largely this that had kept Melbourne Glaciarium and its aging ice plant afloat on the Exchange. Howard-Smith and his board of directors had guided it through the difficult transition from the Reids to Grice and Luxton, like a ship to a safe harbour in a darkening storm.

Harold Bellingham Howard-Smith was chairman of Howard Smith Ltd at least until 1922, probably since his brother Edmund retired in 1904. He died in November 1935 at the age of 74 in Melbourne leaving a huge estate of 1,135, 378 pounds. He was interred privately on Remembrance Day at St Kilda Cemetery, next to his wife Annabella, who had been interred on June 20th, 1918 at the age of 62, and his parents William and Agnes (COE Monumental Grave Compt A 269, 270, 271) [194, 197] Some of the key organisers of ice sports in both Victoria and New South Wales shared business interests long before the advent of Australia's first ice rinks. Their family links had stretched back a generation, and sometimes more, to some of the earliest pioneers of Melbourne and Newcastle.

Howard Smith Ltd | 1930 |

[1] See Flotilla Australia web site at these links for related images postcards and ephemera:
Howard Smith Ltd | 1 | 2 | 3 | Archibald Currie & Co | 1 |
McIilwraith McEacharn Ltd | 1 | Huddardt Parker & Co | 1 |


CAPT WILLIAM HOWARD SMITH (1814 – 1890), father of Harold, was born at Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, son of Ormond Smith, mariner, ship-owner and mail contractor for Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Holland, and his wife Kesier, née Edmunds. He went on his first voyage at the age of 10, and later studied navigation and qualified as a master. He became a partner of his father at 21 and was given command of the steamship Adonis. For some years he was employed by Malcolmson Bros, ship-owners, and sailed to Dutch, Spanish and Latin American ports. His first wife Anna Geil, née Hansen, died without issue; in 1854 he brought his second wife Agnes Rosa née Allen, and their five children to Australia. With S P O Skinner, a marine engineer, Smith had bought the Express, a 136-ton schooner-rigged steamer, and entered the Port Phillip Bay trade between Melbourne and Geelong. After eight good years Smith entered the intercolonial trade after selling out to his Geelong agent, T J Parker, later a founding partner of Huddart Parker & Co which established the first service between Vancouver BC and Australia as the Canadian-Australian Steamship Co (see Fraserland). In 1862, Howard Smith and his family revisited Europe. He bought the steamer Kief, renamed it You Yangs, and from mid-1864 commanded it in competition with the powerful Australasian Steam Navigation Co between Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle. The venture was successful and two years later he bought another steamship in England, the Dandenong. It was his last command and he remained ashore after 1870.

A pioneer in the coal trade between Melbourne and Newcastle, Howard Smith formed a limited partnership with L J L Burke, who had a large coal business in Melbourne in the mid-1860s. He soon acquired the firm and it became one of Melbourne's largest and most efficient coal importers, constantly acquiring vessels because of the growing demand for passenger and general cargo services from Melbourne to all the eastern coast ports. In the late 1870s, he had three of his sons in the partnership and they took charge of the Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane offices. The firm became a limited liability company in September 1883, William Howard Smith and Sons Ltd, with a nominal capital of £1 million, paid up to £500,000: all the £10 shares issued were taken up by the family. He became managing director at Melbourne and his second son, Edmund, at Sydney.

Howard Smith retired from active management in 1884 and his sons Walter and Arthur succeeded him. He continued as chairman until 1887. Smith was a justice of the peace, a director of many commercial companies, a commissioner of the Melbourne Harbor Trust in 1884, and a member of the Marine Board of Victoria in the late 1880s. He was also a committee-man of the Melbourne Sailors' Home in 1874–80, chairman next year, and a committee-man of the Victorian Shipwreck Relief Society in 1877–80. Aged 76, he died on March 22nd, 1890 in Melbourne, survived by his wife and seven sons and two daughters of their twelve children. His estate was sworn for probate at £137,153. The business was reorganized under the control of four sons, Edmund (Sydney), Walter (Geelong), Harold (Melbourne), and Ormond (Brisbane) who later acquired extensive pastoral properties near Kilcoy, Queensland. Howard Smith's great entrepreneurial ability had ensured the firm's prosperity through the 1890s depression. [195] The Howard Smith wharves near Storey Bridge in Brisbane are currently undergoing restoration.

EDMUND EDMONDS SMITH (1847 – 1914), Harold's brother, was born on January 17th, 1847 at Rotherhithe and was educated at Melbourne Grammar School. He entered his father's firm and by 1886 was managing director of Howard Smith & Sons Ltd, retiring in 1904. Next January he took over as managing director in Melbourne; he was chairman in the 1890s and retired from the board in 1904. He was president of the Victorian Employers' Union and the Australasian Steamship Owners' Federation in 1890 and of the federal council of the Employers' Federation in 1904. He owned Oxford Chambers in Bourke St; the Empire Buildings in Flinders St; and a house at Toorak. A member of the royal commission on the University of Melbourne (1902), he was elected to the Legislative Council for South Yarra next year, but resigned in 1903 to contest the Senate and lost. Smith died childless on April 13th, 1914 at his holiday home at Cowes on Phillip Island, and was buried with Anglican rites in St Kilda cemetery. He was survived by his wife Jemima, née Doling, whom he had married at Heidelberg on May 11th, 1892. His estate was valued for probate in Victoria at £252,771. [196] Parliament of Victoria profile.

ARTHUR BRUCE SMITH (1851 – 1937), Harold's brother, businessman, barrister and politician, was born on June 28th, 1851, at Rotherhithe, Surrey, England, fifth of the seven sons. Bruce was educated in England (1862-64) and at Wesley College, Melbourne, then engaged in commerce (1867-72). Coached by W W Mankel, he matriculated at the University of Melbourne in October 1872, and studied law there before entering Lincoln's Inn, London, in December 1873; he was called to the Bar on January 26th, 1877. Returning to Melbourne, he was admitted to the Victorian Bar on September 14th, the same day as Alfred Deakin. At the Presbyterian Church, Toorak, he married Sara Jane Creswell (d.1929) on 15 January 1879. Narrowly defeated for the Legislative Assembly seat of Emerald Hill (South Melbourne) as a 'Constitutionalist' in February 1880, Smith moved to Sydney next January, armed with a letter of introduction from James Service to Sir Henry Parkes, and practised at the Bar. He won a Legislative Assembly by-election for Gundagai on November 23rd, 1882, the day parliament was dissolved, and he was re-elected on 13th December. He resigned his seat in April 1884 and returned to Melbourne to become joint managing director of Wm Howard Smith & Sons Ltd (registered in September 1883) at a salary of £1,250. Faced with industrial unrest, in March 1885 he founded the Victorian Employers' Union (president 1885-87) and, later, the Victorian Board of Conciliation.

After quarrelling with his father, in December 1886 Smith sold all his shares in Howard Smith to his brother, Edmund, and in January 1887 resigned from the board. Disinherited by his father in February, he returned to Sydney and practice at the Bar, and that year joined the Australian Club. Over the years he contributed to such journals as the Victorian Review, Melbourne Review, Centennial Magazine, Sydney Quarterly Magazine and the Australasian edition of the Review of Reviews, often reprinting his articles as pamphlets. In 1888, he founded the New South Wales Employers' Union and under its auspices published a pamphlet, Strikes and their Cure. Returned to the Legislative Assembly for Glebe in February 1889, Smith joined the committed free traders led by his close friend (Sir) William McMillan and from March 8th served in Parkes's last ministry as secretary for public works. Smith frequently clashed with Parkes and was 'furiously angry' in October 1889 when the latter espoused Federation without consulting his ministers. On August 14th, 1891 he replaced McMillan as colonial treasurer. He was a member of the United Federal Executive's finance committee in 1899 and edited United Australia (1900-02). In March 1901, he was elected to the House of Representatives for Parkes and held the seat until defeated in 1919.

Black-haired with a beautifully waxed moustache as a young man, he lived at Point Piper on Sydney Harbour, became a leader at the Bar and took silk in 1904. He was a director of the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society Ltd and the Sydney & Suburban Hydraulic Power Co Ltd, State president of the British Empire League in Australia and the Association for the Protection of Native Races, and a member of the Union Club from 1915. He published a handbook on the Constitution, Our Commonwealth (1904); Paralysis of a Nation (1914), attacking socialism; Truisms of Statecraft (1921); The Light of Egypt (1924) and a volume of verse, Fugitive Thoughts (1929). About 1925, he retired to his house at Bowral where he had always enjoyed fishing and outdoor pursuits. He died there on August 14th, 1937 and was buried beside his wife in the Church of England cemetery. Two daughters and a son survived him. His estate was valued for probate at over £42,000. [196] His book, Liberty and Liberalism, first published in 1887, was re-published in 2005 by the Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney (reviewed by Keith Windschuttle in Quadrant, April 2005). Parliament of NSW Shadow Ministry Profile

Sir John GRICE LL.B BA KB

(1850 - 1935)

A LAWYER AND BUSINESSMAN, BORN ON OCTOBER 6TH, 1850 in Melbourne, fourth son of pastoralist, businessman, philanthropist and churchman Richard Grice (1813–1882) and Anne Lavinia Hibberson. [175] His father had arrived in Melbourne three years after it was founded, where he became a partner in Grice Sumner & Co, one of the oldest and foremost mercantile houses in the Australian colonies. Their extensive bonded stores were on the north side of Flinders Street, in an easterly direction from where Custom House still stands today as the Immigration Museum, and just around the corner from Howard-Smith Ltd. The dean of Melbourne once recalled that Richard Grice had arranged his benefactions with such modesty that practically nobody who enjoyed the fruits of his generosity ever knew their source. [175, 176] John Grice was among the earliest enrolments at Melbourne Grammar School, first established on April 7th, 1858 when he was 8 years-old. However, he finished his secondary schooling at the newly opened Wesley College, where he won a prize as the first boy from that school to matriculate with credit at the University of Melbourne.

Grice went on to become one of the leading business men of Melbourne, but he had also been a driving force behind Melbourne Grammar's contribution to Australian ice sports since their foundation, until the late 1920s when he was approaching his eighties. Melburnians IHC (later Melbourne IHC), one of the original four Australian ice hockey clubs, was comprised of Melbourne Grammar athletes from their field hockey team of the same name. Old Grammarians, the Old Girl's association of Melbourne Girls Grammar, also had a women's field hockey club from 1908. It won the Dunraven Cup in 1913, the prize for winning three consecutive State premierships, 1911, 1912 and 1913. [248]

After matriculating, Grice entered Melbourne University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Law (LL B, 1871) and Arts (BA, 1872). He was an early member of the University Boat Club founded by Martin Howy Irving in 1859, and he rowed in the University boat race between Melbourne and Sydney in 1870, and the Intercolonial (Interstate) four-oared crew of 1872. On May 8th, 1878 at St John's Church, Toorak, Grice married Mary Anne, daughter of David Power of Moorak, Mount Gambier, South Australia. In 1901, they lived at Arnside near the north-east corner of Domain Road and Walsh Street in South Yarra, the former residence of Raynes Waite Dickson, president of the Law Institute of Victoria, and advocate of the diocese of the Church of England, Melbourne. They later moved to Coolullah on Williams Road in South Yarra, and their holiday home named Coolangatta was at Mount Macedon in Victoria. [175] The Grices had six children, but the eldest son George, a Lieutenant with 2 /Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) during the Boer War, was wounded at Tweefontein in South Africa on Christmas Day, 1901, and died next day at the age of 21. Youngest son, Thomas Gerald, completed his education in England where he too joined the Scottish Rifles. He returned to his station Moorakyne at Inverell, NSW, but when war broke he became a senior Major in the 1/4 Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. He too was killed in action in France on June 15, 1916. [175]

Twins John and James entered the medical and engineering professions. Hilda was an accomplished ice skater at the Glaciarium. Her performance with Phyllis Fraser (Clegg) in an ice ballet produced by Enders and Cambridge for the 1924 end of season carnival was reportedly equal best of the cast of ten amateur skaters, [203] and some of her friends played in the first women's ice hockey teams in Australia around this time. Elsa helped to found the Country Women's Association in Australia after World War I. Her sister Hilda was chairman of its handicrafts and home industries committee by the late 1920s, and the Lady Mayoress, wife of Harold Luxton, was a member of the management committee. The twins were named after Grice and his brother, James (bef 1850–1932), who was also a prominent Melbourne businessman. He lived at Moondah in Frankston with four sons and several daughters, where the Lucas and Langley families also resided. [176] William Grice, who played for St Kilda IHC in 1926, was also descended from this family. [219]

On January 25th, 1886, Grice was elected to the committee of the (Royal) Melbourne Hospital; became vice-president in 1888; and president in 1905 where he remained until 1918. He played a leadiing role in the selection of its site and the construction of its original buildings. Melbourne Glacarium had traditionally held annual charity nights for Victorian hospitals, and it had also contributed to Red Cross fundraising during the war, when Grice became the first voluntary treasurer of its Victorian branch. In fact, his knighthood in 1917 was in recognition of this Red Cross voluntary work, and he had no doubt called on the Glaciarium for assistance. [175, 176]

Like his father and brother James, Grice was a partner in the firm of Flinders Lane merchants, Grice Sumner & Co, and he was admitted to the bar in 1901. He was also director and chairman of the National Bank, and a Melbourne board member of the Norwich Union Assurance Co; the Trustees, Executors and Assurance Co; and the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency. He was chairman of directors of the Dunlop Rubber Co of Australasia Ltd (later Dunlop Perdriau Rubber Co), the Emu Bay Railway Co Ltd, North British & Mercantile Insurance Co Ltd, and the Australian Glass Manufacturers Co Ltd. He also held interests in Queensland as director of the Portland Downs and Malvern Hills pastoral companies, and his brother's interests were as varied and extensive as his own. James was also heavily involved with the Victorian Racing Club, the Victorian Amateur Turf Club, Moonee Valley Racing Club and Caulfield racecourse. His son, Claude, was a champion steeplechaser.

Elected to the council of the University of Melbourne in 1888, Grice became Vice-chancellor, or deputy CEO, in 1918 at a time when the council felt his business experience would be useful in overcoming financial difficulties, and when Barney Allen, president of the National ice skating association, was a vice-master. Strictly speaking, the Vice-chancellor is only the deputy to the Chancellor of the university, but the Chancellor is usually a prominent public figure who acts as a ceremonial figurehead only, while the Vice-Chancellor acts as the day-to-day chief executive. For example, the Chancellor of Cambridge University is HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. In effect, Grice was the chief university executive. The university itself had been established six decades earlier in 1854, a few years after Grice was born, as a direct product of the gold rushes. It was made possible by the wealth of gold, and it was a demonstration of how important Victoria then saw itself; a conscious move by the raw and young community of Robert Grice's time, to cloak itself with some of the culture and sophistication of the parent country. It was also about asserting equality with Sydney, whose university had opened two years earlier in 1852.

The links between Victoria's university, its public schools and the first Australian ice sports were formed over the half-century that followed. For example, Edward Ellis Morris (1843–1902), the second Melbourne Grammar headmaster and a co-founder of the Melbourne Shakespeare Society with Rev John Reid, father of Henry, became the professor of languages and literature at the university. He was chairman of the university Professorial Board in 1888 and 1890-93, a founder and committee member of the University Union, and chairman of the University Extension Board's Committee in 1894. The university careers of Grice, Allen and Morris overlapped, as did their links to the Reid family, in the years leading up to the foundation of ice sports in Australia. [246]

Grice had established the R Grice Scholarship at Melbourne University in honour of his father, as far back as 1879. Sometime before 1918, he established the Sir John Grice Trophy, the oldest known ice sports trophy in Australia after the Goodall Cup. It was the prize for winning three consecutive ladies free skating championship events. Victorian Doris Mostyn Armytage (1894–1947), one of the earliest "Ladies Champions of Australia" on record, was the inaugural winner in 1918. [152] This trophy was still being contested by women in Victoria in 1932. Dorothy Tickle won the trophy in 1931; Winsome Thackeray was placed second; and Kathleen McGill and Vera Pincott were placed equal third. [166] Grice was mostly educated at Melbourne Grammar, but he had matriculated from Wesley, and he became president of its old boys' association in 1918, around the same time that the Grice trophy was established for ice sports. There he set up the Grice scholarship for sons of Wesley officers who had been killed in World War I. [175]

The Thomas Gerald Grice scholarship at Geelong Grammar in Corio, was set up in memory of his son who was killed in France in 1916. It too was open to the sons (under 14 years) of commissioned officers of the British or the Australian Army or Navy, who were killed or died on active service in the war. [175] An ardent rower as a boy, Grice had also established the John Grice Shield for inter-faculty rowing at Melbourne University about this time. These four prizes, all established during the war years, paid tribute to the Grice name but, perhaps more precisely, they had assisted the students of schools with which John Grice was associated and, long after his death, some still do. In the case of the ice sports trophy, the recognition was indirect yet, looking back, it stands out as a potent symbol of the Glaciarium's continued indebtedness for its very existence to the Victorian public school's old boy network; and to Melbourne Grammar in particular.

When organised ice sports resumed in Victoria in 1920, they were without the Reids, and so they were more patently identifiable, through organisers like Grice and Allen, with the hallowed halls of the University of Melbourne and their long-established ties to Victorian public schools. The ranks of those who had championed ice sports in Melbourne were far from depleted; they seem to have been constantly replenishing through old boy networks. Their spheres of influence and potential strength had actually multiplied, and it is unlikely interstate organisers such as Dunbar Poole and his circle were left unaware. In fact, the leaders of Ormond College at the university were almost certainly already well-known to Poole. They were from his birthplace in Belfast, Ireland, and the rival cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland where he had lived.

Moreover, Barney Allen's family were friends of the Reids and they had moved from Melbourne to Sydney in 1890, years before Poole had arrived in Australia. By the time Poole had moved to Sydney in 1907, Barney's father, William, was one of its prominent ecumenical spokesman, from 1890 until he retired in 1917. His brother, Leslie, had been a part-time lecturer at Sydney university until 1911; a senior lecturer at the Sydney Teachers' College; a professor at the Royal Military College at Duntroon in 1918; and a lecturer at the new Canberra University College from 1931. Barney's brother, Carelton, was educated at Newington College and the University of Sydney (BA, 1910) where he won a scholarship to Oxford. He died at Oxford in 1966, after an illustrious career in one of the world's leading academic institutions, the oldest university in the English-speaking world, the model for some of the first Victorian schools.

Some of the first ice athletes in Australia, including Andy Reid, had moved on to the University of Melbourne immediately after the Glaciarium had first been established. Ice sports in Victoria increasingly recruited athletes from that source, and the story of Victoria's fledgling snow sports was the same. The first two ski clubs in the State had been organised by Gordon Langridge, a veteran of the first Australian ice hockey team of 1906, and the resultant synergies produced new spin-offs for all winter sports. Throughout the 1920s, Melbourne Glaciarium rapidly expanded its offerings to embrace them and, within the space of a few years, it had become the focal point for both ice and snow sports; the central city hub for all winter sports in the State. Langridge's clubs were soon followed by the Melbourne University Ski Club (MUSKI), the third in Victoria, established in 1929, two years after the Sydney University Ski Club [243] (see Barney Allen).

Like Harry Howard-Smith, Grice had become a chairman of directors of both Howard Smith Ltd, and the Metropolitan Gas Company from 1901. He had attracted publicity at the gas company in the 1920s, through combating threats to nationalize it, and the strong stand he took in the press against striking workers over a pay claim. He also attempted to prevent the formation of a bank officers' union in 1920, and these attitudes to employees' demands did not make him popular with those who worked for the companies he directed. As a fellow board-member, however, he was considered an honest, astute advocate who could drive a hard bargain, yet command respect. [175] The gas company purchased Melbourne Glaciarium in 1926, and re-sold it to organisers of Victorian ice sports five years later in 1931 (see Leo Molloy). Grice was 76 years-old when he led the purchase, and he had been chairman of directors of the gas company for a quarter-century; since 1901, a few years before Australia's first ice rinks were built by Reid's syndicates.

Melbourne Grammar, Scotch and Wesley colleges were the original cornerstones of Australian ice sports, and so it was unsurprising they were first to ice teams in the Victorian Ice Hockey Association's inaugural Public Schools under-16 competition in 1931. Although "schoolboys" had competed in "teams races" in Victoria since sometime before 1924, the Victorian speed skating championships were simultaneously redefined in 1931, enabling boys and girls to compete in under-sixteen and under-eighteen junior age divisions. [229] Tange has suggested that ice hockey age limits were not considered until much later than this, [2] and he held the view that the first junior-age competition had commenced in the 1950s. There are earlier references to "junior" hockey in the historical record of which Tange was aware, [2] and they invariably refererred to senior "reserve" grade players, as he concluded. The birth records of the earliest players show senior Interstate ice hockey in Victoria had originally commenced at age 18, and at age 17 for players capable of senior hockey, such as John Goodall in Victoria, and Ken Kennedy in New South Wales. The Victorian Public Schools junior competition founded in Victoria in 1931, for athletes 16 years-old and under, was established to fill this junior age gap, and it is the earliest known record of a true "junior" ice hockey league in Australia. [207] Organised junior-age ice hockey competition was founded in Australia twenty years before Tange had thought possible. It was brought into being on the 25th anniversary of Melbourne ice, its Silver Jubilee, in honour of the earliest organisers of ice sports in Melbourne, for the junior-age public schools they had attended and supported throughout their lifetimes.

In 1930, Grice was succeeded as chairman of the Metropolitan Gas Company, owners of Melbourne Glaciarium, by Melbourne businessman and lord mayor, Sir Harold Luxton (1888–1957), the son of sharebroker and one-time mayor of Prahran, Thomas Luxton (1888–1957). In 1932, Luxton attended the funeral of James Grice, John's brother, along with "several hundred friends and representatives of companies and organisations with which he had been associated". [176] John's wife, Mary Ann, had died the year before, and his health slowly faded until his death a few years later on February 27th, 1935, at South Yarra. He was 84 years-old when he was buried next to his wife and brother at the family plot in St Kilda cemetery (COE Monumental Grave D 19). His biographer said he was remembered by his descendants as fairly remote and rather stern, and "no doubt time spent with family was reduced by work commitments, although friends were frequently contacted at the Melbourne Club, either for formal dinners, or to play a rubber or two of bridge". Grice's estate was sworn for probate at about £40,000. [175] He lived long enough to see the birth of Victoria's Junior Public Schools ice hockey competition (1931), in which his two Alma Maters were first to compete. This would have pleased him greatly.

John Grice owned several other Melbourne mansions over the years, including Leighwood at Orrong Rd in Toorak; Bella Vista (Atta Vista) at 389–393 Alma Rd, Caulfield; Moorakyne, the 40-room mansion he built in 1890 at Glenferrie Rd, Malvern and sold to Bowes Kelly (1852–1930) in 1892; and Oma (Sommariva, Nareeb) at 170 Kooyong Rd, Malvern, purchased in 1888 from piano manufacturer Octavius Beale, and sold a few years later to grocerer Frederick John Cato (Moran & Cato), who in turn sold it back to Grice's brother, James. James also owned Rosemount at 112 Kooyong Rd, Caulfield, and he took over the Crown lease of the Scarborough/Kruska estate at Frankston in 1901, then the full title in 1902. There he built a racetrack for agistment and training of horses on which his son, Claude, became an expert steeplechaser. It was sold in 1917 and is now the Long Island Country Club golf course at Frankston. Richard Grice owned a residence at William Street in central Melbourne; an 18-room house he built in 1850 at 115 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy; Eyrecourt at Berwick; and Manyung at Mornington (c 1863). This was the property next to which his son James built his own home Moondah in 1888, on 250 acres at Kunyung Road, Mornington, where he lived until his death in 1932. [261] The original Moondah homestead built on Richard's Manyung property was purchased in 1947 by Reg Ansett, and it became the ‘Hotel Manyung’ for a period in the 1950s. It was also the namesake of the Moondah Plate horse racing event at Caulfield Racecourse which continues to this day, and it is now the home of the Australian Administrative Staff College.

Without the patronage of John Grice, ice sports in Australia could never have developed as they did. He was a prominent and influential figure-head and patron during their formative years, and he helped bridge the significant gap left by the Reids in the lead-up to the federation of State associations, and the founding of the first organised women's and junior ice hockey and speed skating competitions in Australia. His most important contribution in later years was sparing Melbourne Glaciarium from re-development. The first and only ice rink in Victoria for over thirty years, it survived for a half-century until 1957, due largely to his early patronage, and also to his intervention when it had floundered less than mid-way. Without the boardroom support he was able to marshal for the embattled Playhouse group in 1926, it would have closed its doors there and then, and quite possibly even earlier.

Coolullah | undated | Knighthood | 1917 | Nephew Claude | 1923–4 | Bad Timing | 1924 |
Old Melburnian Prime Ministers | 1925 | Hilda Grice | 1924 | Portrait by Longstaff | 1927 |
National Bank presentation | 1932 | James Grice Obit | 1932 |

Notes:
[1] Coolullah on the south-west corner of Toorak and Williams Roads, was part of the Winterfield estate of John Pike, a pastoralist who made his fortune as a storekeeper on the Bendigo goldfields. A building at Pall Mall in Bendigo continued to be know by the name of Pike's Corner well into the 20th century. Pike died insolvent in 1889 and, after the death of his wife Eliza in 1908, part of the property was subdivided by their son, John. Part of the subdivision was known as the Coolullah estate, including the house 'Coolullah' which John Grice purchased, which has since been demolished. (Betty Malone, Discovering Prahran Notes, Sec 6, pp 5, 6). Sir John and Lady Grice of Coolullah were among the signatories to a prospectus for the establishment of St Catherine's College at Beaulieu in 1922 (see Claude Langley). Mary Grice, grand-daughter of Sir John and Lady Grice, recalls the house had a small round turret on the left when looking at it from the street, and a verandah balcony to the front and north sides. The grounds of three acres included a croquet lawn and tennis court.

DORIS ARMYTAGE OF COMO AND THE WESTERN DISTRICTS. Doris Mostyn Armytage (1894–1947) was the 1918 and 1919 ladies' figure skating champion of Australia, and the inaugural winner of the Sir John Grice Cup for free skating in 1918, to be won three years consecutively. [152] She was born at Armadale in Melbourne in 1894, a grand-daughter of the pioneering family of Western District pastoralists who lived at the famous Melbourne residence Como above the Yarra at Toorak. Como House is now the Victorian National Trust headquarters, and the Como Hotel and related development occupy part of the grounds of the original estate. Doris' father, George Herbert Armytage ( – 1925), was the second son of Caroline Morrell Tuckwell and Charles Henry Armytage (1824–1876) who married in 1856. Charles was the fourth son of farmer and pastoralist, George Armytage, whose name Doris' father inherited. Doris inherited "Mostyn", her middle-name, from one of her father's stations near Balmoral in Victoria's Western Districts. Her grand aunt, Eliza Ann, (Charles' eldest sister) had married the second son of Henry Hopkins (1787–1870). Hopkins is credited with founding Congregationalism in Australia, the ministry of Henry Newman Reid's father, and he laid the foundation of the first Victorian Congregational Church in 1839, four years after Melbourne was founded. Originally Collins Street Independent Church, it is now St Michael's Uniting Church, corner Collins and Russell Streets. [181] The Armytage family played a significant role in Australia's establishment of an international trade in frozen meat, and the commercialisation of the pioneering refrigeration inventions of James Harrison (see Next Wave).

During the 1920s Doris' family home was Yaralla in St Georges Road in Toorak, Victoria. She was a friend of Elsie and Hilda Grice and many others in the social circle of John Goodall, including the Grimwades of Caulfield and the Frasers who lived nearby at Irving Road, Toorak, and owned property nearby the Armytages in the Western District. They attended some of the same social events and helped to organise and run various fundraising appeals, including a Golf Gymkhana held in October 1924 at Royal Melbourne Golf Club, Australia's oldest and most celebrated. Its founding captain was John Munro Bruce, father of Prime Minister Stanley Bruce, who had lived a few doors from Goodall's grandfather in St Kilda. The Appeal raised over £400 for the Victorian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. [181] Gerald Mostyn Armytage (1897– ), younger brother of Doris, served with the AIF Howitzer Brigade 23, Battery 107, on the Western Front. John Goodall's cousin, John Desmond Topp, served in the same brigade in Battery 109, and he had lived at Risdon in St Kilda before it became John Goodall's home. [160] Gerald Armytage was awarded the Military Medal for bravery, 'On the 29th May, 1917, whilst the Battery position was being heavily shelled ammunition hit one gun pit and the camouflage covering caught fire. This man assisted to put out the fire thereby saving serious loss in ammunition in that pit and possibly in others, if the camouflage had not been extinguished at once.' [181] Doris Mostyn Armytage was buried at St Kilda Cemetery in Melbourne. She was interred there at the age of 52, on March 7th, 1947, in a family memorial with about eighteen of her relatives (Church of England section, Monumental Grave D 177).

CHARLES HENRY ARMYTAGE (1824 – 1876) Doris' grandfather, born on August 24th, 1824 at Bagdad, Van Diemen's Land, fourth son of George Armytage (1795–1862) and his wife Elizabeth, née Peters. He was educated there and then worked on his father's properties. In 1857, his father gave him Mostyn and Fulham stations near Balmoral in Victoria. Fulham, a run of 65,500 acres, carried 20,000 sheep. In 1863, he acquired Mount Sturgeon station, 28,000 acres carrying 30,000 sheep and 300 cattle. The price was £70,750 and he paid £16,000 in cash, £9000 eight months later, and the rest within two years. The wool clip there alone brought £10,000 a year. In 1864, he employed 130 men, but he installed an overseer, preferring to live in Melbourne at Como, a house and fifty-four acres, bought in 1863 for £18,000. From there he directed his squatting empire, of which Fulham and Mount Sturgeon were only a part. In spite of much opposition from the South Australian government, he acquired pastoral leases which extended over 1,800 square kilometres by 1874, as far afield as Northwest Bend on the Murray River.

Armytage did not have to buy much of his land until 1870, when a long fight began with selectors over Mount Sturgeon. He eventually secured freehold of 10,720 acres there, and 18,246 acres at Fulham, but at the cost of a somewhat blemished reputation. He was involved in a notorious 'dummying' scandal, but he kept out of the banks' clutches. He shipped sheep to New Zealand and his observation of the Aboriginals' use of gum leaves for healing purposes led to the manufacture of eucalyptus oil through Dr Day of Geelong. He was also interested in mining development and became a director of the Alexander Quartz Mining Co in the 1870s, and invested in the New Pilot and Nevada Reefs near Tumbarumba in New South Wales. He died on April 26th, 1876, leaving an estate of some £120,000. His wife Caroline, five daughters and five sons, including Doris' father, toured Europe for a few years and on their return bought Holm Park near Beaconsfield and Afton Downs in Queensland. The Como property was subdivided in 1911, the house and garden being retained by the family. [181]

Charles Henry Armytage | c1870 |

FREDERICK WILLIAM ARMYTAGE (1838 – 1912) Doris' grand uncle, brother of Charles, born at Bagdad, Tasmania, on October 17th, 1838. His father moved to Geelong in 1851, and Frederick was one of the first pupils at Geelong Grammar School (Diocesan Grammar School), established in 1851. His share of his father's pastoral empire was part of Wooloomanata station near Lara near Geelong. He also acquired Norley, Bimbra, Thargomindah and Eulbertie stations in Queensland and Nocoleche and Mossgiel in New South Wales. His success was mixed; in one severe drought he lost 90,000 cattle and 250,000 sheep, but he was said to have made £120,000 in the 1870s on the resale of Mossgiel, a large sheep station in the Riverina. Armytage was a keen cricketer and in January 1862 he played for the Geelong and Western District team against a visiting English side. He was a great lover of horses and enjoyed shooting. At Wooloomanata, the fine bluestone mansion and the good pheasant shooting proved an attraction for visiting governors. Armytage travelled overseas and built up a valuable art collection which was later acquired by the National Gallery trustees. Both Armytage and his wife Mary Susan, née Staughton, were concerned with the welfare of the local Aboriginals and Armytage was a member of the Corio Shire Council for many years. He was a prominent member of the Melbourne Club, a director of the Union Mortgage and Agency Co of Australia, and the Australian Estates and Mortgage Co. He was also associated with the development of the frozen meat export industry in which the Reids and Thonemanns were involved, and owned a large part of the historic initial shipment to England in the Strathleven in 1879. Armytage had power of attorney to act for the Australian Frozen Meat Co in arranging for freights and machinery and his efficiency was highly praised. He was also an adviser to the Newport Meat Freezing Co, which established a slaughtering and freezing plant in 1882 at Newport, 7 km south-west of Melbourne's CBD. Frederick Armytage died at Como on September 3rd, 1912, predeceased by his wife and two of his five sons. One son, Bertram, had accompanied Sir Ernest Shackleton on his Antarctic expedition. [181]

Historical notes:
[1] Sir Simon Fraser (1832–1919), grandfather of former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia. His parents were from Inverness, Nova Scotia on the west coast of Cape Breton Island, about 100 km from Sydney where the family of Jim Kendall lived (see map at link above). Fraser grew up at Pictou and immigrated to Australia in 1854 at the age of 22, where he bought extensive estates in the Western District of Victoria. There he became a leader of the wealthy wool-growing class known as the squatters, which included the Armytage family. Simon Fraser was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly for the seat of Rodney in 1876 where he served until 1883. He was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council, the traditional preserve of the squatters, for South Yarra Province in 1886, and remained a member until 1901. He was a Minister without Portfolio from 1890 to 1892 in the Cabinet of James Munro. He was a Victorian delegate to the Imperial Conference in Ottawa, Canada in 1894. Robert Reid, uncle of Henry Newman Reid, was also in Ottawa in 1894. Reid had arrived the year before, the year Lord Stanley donated the Stanley Cup (see Henry Newman Reid). Fraser was a member of the Constitutional Convention which drafted the Australian Constitution, and closely related to the family of John Goodall.

DICKSON OF ARNSIDE, SOUTH YARRA AND BRIGHTON. In 1899, John Grice purchased the Arnside mansion near Wesley College and Melbourne Grammar, from Raynes Waite Dickson (1844–1928), who moved to Brighton, Victoria. Grice lived there during the years that Melbourne Glaciarium was built and then sold it to pastoralist and entrepreneur Sir Rupert Clarke of South Yarra, shortly before 1909 when the Grice family moved to Coolullah on the corner of Toorak and Williams Roads in South Yarra. Dickson was well-known to Grice as president of the Law Institute of Victoria (1888–9), and advocate of the diocese of the Church of England, Melbourne. He was a member of the Melbourne legal firm of Klingender, Charsley and Dickson at Temple Court in Melbourne (later Klingender, Dickson and Kiddie); the council of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne; the board of management of the Alfred Hospital; and honourary secretary to the Society for the Assistance of Persons of Education. [259] He was six years older than Grice, born on August 13th, 1844, the son of William Dickson of Anfield Lodge near Liverpool, England, and Frances Rickets, daughter of Raynes Barrett Waite of Blue Hole and Moreland Estates, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Rickets was lineally descended from Colonel Sir Thomas Wayte, the youngest of the twelve judges who condemned King Charles I (1600–1649) to death for high treason, and one of the first settlers in Jamaica, where he acquired considerable property. Raynes Dickson married Elizabeth on October 20th, 1870, daughter of William and Elizabeth Kiddle, of Somersetshire, England, where the Goodall family originated. He returned to England in 1906 and died there at Brighton in 1928. [259]

Their only son, Raynes Waite Stanley Dickson (1871– ), remained in Melbourne and became a solicitor and president of the Law Institute of Victoria (1924–5), like his father before him. He was a trustee of the Howey estate in Toorak for over 30 years and a director of the Royal Insurance Co, Carlton and United Breweries, and the Castlemaine Brewery Co, among others. He was also a member of the Anglican Synod and a warden of St John's Church Toorak where Grice was married. The reverend there was the son of architect Arthur Peck who sailed with John Goodall, and C Dickson (Dixson, Dixon) played ice hockey for Brighton IHC during the Goodall years. Peck's daughter, Marjory, was the women's skating champion of Victoria in 1930. Dickson lived at Lansell Road in Toorak and he was elected to the Melbourne City Council in 1933 when Harold Luxton was also a councillor. His son, Raynes Waite Adrian Dickson ( –1977), was a graduate in Laws of the University of Melbourne and a solicitor in the City of Melbourne. He married the eldest daughter of surgeon, soldier and politician, Sir Neville Howse VC (1863–1930), who was also born at Somerset in England, from where the Goodall and Kiddie families originated. [259] Howse was an Englishman who expressed the emerging Australian nationalism vigorously and directly, and it is worth noting that he gave evidence before the Dardanelles Commission in 1917, characterizing the arrangements for the wounded at the Gallipoli landing as 'so inadequate that they amounted to criminal negligence' on the part of the Imperial authorities. [259] In 1979, the Raynes Dickson Memorial Fund was established at the University of Melbourne, by Mrs Mary Violet Dickson to commemorate her late husband, Raynes Waite Adrian Dickson.

Horace William 'Barney' ALLEN BA MA

(1875 - 1949)

BORN AT MARYBOROUGH IN VICTORIA ON JANUARY 31st, 1875, eldest son of Rev William Allen (1847–1919) and his wife Martha Jane, née Holdsworth, a teacher. Maryborough is 80 km north of Ballarat, where the Goodall family built their wealth from the 1850s goldrushes. Allen's father was educated at Scotch College and trained at the Congregational College of Victoria, during the years that Rev John Reid, father of Henry Newman Reid, lecturered there in theology and philosophy. Barney Allen was president of the National Ice Skating Association of Australia (NISAA) in the 1920s, a position he had possibly held since its inception in 1911 at Melbourne. [145] He became a teacher and vice-master of the Presbyterian Ormond College at the University of Melbourne [190] and vice-president of the Melbourne University Sports Union (now Melbourne University Sports Association). [191] According to David Picken, the master of Ormond during those years, Allen "ranked as one of the Australian judges who could have gone to Scandinavia as a 1934 World Championship judge". [467] That was two years after Australia joined the International Skating Union and thirteen years before the first Australian officially became an ISU judge. Allen's brothers were Leslie Holdsworth Allen (1879–1964), lecturer in Latin and English at Canberra University College, and Sir Carleton Kemp Allen (1887–1966), Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford and Warden of Rhodes House.

Scotch College, now the oldest surviving secondary school in Victoria, was first established in 1851, the year before Allen's father arrived in Australia at the age of four. The founder, Rev James Forbes, the first settled minister of the Presbyterian Church in Victoria, had opened it in a small house in Spring Street in central Melbourne, under the name of the Melbourne Academy. From the time of his appointment in 1857, Alexander Morrison (1829–1903), the second headmaster, wanted to change the pervasive classicism of colonial secondary schools, and he set about making Scotch in the image of Scotland's Elgin Academy, where he had been both student and teacher. This was consistent with the desires of the townspeople of Melbourne, and Scotch became the largest church school in Australia under his reforms and leadership, remaining so for 35 years until the 1890s depression.

By 1875, the year Barney Allen was born, a visit to Britain had convinced Morrison that Victorian schools were as well adapted to the times as English grammar schools. He then initiated Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. Still today, Who's Who in Australia lists Scotch College alumni more often than those of any other school, followed by three other Victorian schools; Melbourne Grammar, Melbourne High, and Geelong Grammar. Allen succeeded Ernest Iliff Robson BA MA (1861–1946) as classics teacher at Ormond when Robson became headmaster of Sydney Church of England Grammar School. Some players in the New South Wales ice hockey association during the 1920s were educated there (see Henry Hinder). In 1895, Robson married Kate Isabel, daughter of Alexander Morrison, the headmaster of Scotch.

While John Grice was a product and patron of the Church of England tradition in Victorian education and sports, including Melbourne Girls Grammar, Allen represented the Congregational and Scots-Presbyterian tradition through Scotch College boys secondary school, and Ormond College at the university. Both men adhered to the religious and educational choices of their pioneering fathers and, oddly enough, it was these traditions that first connected them to ice sports. Allen was educated at Scotch and Haileybury colleges, and then the University of Melbourne, where he took honours in classics with Thomas George Tucker, and graduated in Arts (BA, 1896), which he followed with a Masters degree (MA, 1898). He lived at Parkville in central Melbourne and tutored in classics from 1897 at Ormond College, University of Melbourne, where he was vice-master under David Picken from 1915, until his retirement in 1944. He is said to have been an inspiring and lively teacher, whose wit was delightful and never palled. [190]

Allen enlisted at the age of 42, on ANZAC Day 1917, starting in the Sportsman's Unit at Broadmeadows in Victoria. He was 5-foot 9-inches tall, weighed 147 pounds, with a 32 inch chest, blue eyes, fair complexion and hair, and he embarked on the SS Ventura for overseas service with the 7th Battalion on December 19th, 1917. He transferred to the Australian Flying Corps in February 1918, and he was commissioned and posted to the AIF Education Service the following September. He was promoted Lieutenant on January 23rd, 1919, and Honorary Captain two weeks later. He returned to Australia on October 30th, 1919, where he was discharged in January 1920. A review of his talk to the Classical Association of Victoria ten months later, is held by the Australian War Memorial: H W Allen's 'Xenophon's Greek diggers'. [192] It compares the soldiers of the 1st AIF with their ancient Greek predecessors. He also compiled his university's Record of Active Service 1914–18 (1926).

The NISAA in Melbourne had a documented constitution, broad objectives and an obvious legitimacy as the National ice skating authority, but the ice skating association in New South Wales had chosen to operate independent of it for twenty years (see Mireylees Reid). Like most other ice sports organisers in Victoria during the 1920s, Allen also had to contend with the several changes of ownership of the Melbourne Glaciarium. He was a member, and possibly a provisional director, of the Feathertop Chalet company led by Gordon Langridge. He was a speaker for the Feathertop deputation to the Minister for Public Works, Mr Goode, on April 3rd, 1925, along with representatives from the Victorian Ice Hockey Association (VIHA), Ski Club Victoria, the Victorian Alpine Ski Club, the National Roads Association of Australasia (NRAA), and the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV), in which John Goodall was very active at the time.

There he described the winter sports at St Moritz, in Switzerland, and said that the Feathertop proposal aimed to imitate its facilities as far as possible. He said the proposal accommodated skiing, tobogganing, ice skating, curling, ice bowls, and many other different pastimes. [191] This was also the year that European champion ice skater, Henri Witte of Switzerland, was engaged by Melbourne Glaciarium as a professional skating instructor for the season, after which he returned regularly. Both Henri and his wife and skating partner, Heta, were exhibitors and instructors during the ice skating seasons in Melbourne from 1925 until 1932, and probably later.

Late that same year, Allen was also active on the Playhouse ice rink committee, which had been formed from a meeting of ice sports enthusiasts at the Playhouse theatre in Melbourne, on December 15th, 1925. Other members included Leo Molloy, Professors Cyril MacGillicuddy and Claude Langley, Hector Kendall, goalie Alban de Long and F Turner. Their chief concern was the imminent conversion of the Glaciarium to another form of entertainment, or an altogether different use (see Leo Molloy). This group was organised to build a new rink in South Yarra, however, it formed Glaciarium Ltd instead, and purchased Melbourne Glaciarium outright in 1931. Allen may have still presided over the NISAA by then, and this was also the year that the New South Wales ice skating association finally agreed to join with the National Ice Skating Association of Australia based in Melbourne, and form a joint Council of the NISAA. Australia affliated with the International Skating Union (ISU) the following year.

On June 25th, 1929 a meeting was convened at the University of Melbourne which determined "to form a Club, to be called the Melbourne University Ski Club, with the object of bringing together those members of the University who are interested in skiing and popularising skiing among past and present members of the University". A constitution was drawn up and Paul Wood was elected President, with Warrand Begg honorary Secretary-Treasurer. The committee was Selwyn Bates, Roger De Crespigny, Monty Kent Hughes and Malcolm McColl. Barney Allen became a vice-president of the ski club, with John F Foster, assistant Registrar of the University, and Gerald V Rush, co-founder with Gordon Langridge of Ski Club Victoria, and its first honorary Secretary. Allen continued a long and helpful association with the Club, not only as a vice-president annually until 1945 when he turned 70, and honorary auditor for 17 years, but also as "a valued adviser and advocate in bringing about recognition of skiing as an official inter-varsity sport". [243] He had made inroads by June 1932, as reported in The Argus newspaper in Melbourne:
Inter-University Ski-ing. First Contest in August. University teams will meet in a ski-ing contest at Mount Hotham in August. The contest is being arranged by the Melbourne University club, and a team from Sydney will take part. It is hoped that Tasmania will also be represented. Events will include a downhill run, and slalom, a jump, and a langlauf, but the details have not yet been decided. This will be the first time that an inter-University ski-ing contest has been held, and it will be the eighteenth sport in which Melbourne teams compete against other universities. The University Sports Union will not recognise it as an inter-University sport until three annual contests have been held, and no "blues" will be awarded until it is granted recognition. [250]

Allen was a keen ice skater and fly-fisher, and president for many years of both the Classical Association of Victoria and the Melbourne University Boat Club, [191] the oldest rowing club in Australia. Its patron during the Allen years was Rev Henry Girdlestone (1863–1926), former stroke of Oxford Eight; former headmaster of the Collegiate School of St Peter in Adelaide (1894–1916); and acting headmaster of Melbourne Grammar (1917–19). The young Reids had attended St Peter in 1904 when their father was building Adelaide Glaciarium.

Melbourne Glaciarium was known as the "Academy of Skating," and Allen had presided over the organisation and development of its instruction programs, proficiency standards and championship competitions for a very long time. It had emerged as the first and preeminent ice skating school in the southern hemisphere long before he died. Allen was at least partly responsible for the first national association of ice skating in Australia, established in Melbourne in 1911. His administrative contribution as its president, and vice-president of the University Ski Club, spanned the foundation and consolidation of both ice and snow sports in Victoria, and farther still, to all eighteen sports at the university in his capacity as vice-president of the Sports Union. He presided over the NISAA during the period it was left little choice but to conduct 'National' figure skating championships independently of the Sydney association for twenty years, at the expense of a unified controlling authority (see Mireylees Reid). His position among the leaders of Victoria's earliest secondary and tertiary schools helped to provide Victorian winter sports with a constant flow of new enthusiasts and athletes. Horace William Allen died, unmarried, at the age of 74, on August 13th, 1949, at Frankston in Victoria. [190] He was cremated privately at Springvale Botanical Cemetery in Clayton, Victoria (Tristania, Rose Tree Garden G4, 2, 49). [245]

Ormond College | c1885 | Feathertop Proposal | 1925 |


Rev WILLIAM ALLEN (1847 – 1919), father of 'Barney', migrated to Melbourne in 1852 at the age of four, two years before William Howard-Smith and his wife Agnes Rosa Allen. He arrived in September that year on the ship Bangalore, with his contractor father, also named William (abt 1819– ), and his mother, Rebecca (abt 1815– ). [244] Rev William Allen was educated at Scotch College and trained at the Congregational College of Victoria, where Rev John Reid, father of Henry Newman Reid, was an educator. In 1871–90, he held pastoral appointments at Sandhurst (Bendigo), Maryborough and Carlton, and in 1885–86 he was chairman of the Congregational Union and Mission of Victoria. He was joint-editor for a time of the Victorian Independent, published by Random Rhymes (Melbourne, 1886); he had a prize-winning cantata performed at the Centennial International Exhibition; and he wrote a national anthem, 'God Save Our Austral Land', later sung in Queensland schools. In 1890, he moved to Petersham in Sydney's inner-western suburbs, became a prominent evangelical and ecumenical spokesman in Sydney, and was chairman of the New South Wales Congregational Union in 1894-95. He served at Greenwich from 1908 to 1917 when he retired. Unlike Henry Reid's father, he was strongly opposed to the theatre, which several of his four sons and two daughters adopted as an engrossing hobby. [190]

Sir CARLETON KEMP ALLEN (1887 – 1966). One of three of Barney's younger brothers, Carleton, or 'C K' as he came to be known, was born on September 7th, 1887 at Carlton in Melbourne. He was three when the family moved to Sydney, and he was educated at Newington College and the University of Sydney (BA, 1910), where he read classics and won a scholarship to Oxford. There he studied jurisprudence under Corpus professor (Sir) Paul Vinogradoff at New College, took first-class honours in 1912, and was elected Eldon Law Scholar in 1913. He was a captain in the 13th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, in World War I, was wounded, and was awarded the Military Cross in 1918. Elected Stowell Civil Law Fellow of University College, Oxford, in 1920, he remained a fellow of the college in one capacity or another for the rest of his life. In 1926, he spent a year as Tagore professor at the University of Calcutta and published his lectures there as Law in the Making in 1927; it became an established classic and he completed a seventh edition in 1964. In 1929, he was appointed professor of jurisprudence at Oxford, but in 1931 he became the second warden of Rhodes House. He filled this office with great distinction and he and his wife Dorothy Frances, née Halford, whom he had married at Oxford in 1922, won the affection and respect of generations of Rhodes scholars. Allen wrote in a lucid and lively manner and was always interesting; his depth of scholarship could elude the superficial reader. He expressed his individualist philosophy in Bureaucracy Triumphant (1931); other works included Law and Orders (1945), The Queen's Peace (1953), Law and Disorders (1954) and Aspects of Justice (1958); he also wrote two novels. On his retirement in 1952 he was knighted; he had been elected to the British Academy and appointed K C in 1945. 'C K' had been a keen amateur actor and cricketer. He was stalwart in appearance, despite a weak heart, with thick white hair and a neat moustache. He died at Oxford on December 11th, 1966, survived by his second wife, Hilda Mary Grose, whom he had married in 1962, and by a son and daughter of his first marriage. His portrait by James Gunn is in Rhodes House. [190]

DAVID KENNEDY PICKEN (1879 – 1956). Born in Dennistoun, Glasgow, Scotland, and educated in Glasgow, he then went to Cambridge to study the Mathematical Tripos. Following his graduation Picken was appointed Lecturer and Assistant Professor in the University of Glasgow. From there he moved to become Professor of Mathematics at Victoria College at Wellington in New Zealand in 1907. Picken was a member of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (1883), from May 1903, and he remained a member during his career in New Zealand and Australia. He served on the Committee of the Society from session 1904–5; served as editor of the Proceedings from session 1906-07; and read papers to the Society. Picken was a prominent member of the Mathematical Association of Victoria, and his obituary appeared in The Mathematical Gazette, (transcript). [242] In 1915, Picken was appointed Master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. The College was Presbyterian, named after its principal benefactor, grazier and philanthropist Francis Ormond (1829–1889). In 1881, Ormond had also offered £5,000 towards the establishment of a technical college on the proviso that the public contribute a "like sum" and a considerable sum was raised by the Council of the Melbourne Trades Hall, which rallied support amongst its membership of unions. The Working Men's College (now RMIT University) opened in 1887 with 1,000 enrolments within its first 12 months of operation, and Ormond served as its President until his death in 1889. George David Langridge, grandfather of Gordon Langridge, became its treasurer two years later in 1891. Ormond had left an estate of nearly £2 million, hundreds of millions in today's money, three-quarters of it in Victoria and the rest in New South Wales. His will provided £5,000 each to the Melbourne Hospital, the Benevolent Asylum, the Orphan Asylum, Deaf and Dumb Asylum, Blind Asylum (Ormond Hall), Sailors' Home, Alfred Hospital, Children's Hospital, Geelong Hospital, Geelong Orphans' Asylum, Ballarat Hospital, Ballarat Benevolent Asylum, and £1,000 each to St George's Presbyterian Church, Geelong, and Toorak Presbyterian Church, in addition to his large educational bequests.

Picken was the second master of Ormond College after Irish-born John MacFarland (1851–1935). MacFarland had trained at the Royal Academical Institution in Belfast, Ireland where Dunbar Poole was born. A friend and fishing companion of Dr Wiliam Littlejohn (1859–1933), headmaster of Scotch College, he became vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne in 1910, in effect commencing a period of twenty-five years as unpaid chief university executive. Sir Zelman Cowen, born in Melbourne to Jewish parents and a Rhodes scholar to New College at Oxford University, was Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Melbourne between 1951 and 1966. A former Governor-General of Australia, he once gave a nice account of Picken as Master of Ormond:—

My own experience is I think instructive. When I came to the University of Melbourne in 1936 my ambition, transmitted to me by my mother, was to become a barrister. She stipulated, "You're to be a boy or a barrister." Accordingly, I wished to take a straight law course and embark on the practice of the law as soon as possible. It happened that I'd won a non-resident scholarship to Ormond College in the University, and I was interviewed by the Master of that College, D K Picken, a doughty, Scots Cambridge mathematician. He threw cold water on my hopes of completing my law course as quickly as possible. He told me bluntly that this was misconceived and that I would benefit both educationally and in my personal development if I undertook a combined Arts and Law course. At the time I felt frustrated and vexed that my entry into the legal profession would be delayed for a year. But ever since then I have been deeply grateful for Picken's firm guidance. His insistence that I should broaden my university studies opened up a learning and cultural experience for me in areas in which the university was at its best. I was exposed to its outstanding teachers. It was a truly broad and liberal education and as such, it was to be of inestimable benefit to me. [241]

Sir Harold Daniel LUXTON KB

(1888 - 1957)

BORN ON JUNE 25TH, 1888 AT KANGAROO FLAT, near Bendigo in Victoria, fourth son and last of eight children of sharebroker and one-time mayor of Prahran, Thomas Luxton (1850–1911), and his wife Sarah Schooling. The family moved to Grandview, 5 Wynnstay Rd, Prahran, and Harold distinguished himself in athletics and rowing at Melbourne Grammar School from 1899. He attended with Andy Reid, a year younger and also an outstanding athlete, and both families were well-known to the Goodall family. Luxton had probably first met John Goodall's grandfather in Ballarat, but Thomas Luxton had bought a seat on the Melbourne Stock Exchange in 1887, when Goodall was a member, and for a time Luxton was the only broker who was a member of the Melbourne, Ballarat and Bendigo Exchanges. [240] In 1930, he succeeded Sir John Grice (1850–1935) as chairman of directors of the Metropolitan Gas Company. It had purchased Melbourne Glaciarium in 1926 from another company which, although it had no interest in an ice rink, had acquired it at a liquidator's sale a few years earlier. The gas company sold it back to the organisers of ice sports in Victoria the year Luxton became chairman (see Leo Molloy). Later in 1950, Luxton also assisted the Victorian Ice Hockey Association to gain admittance to the Australian Olympic Federation (AOF, now Australian Olympic Committee), after which long-range plans for a touring Australian ice hockey team were set in motion (see Ken Kennedy).

After matriculating from Melbourne Grammar, Luxton joined the hardware business at 119 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, which his father had formed from the purchase of McLean Bros & Rigg in 1907, and James McEwan & Co in 1910. He recalled that he was a 'man of affairs' at 19, and when his father died in 1911 he and his brother Tom had 'the full responsibility of running a big business at a time when I, at any rate, should have been playing tennis'. He also married early, to Doris Mary Lewis at St George's Church of England, Malvern, on November 17th, 1909. In February 1915, he enlisted in the Australian Field Artillery as provisional lieutenant and was appointed second lieutenant when he joined the Australian Imperial Force in October. He served as lieutenant in Egypt with the 4th Field Artillery Brigade, Battery 11. This brigade was led by Major Willie Fanning, a cousin of John Goodall's wife, Kathleen, and it also included Lieutenant Claude Grice, a nephew of John Grice. In October 1916, Luxton transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, attended the Oxford School of Aeronautics and flew on bombing and spotting missions. He was shot down in France on August 1917, suffering a fractured skull, broken jaw and other injuries.

After the war, Luxton returned to the family business in Elizabeth Street. In 1919, he stood successfully for the Lonsdale Ward of the Melbourne City Council, intending to represent returned soldiers. He retained the seat until redistribution in 1939 when he represented Hoddle Ward, retiring in 1943. In 1928, when managing director of McEwans, but still dark-featured and youthful in appearance, he succeeded Sir Stephen Morell as lord mayor — the youngest-ever. He was the first returned soldier so distinguished and, more remarkably, one who had not served as chairman of a committee, although he had been a member of four — licensed vehicles, finance, abattoirs and cattle markets, and public works. Luxton declared himself in favour of more bridges over the Yarra River and of the centralization of charities in the Lord Mayor's Fund as a community chest on the American model. With three terms as mayor behind him, in 1931 he publicly regretted that the recommendations of the Metropolitan Town Planning Commission had not been implemented, or a town planning authority created. Nor was his vision of a single charity organization much further advanced. He blamed the economic Depression. Even the lady mayoress complained in 1930 that 'Debutantes are having a hard time this year. There are hardly any parties for them. People cannot afford it'. In 1932, Luxton was knighted, the standard reward for lengthy mayoral service. He continued on as a city councillor, serving for almost a quarter-century between 1919 and 1943. [240]

The image of the able young community leader, 'decisive in speech and manner', carried Luxton into State parliament at a by-election in 1930 for Caulfield to join other young Nationalists such as (Sir) Wilfrid Kent Hughes, (Sir) Thomas Maltby and (Sir) Robert Menzies. He expressed a businessman's view that no solution was possible to the problem of unemployment without the restoration of profits to industry, and maintained that what the country needed was 'more millionaires'. But Luxton's impact was slight. He faced the Hogan Labor administration of 1929–32 and remained a back-bencher during the Argyle-Allan United Australia Party-Country Party coalition of 1932–35. He resigned from parliament on the eve of the 1935 election after obtaining party endorsement, explaining that years of public service had affected his health. Around 1937, his brother Tom purchased Coolart in Luxton Drive, off Sandy Point Rd in Somers, originally owned by Frederick Grimwade. It was later purchased by the Victorian Government in 1977. [261]

In the 1930s, Luxton extended his affiliations as a businessman. He became a Victorian director of the Bank of New Zealand and chairman of directors of the Metropolitan Gas Co which owned Melbourne Glaciarium, the National Mutual Life Association of Australia Ltd (1935–53) and the Fourth Victoria Building Society. A member of the Athenaeum and the Naval and Military clubs, he was a well-known breeder of racehorses at his Dandenong property and became an enthusiastic traveller abroad. In 1933, he was one of two Australian representatives on the International Olympic Committee and attended the 1949 Rome meeting which voted to give Melbourne the 1956 Olympics. Returning from the 1950 Copenhagen meeting of the international committee he urged Melburnians to prepare themselves for the influx of visitors, complaining of a lack of hotel accommodation and sophisticated night-life. He claimed that Victoria's politicians had made a grave mistake in not extending hotel drinking-hours. 'I love Melbourne', he said, 'I have lived here all my life, but it is still deadly dull'. During World War II he was Victorian director of the Empire Air Recruiting Committee.

Deteriorating health in the 1950s forced Luxton into semi-retirement. His place on the organizing committee for the 1956 Olympics was taken by his son Lewis, although he remained the elder statesman of the movement. He is credited with significantly building-up the AOF reserves through his fundraising efforts and, jointly with Hugh Weir, winning the Melbourne bid for the 1956 Olympic Games, when Melbourne defeated Buenos Aires by one vote. [237] He was still chairman of the family business on his death on October 24th, 1957 at The Lodge in Dandenong. His wife, three sons and daughter were the main beneficiaries of his estate, valued for probate at £98,610. Like Howard-Smith Ltd, McEwan's was eventually bought out by Westfarmers (Bunnings) in 1993. A portrait by W B McInnes is at the Melbourne Town Hall. His memorial is at Springvale Botanical Cemetery in Clayton, Victoria (Dodonaea, Tree 64). [239]
John Grice initiated the return of Melbourne Glaciarium to the Victorian ice sports community in 1925. Harold Luxton completed it in 1930, when he succeeded Grice as chairman of directors of the company that owned it. Twenty years later, he assisted the Victorian Ice Hockey Association to gain admittance to the Australian Olympic Federation (AOF, now Australian Olympic Committee), which enabled Victoria to ice the first Olympic ice hockey team in Australian history (see Ken Kennedy).

Historical notes:

[1] General biographical detail for Harold Luxton is largely from David Dunstan's entry in Australian Dictionary of Biography. [240] It has been checked and validated against various primary sources, and part of what is presented here is an edited version of the original.
[2] Australia has competed in all twenty-five Summer Olympics. It has also sent teams to 16 of the 20 Winter Olympics. In 1908 and 1912, Australia joined New Zealand under the name ‘Australasia’. Australia and Greece are the only two nations to have participated at every Summer Olympics of the modern era.

Lewis Thomas LUXTON CBE OBE

(1910 - 1985)

BORN ON DECEMBER 12TH, 1910 AT MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, eldest son of hardware merchant Harold Luxton (1888–1957) and Doris Mary Lewis who were married at at St George's Church of England, Malvern, on November 17th, 1909. [240] On Saturday, August 23rd, 1930, Luxton attended an Essendon ice-hockey match at the Glaciarium (see Ted Molony). At the time, his father, had only just become chairman of directors of the company which owned Melbourne Glaciarium, [237] and it was sold back to the organisers of ice sports in Victoria, just a few months after Lewis attended this match (see Leo Molloy). His article "The Fastest Game in the World," [205] published in The Argus newspaper in Melbourne in 1930, is a short but important document in the history of Australian ice sports. It contains a classic account of the evolving ice hockey team-structure, rules, equipment and game-play; illuminated for just a moment in the darkness of the Great Depression in Victoria. Luxton wrote numerous other short stories and sporting and cultural articles for The Argus newspaper, including "Kings of the Pens, Personalities of Old Newmarket" [183] which included a profile of stock and station agent, John George Dougharty (1823–89), grandfather of John Goodall on his mother's side. Others included "Hunting the Octopus in a Diving Dress" (1929); "Lost Joys of Bohemia, What the Theatre Lacks To-day" (1929); "Cricket Bat Lore, An Hour with Mr. "Bob" Crockett" (1930); "Sport of a 1001 Secrets, Popularity of Model Yachting" (1931); "Humorists Afloat, Happy Stories of Motor Boating" (1932); "A Meteorologist at Peace" (1932); "A Flying Photographer The Adventures of 'Airspy'" (1932); and "Business in Charity, Remarkable Achievements at Royal Park" (1932), about the Victorian Home and Hospital for the Aged and Infirm.

Luxton was educated at Melbourne Grammar and Pembroke College of Cambridge University in England, where he won the quarter-mile race in the Oxford-Cambridge swimming match in London in 1931, and the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley in 1932 as stroke of the eight-oared (rowing eight) crew, the first Australian to stroke a Cambridge crew. Australians were still regarded as part of the British Empire at that time, and so they qualified for British crews. Luxton represented Britain in rowing at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, as a result of the Cambridge win. [205, 237] In so doing, he continued a tradition commenced by the first Australian rowing eight at the 1912 Stockholm Games, in which Simon Fraser rowed. He married Mary Varley and became the Assistant Manager of the South Australian branch of Shell Australia, which had its head offices in William Street, Melbourne. He later became chairman of Shell Australia. During the Second World War, he was engaged in the planning with General HQ of the employment of the Australian Military Force. He sailed for the Middle East in October 1940, and served in Egypt, Greece, Crete and Syria, before returning to Australia on March 16th, 1942. After training at the Staff School of Duntroon Military College, he joined the New Guinea force based in Queensland. Luxton was awarded an OBE in 1947 for distinguished military service as a Major in the south-west Pacific.

When Sir Harold Luxton, Lewis' father, resigned by cable from the IOC on May 9th 1951, the IOC's Otto Mayer immediately announced Lewis would be his successor. He also succeeded his father on the organising committee of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, in the years immediately before Australia iced its first Olympic hockey team (see Ken Kennedy), and he is credited with much of its success. Both father and son served on the AOF Executive Committee for many years, and it Lewis' casting vote on the AOF in the controversial lead up to the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games in Moscow that enabled Australia to compete, ensuring it remained one of the few countries to attend every summer Olympics. In recognition of his service to international sport, Lewis was made an honorary member of the IOC upon his retirement in 1974. He became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1957 for his services as Deputy Chairman of the Olympic Games Committee, host-organisers of Australia's first Olympics in Melbourne in 1956. [56, 237] Lewis Luxton died just before Remembrance Day in 1985, and was interred publicly at Springvale Botanical Cemetery in Clayton, Victoria, on November 12th. [239] On December 5th 1989, he was inducted as a General Member to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame for Olympic Sports Administration.

The Fastest Game in the World | 1930 | Luxton's Eight | 1932 | On HMS Hotspur | 1941 |

Claude Charles Leadbetter LANGLEY

(1884 - 1949)

BORN ON SEPTEMBER 25TH, 1884, AT DARJEELING, INDIA, the son of Philip Richard Langley (abt 1837– ) and Frances Rowett (abt 1851– ) who married at Bengal in 1865. [148-150, 153] His middle namesake was probably Charles Leadbetter (1854–1934), an English clergyman, author, clairvoyant, and prominent early member of the Theosophical Society. Leadbetter met Helena Blavatsky in London, a Society founder, and followed her to India in 1884, the year Langley was born there. The Langley family immigrated to Melbourne in September, 1895, on the ship Cloncurry, when Claude was 10 years-old. He arrived with his parents, two brothers and three sisters; Minnie aged 22; Edgar John Flynn aged 16; Vyvyan aged 12; Ernest (Edward) aged 8; and Kathlin aged 7. [150] Two or three older brothers and sisters, possibly born between 1865 and 1872, may have remained behind. Claude married Lily and lived at Altiora, Williams Road, South Yarra. During the war, Lily lived with Ingrid Jackson at Murrumbeena, near Caulfield in Melbourne, Victoria, then moved to 73 Coorigal Road, Murrumbeena. [149] After the war, Professor Langley had a farm on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. This was probably at Cranbourne Road, Hampton Park, the address at which he died. During the early 1920s, his poultry competed in egg-laying competitions held by the Burnley Horticultural College at Richmond, established in 1863. [150]

Like Robert Jackson, Langley dreamed of being a great stage dancer, but the opportunity did not come his way. He commenced skating at Adelaide Glaciarium in 1904 where he met Professor James Brewer, the professional world champion ice skater from London (see Figures). It is said working with Brewer changed Langley's life. Langley was enthralled by Brewer's exhibitions, and decided to become a great skater. He learnt all he could from Brewer and traveled to Europe in 1906. He gained Bronze Medals at Princes Skating Club at Knightsbridge in London in 1910 (Brewer's home ice), then Gold, Silver and Bronze Medals at Davos in Switzerland in 1911. It was there he saw exhibitions by Salchow, then World Champion, and Zander and Ritberger, second and third respectively in world championship ranking. [280] Langley played hockey on ice at Adelaide Glaciarium in April 1906, top scorer on a team captained by Professor Brewer. The following July he severed his connection with the Adelaide ice rink and returned to Melbourne with a purse of sovereigns presented by the ladies under his tuition at a send-off at Bricknell's Café on the 18th July. [529]

Both Langley and Brewer were among the first professional instructors at Melbourne's Academy of Skating a few months later. [359, 361] Langley was 23 years-old when he and his first Australian ice skating pupils, including the young Reids, performed a figure skating exhibition at Sydney Glaciarium on July 27th, 1907, two days after it had officially opened. [2] From that time on until the war, he visited Sydney frequently to exhibit "fancy" skating, and sometimes with a young female pupil from Melbourne as his ice dancing partner. He was also an organiser of the earliest hockey pratice matches for patrons. Langley trained skaters at all three of Australia's first rinks, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. He is remembered as the "doyen of Australian ice skating", and the prime mover in forming the National Ice Skating Association of Australia in 1931 from the rival Victorian and New South Wales associations. Australia joined the International Skating Union the following year. Langley remained a member of the Victorian branch all his active life, specialised in figures and free skating, took an interest in ice hockey, and was a senior instructor at Melbourne Glaciarium. He skated all but a few seasons there since its opening in 1906, until some time after 1932. He was also keenly interested in shooting and etymology. [280]

On August 5th, 1915, during the Great War, Langley danced on ice with Robert Jackson and his wife, in a skating carnival at Melbourne Glaciarium, in aid of the Victorian Red Cross Fund for Australian Sick and Wounded Soldiers. [151] Langley had previously served 12 months in the infantry (AIR) in South Australia, and he enlisted in the AIF on February 11th, 1916, at the age of 31. He served as a Private in 24th Battalion, 15th Reinforcement, which embarked from Melbourne on board HMAT A9 Shropshire in September, 1916. In May 1917, his battalion participated in the successful, but costly, second battle of Bullecourt on the Western Front. It was involved for only a single day — May 3rd — but it suffered almost 80 per cent casualties. The AIF’s focus for the rest of the year was the Ypres sector in Belgium, where Andy Reid was killed in June. The 24th fought on the Menin road, but its major engagement there in Langley's time, was the seizure of Broodseinde Ridge. Claude's brother, Edgar J F Langley (1878– ), had lived at 114 Goulburn St in Hobart with his wife and family, but they moved to Melbourne's western suburbs during the war, and lived at 217 Gladstone Street, Moonee Ponds. He was an accountant with Stone & Best and a veteran of the Boer War. During the First World War, he served as a Major with the 4th Brigade of the 13th Light Horse Regiment, Headquarters and Machine Gun Section. He was decorated with a Distinguished Service Order in the South African War and the Croix de Guerre in France. [149]

Langley returned to Australia on January 30th, 1918, [149] suffering from acute arthritis. In August he was skating in another Melbourne carnival with Dunbar Poole, who demonstrated "International free skating", originated by the American, Jackson Haines (1840–1875). The first American figure skating championships in the "International Style" had been held a few years earlier in March, 1914, in New Haven, Connecticut. The style became popular in Europe where Haines taught, but not in the United States until many years after his death. Ramsay Salmon, another veteran of the first Australian ice hockey team of 1906, demonstrated "Continental pair skating" with his wife at the same carnival. Gordon Langridge, yet another of the original six ice hockey players, won the waltzing prize with Mrs Thompson. This was also the carnival at which Victorian Doris Armytage (1895–1947) was presented with prizes for winning the "Ladies Championship of Australia", and the inaugural Sir John Grice Trophy, for three consecutive Ladies free skating championship tests. [152] Claude's wife Lily died when he was 35 years-old, on February 16th, 1919. His brother Ernest and wife Verna Smith lived at Griffith Street in Caulfield and had a daughter named Joan Marie in 1922. [151]

Professor Langley was almost 5-feet 9-inches tall, with a 38-inch chest, and weighed 140 pounds. He had a fair complexion, grey eyes, brown hair and scars on his neck, arm and knee. [149] He was seven years younger than Dunbar Poole, yet he was almost as accomplished when Poole left to manage Sydney Glaciarium in 1907. Like Professors MacGiilicuddy and Gordon who were soon to follow him, Langley had helped to establish the Melbourne skating academy from its inception in 1906, and he was the prime mover in founding the council of the National Ice Skating Association of Australia in 1931. He made a highly significant contribution to Australian ice sports over many years, as a coach of the first generation of Australian figure skaters. Among those who benefitted from his work, in the years long before titles were sanctioned by a unifying figure skating organization, were some of the earliest Australian National champions, such as Doris Armytage, and International champions such as Enders and Cambridge. Langley was also a leading member of the group that formed Glaciarium Ltd in 1925, which first leased Melbourne Glaciarium from new owners, then purchased it during the Great Depression to safeguard the future of ice sports in Victoria. [145] Claude Charles Leadbetter Langley died at his home in Cranbourne Road, Hampton Park in Melbourne on August 3rd 1949, and was buried at Dandenong cemetery. He was 63 years-old and was survived by his second wife Margaret Ellen Elizabeth Langley; two daughters, Loris and Helen (Mrs. Jackson); and son, Ian. [149, 153, 280]

Charles Dansie MACLURCAN AMIEE

(1889 - 1957)

THE SON OF HOTELIER AND FOOD WRITER Hannah Maclurcan (1860–1936) and Donald Boulton Maclurcan. He left school at 13 and was apprenticed to an electrical engineer before establishing his own business at the age of 19. In 1912, he established the car dealership, Maclurcan and Lane, with Cyril Lane who married Lyn Maclurcan, Charles' sister. [549] Later, Maclurcan became famous as the "wireless man", one of the pioneers of radio in Australia. He was an instructor with Professor Claude Langley at Sydney Glaciarium in 1909; the years that Miss Dent, of London's Princes Skating Club, taught in both Melbourne and Sydney. [525] Maclurcan is credited with establishing the Sydney Figure Skating Club at Sydney Galciarium, [416] soon after after the National Ice Skating Association of Australia (NISAA) was established in Melbourne in 1911 by Claude Langley and Barney Allen. Sydney preferred its own judges and rules.

This Club was the successor to the Glaciarium Figure Skating Club (GFSC) formed in 1907 with Dunbar Poole in charge, and it went on to operate as the NSW State controlling authority for figure and speed skating. Despite changes in leadership, Poole continued to impress himself upon the Sydney skating public at large. At the resumption of the 1924 season the Referee newspaper noted: "... Mr Dunbar Poole, who is still in charge of this exhilarating pastime, anticipates that the new season will eclipse all others in popularity..." [532] Not surprisingly, it took a further 20 years for the two state organisations to even begin to agree on uniform standards; form a truly national controlling authority; and join the International Skating Union (ISU).

Maclurcan won second place in an ice waltzing competition for all-comers at Davos Platz, Switzerland in 1909 when he was just 19 or 20. [546] The Internationaler Schlittsschuh-Club Davos had been a club member of the ISU since 1896, and it was there Maclurcan passed his Bronze medal in 1909 then Silver and Gold in 1912. [548] He won the men's title of the National Ice Skating Association of Australia (NISAA) in Melbourne that same year. Many years later in 1950 The Weekly reported he was "first in Australia to pass bronze, silver, and gold medals for figure skating" [527] and he had said elsewhere Ramsay Salmon and his wife Fannie had been the only others to have reached gold medal standard in New South Wales by 1930. [528] However, there were skaters in Victoria where the NISAA was first established who had achieved that standard, even before 1914. For example, Victorian Claude Langley achieved gold, silver and bronze medals at Davos in Switzerland in 1911. [529]

In 1927, Radio magazine had described Charles as "...Champion Ice Skater of the Commonwealth," and "...in 1910 he was champion ice skater of the world, having won the title at the famous winter sports in Switzerland." [417] Such titles may have been in use at the International Skating Club at Davos Platz back then but, if so, they were obviously misleading. They were certainly not the official international titles of the ISU-judged world championships and Olympic events. Ulrich Salchow won both the World's and European championships in 1910, and Arthur Cumming was Commonwealth (British) champion in 1912. Although Maclurcan may have attended the World's in Davos in 1910, he was not an official competitor. Claude Langley, Ramsey Salmon and Dunbar Poole all visited Davos during the years 1908 to 1913. Salmon had similarly told the local press he was off to Europe to represent Australia in the 1909 world championships, but he did not. [526]

In 1950, The Weekly described Maclurcan as "...a senior judge in world international figure skating..." [527] and a 1957 "In Memoriam" states he was an "...Olympic Games judge in figure skating". He did judge a waltzing championship in Switzerland in which the British Olympic Pair skaters, Muckelt and Page competed (image opposite), but it was not an Olympic or "international" event. Ice dancers did not compete internationally until much later, at the World Championships in 1952; the European Championships in 1954; and the Olympics in 1976. A grandson said in 2014 this had been a family misconception: "I am sure my grandfather would have disapproved of any such misnomer because while he was a man of great achievement, he was notably modest". [547] Maclurcan was one of the permanent judges for all tests and competitions of the Sydney Figure Skating Club since its inception. He was club president for many years, then vice-president and the only honourary life member by 1930. He was also vice-president of the Kosciusko Alpine Club, and claimed to be the first to build a skating rink at the old Kosciusko Hotel.

Maclurcan became the first president of the newly-appointed Council of the National Ice Skating Association of Australia during the 1931 skating season. Claude Langley had been the prime mover in finally joining the rival associations in Victoria and New South Wales. The other NSW board members were Reg Jefferies and Robert Croll, father of Sidney Croll. Victoria was represented by Cyril Macgillicuddy, Frank Mercovich and Jack Gordon [524] The image opposite shows Maclurcan with judges and officials of the inaugural Australian Figure Skating Championship in 1931. The Council finally joined the International Skating Union (ISU) in 1932, although Australia did not contest the World Figure Skating Championships until 1947 when Patricia Molony became the first Australian to compete and Macgillicuddy became Australia's first ISU judge. It has been said that Macgillicuddy and Maclurcan set the direction for the new council of the NISAA, [443] and let there be no doubt that it involved considerable compromise. A system consistent with ISU standards was simply not achieved in either of their lifetimes.

In 1901, the Maclurcan family acquired the lease on the Wentworth Hotel on Church Hill, near Wynyard Square, Sydney. Maclurcan's father, Donald, died in 1903 and Charles became a director in 1916, then hotel manager on Hannah's retirement in 1932. Charles used the flat roof of the hotel for his pioneering experiments in wireless transmission (also see Jack Pike). The Wentworth remained in the Maclurcan family until 1950. [379] Charles published "The Story of the Wentworth Hotel and the Historic Site on Which it is Built" in 1946. The hotel was moved to a different site and taken-over by Sofitel. Donald Maclurcan, eldest son, was president of the Ski Council in 1960, and Chef de Mission and General Manager of the Australian Olympic Winter Team in Squaw Valley, which included the first Australian ice hockey team.

Skating Medals | 1909-12 | Gallery | 1927-31 | 1930 | 1950 | 02 | late-1950s |
St Moritz: 1927-8 | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 |
St Moritz: 1927-8 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
Hotel Wentworth: | Date unknown |



1. All images above where taken by Charles Maclurcan, who had a keen interest in photography. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSAA) hold 9.5mm film which contains at least 5 minutes of footage shot by Charles at St Moritz in 1928. It can be viewed by appointment free of charge at the NFSAA" in Canberra or their Melbourne Access Centre at Federation Square. Title 766730: MACLURCAN HOME MOVIES: ST. MORITZ, 1928, Rack ID: 766730_0005.

2. Gathered for the Olympics and appearing in the images: "WJM" is Winifred J Kenna who Charles married in 1917. "Jack Brown" is John Thomas Brown, brother of hockey player Jimmy Brown. John was the 1939 Australian Dance Champion with Nancy Conner, and later president of the New South Wales and national ice skating associations (now Ice Skating Australia). Others include Hall-of-Famer Howard Nicholson, primary coach of Sonja Henie and a famous ice dancer seen here with his partner, Hilde Rueckert. The first figure skating Olympian, Ulrich Salchow, originator of the salchow jump. Quite a few more.



Leonard Regis MOLLOY MC

(1889 - 1960)

BORN IN 1889 AT KEW IN VICTORIA, the son of Irish-Catholic parents Luke Joseph Molloy (1858– ) and Nora Mary Cahir ( –1911) of Ballarat, where the Goodall family first lived, and later the Darling and Reid districts of New South Wales. [130, 209] Coincidentally, Molloy's father, Luke, was born in Dublin, Ireland, where Dunbar Poole was born. [209] He immigrated to Melbourne on Crusader in 1870 when he was 12 years-old, and married Nora in 1883, probably at Ballarat, when he was 25 years-old. Nora died at 414 Johnston Street, Abbotsford in Melbourne on April 12th, 1911, but in 1923, the Redan Old Scholars Association of Ballarat, unveiled a photographic portrait of her at their inaugural reunion, in honour of her years as Redan school teacher, since it was first opened in 1882. [209] The Redan school was the first of several established by Mother Mary Hilda (1845–1920) of the Irish Loreto Sisters, who had made their Australian foundation at Ballarat in 1874. Mother Mary was principal of St Joseph's primary school in Ballarat from 1877, and she had also opened schools at Portland (1885), where Mireylees Reid was born eleven years later, and at South Melbourne (1891).

Leo Molloy had probably attended St Patricks Eastern Hill or Xavier College at Kew where he was born. He was the same age as Cyril MacGillicuddy, whose uncle Maurice was president of St Patrick's Old Collegians in the 1920s, and probably for some time prior since its foundation in 1911. St Patrick's College in Ballarat, where Molloy's parents had lived, was established in 1893. Cyril and Leo could have met at any one of these three schools but, in any event, their friendship had started early and lasted all their lifetimes, and so too did their passion for ice sports. Together, they eventually took control of Melbourne Glaciarium. Molloy was tall and slim, and the manager of Melbourne Glaciarium for most of its fifty years of operation. His brothers and sisters were Francis Joseph (1887–1966), Wilfred Lawrence (1891–1917), Mary (Molly, May) (1895–1967), Kathleen (1895– ), and Eileen (1899–1956). First-born Gerald John died in 1885 in his first year of infancy. Eileen and Kathleen attended Mother Mary's Loreto Convent at Portland in Victoria, from where they received Grade 1 credits in the Head Mistresses' Association needlework examinations in 1925. Molly and cousin John Cahir lived in Glenferrie Road, Malvern, near to the Reids, [130] and Leo himself later lived in the Caulfield-St Kilda suburbs of Melbourne. A soprano named Molly Molloy sang with Clare Solly in 1922 at the Majestic Picture Theatre in Melbourne. [209]

Eldest brother, Rev Brother Francis Joseph Molloy, was associated with Waverley College in New South Wales (1903), and became manager of St Augustine's Orphanage (1857) in the 1920s, a home for 300 destitute boys at Geelong in Victoria. Both were organised by Christian Brothers, and the original orphange building still exists today as part of St Joseph's College, Newtown. Molloy's brother, Wilfred, was a farm labourer at Riverview at Mirboo in South Gippsland, Victoria, and Lance Sergeant of the 39th Battalion, A Company, AIF. He fought at the battle of Messines Ridge in Belgium (Flanders) with Andy Reid, where he too was killed in action on June 8th, 1917; the day before Reid. He is commemorated on panel 25 of the Menin Gate Memorial in Belgium, near Reid on panel 29, and also on panel 131 of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, near Reid on panel 145. [210-212] The private address on this notice was 9 Chapel Street in Windsor, nearby Presentation College and Christian Brothers College in East St Kilda. [213]

Leo Molloy was a traveling salesman staying at the Hotel Sydney, NSW, when he enlisted as a Private on August 31st, 1914, with 4th Battalion, C Company, AIF. [ 211] It was among the first infantry units raised during the First World War, almost entirely from New South Wales, and within a fortnight of the declaration of war in August 1914. He may have gone to New South Wales to enlist early but, in any event, he sailed for Egypt on Euripides just two months later in October 1914, arriving on December 2nd. His battalion took part in the ANZAC landing on April 25th, 1915, as part of the second and third waves, and his commander, Lieutenant Colonel A J O Thompson, was killed the next day. The battalion took part in the defence of the beachhead at ANZAC, and led the charge at Lone Pine in August, along with the rest of the 1st Brigade. Molloy served at ANZAC until the evacuation in December.

After the withdrawal from Gallipoli, Molloy's battalion returned to Egypt. In March 1916, it sailed for France and the Western Front, where their first major action was at Pozières in the Somme valley in July. Later the battalion fought at Ypres, in Belgium, before returning to the Somme for winter. Lance Boyden, older brother of Reg Boyden, arrived in the 19th Reinforcement of Molloy's battalion, late in 1916. The battalion participated in a short period of mobile operations following the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in early 1917, but spent much of that year fighting in increasingly difficult conditions around Ypres, when Molloy's brother, Wilfred, and Andy Reid were killed. Molloy was promoted to Quartermaster then Honorary Lieutenant around this time. In 1918, his battalion returned to the Somme valley and helped to stop the German spring offensive in March and April. It subsequently participated in the Allies’ great offensive of that year, launched east of Amiens on August 8th, 1918. The advance on this day by British and empire troops was the greatest success in a single day on the Western Front, one that German General Erich Ludendorff described as “the black day of the German Army in this war”. The battalion continued operations until late September 1918.

On October 24th, 1918, Molloy was awarded the Military Cross, one of only twenty-four recommended in his Battalion, "for his valuable services as Quartermaster from 22 September 1917 to 24 February 1918. He has at all times both in and out of the line, carried out his numerous duties with marked ability. By his energy and forethought he succeeded throughout a very difficult period in keeping his Battalion fed, clothed and equipped. His personal supervision and administration contributed largely to the success of the various operations in which his Battalion was engaged." [213] At 11 am on November 11th, 1918, the guns fell silent. The November armistice was followed by the peace treaty of Versailles signed on June 28th, 1919. Over 1,200 of Molloy's Battalion had been killed, and nearly 2,300 wounded. The remainder returned to Australia for demobilisation and discharge between November 1918 and May 1919.

This celebrated ability, to supervise and administer under adversity, found a new purpose at Melbourne Glaciarium. Henry Newman Reid, who was both a professional engineer and a highly-qualified business administrator, was its founder and its inaugural General Manager. Over the years, Reid had been a stock broker; he had sat on the boards of numerous public companies; and he had been involved with the National Institute of company secretaries since inception, including honorary auditor from 1917. Dunbar Poole was a highly-regarded events manager, not a business administrator of public companies, and he did that and ice skating instruction at Melbourne for about a year, before moving on to manage the Sydney Glaciarium when it opened in 1907. Molloy is thought to have been the second manager at Melbourne and, if so, he was replaced briefly by Harold G Jones when the Glaciarium was sold in 1923, or perhaps earlier. Either way, Molloy was rink manager soon after, and he held the position for thirty years or more, through various changes of ownership and control, until the Glaciarium was finally destroyed by fire in 1957. Harold G Jones was possibly Professor Hal Jones, who gave a skating exhibition with figure and speed skater Miss A Abrahams at Melbourne Glaciarium in June 1916. [137]

John Grice, a patron of ice sports, had spent all of 1923 overseas on holiday in Great Britain and Europe. [176] Soon after he left, on March 28th, 1923, the Melbourne Ice Skating & Refrigeration Co (MISRC), owner of the Glaciarium, went into voluntary liquidation. This company was originally established by the Reid family, most of whom had moved to Sydney about five years earlier. The demise of the MISRC was not due to the failure of the ice skating rink, but to the ice storage plant, which suffered a dramatic loss of revenue from £10,000 per annum to £1,500. At the same time, the MISRC had been successfully sued by Lewis Raphael of Brunswick and Melbourne, who had claimed £1,516 /12 /– for damage he alleged had been caused to poultry, owing to defective or careless storage. In April, 1923, the Melbourne courts determined that the presence of mould indicated an absence of reasonable care, and awarded £1,516 damages against the MISRC. The liquidators already had control of the rink complex, and they did not appear in court. [145] This was a significant loss, equivalent to about half the Glaciarium's average annual profits of recent times. The refrigeration plant had been in use for 15 years and, by this time, it required expensive maintenance and parts replacement, which may not have been carried out.

On June 7th, 1923, the Glaciarium property was sold to Cameron Sutherland and Seward Pty Ltd of South Melbourne, for £35,800, or half its value. The original building, plant and machinery had reportedly cost £70,000. The company liabilities at the time amounted to £38,000, and so it was sold by liquidators to break even, at a substantial loss compared to the original investment. This company was involved with farming machinery and equipment sales, and it did not intend to enter the ice rink business. By August 1923, Harold G Jones was rink manager. Grice returned in January 1924 and a few years later, the property was again proposed to be sold. Molloy became secretary of a new ice rink committee, which had been formed from a meeting of ice sports enthusiasts at the Playhouse theatre, nearby the Glaciarium in Aikman Street, on December 15th, 1925. Other members included Professors Cyril MacGillicuddy and Claude Langley; Barney Allen, president of the National Ice Skating Association of Australia; Hector Kendall; goalie Alban de Long; Marjory Peck, a future Victorian women's champion; Kate Gardner and F Turner, who had presented awards at skating carnivals, and who was possibly related to National women's skating champion, Phyllis Turner. Also present were Harry Goldman, Isidor G Beaver, J Telfer and J Williams, perhaps a relative of ice hockey player and drama teacher, Winnie Williams, who staged plays at the Playhouse around that time. Their chief concern was the imminent conversion of the Glaciarium to another form of entertainment, or an altogether different use. They had been promised £40,000 to £45,000 finance to build a new rink at a site in Toorak Road, South Yarra, over which they held an option. [145] At this time, John Goodall was the president of the newly formed National Ice Hockey and Speed Skating Council, and the VIHA secretary was engineer and laundry manager, William Bannerman (1873– ), of Braemar, 132 Toorak Road, South Yarra. [204] The necessary finance of £45,000 was a lot of money but, providing the venture capital was properly secured and managed, it would have presented few problems for the share and stockbrokers of John Goodall & Co.

On September 23rd, 1926, the Glaciarium was again sold, as the Playhouse group had anticipated. It was purchased by the Metropolitan Gas Company for £45,000, after it had been passed-in at auction some months earlier. They had paid 18 percent more than the "fire-sale" price three years earlier, publicly stating the purchase was for a future "sky-scraper" to accommodate their business. However, the lease of their 7-storey Flinders Street building still had 15 years to run, [174] and skyscrapers were not permitted on the south bank of the Yarra River for many years to come. In fact, it was three decades later, in 1967, that the company moved-in to their new brown-brick, twin-towers over the railyards in Flinders Street. South Bank was still tower-less. Formerly the South Melbourne Gas Co, it became the Gas and Fuel Corporation after 1950, and its Flinders Street buildings were subsequently demolished during the Kennett government's term of office, to make way for Federation Square. About three months after the purchase, in January, 1927, Molloy called tenders for repairs to the rink's roof and drainage system and painting of the interior and exterior. At the same time, The Argus newspaper in Melbourne reported: THE GLACIARIUM. New Company Formed. Having obtained from the Metropolitan Gas Company a five years lease of the Glaciarium building in City road, South Melbourne, Mr L R Molloy has formed a new ice skating company, to be known as The Glaciarium Limited. Mr Molloy, who has been manager of the Glaciarium for several seasons, has been engaged as managing director and secretary of the new company for the period of the lease. This season was one of the most successful in the history of the Glaciarium. The season will open in May, and in the interval it is proposed to install new and up to date refrigerating machinery, and to renovate and redecorate the building. [145]

The new rink planned by the Playhouse group was never built. Nor was the proposed new ice plant installed in the leased building. Instead, the new publicly-listed Glaciarium Ltd, formed by Molloy with Cyril MacGillicuddy as chairman of directors, purchased the Melbourne Glaciarium lock, stock and barrel from the gas company on February 8th, 1931, the final year of the lease. This was at the height of the Great Depression, and the purchase price was never disclosed. [145] Harold Luxton, Lord Mayor of Melbourne and new chairman of directors of the gas company, had presided over it. Like Andy Reid, Luxton had been a lieutenant in the Great War, serving in Egypt with the 4th Field Artillery Brigade, Battery 11. This brigade was led by Major Willie Fanning, a cousin of John Goodall's wife, Kathleen, and it also included Lieutenant Claude Grice, a nephew of Sir John Grice. [238] Luxton later transferred to the Royal Air Force and went into action on the Western Front like Andy and Leslie Reid. He was shot down and seriously wounded in 1917 but, unlike Andy, he and these two other Old Melburnian officers had survived the war. [238] All four, in different ways, had helped to complete a task that might never have eventuated had Andy also survived. The Old Melburnian connections and links between these three families had bridged three generations.

The coal-fired boilers at the Glaciarium had been auctioned the year before, and the new electrical refrigerating plant was officially commisioned at half-past 12 o'clock on Thursday, April 14th, 1932. It replaced Reid's original machinery which, incredibly, had been in use for more than 25 years. [145] John Grice died five years later and John Goodall's uncle, Hammond Clegg, the managing director of John Goodall & Co, died the next year, at age 75. Luxton was Lord Mayor of Melbourne for three terms, concluding the year the Glaciarium was sold, but he continued on as a councillor, serving the city for almost a quarter-century between 1919 and 1943. He assisted the Victorian Ice Hockey Association to gain admittance to the Olympic Federation in 1950, after which the feasibility of long-range plans for a touring Australian ice hockey team began to be discussed (see Ken Kennedy). Deteriorating health in the 1950s had forced him into semi-retirement and his son, Lewis, succeeded him as IOC member in Australia, although he remained the elder statesman of the movement. Australia iced its first ever Olympic ice hockey team at the following games held at Squaw Valley in 1960. The officials and all but one player on this team were from the Victorian Ice Hockey League (VIHL). It was coached by former English National League champion, Bud McEachern, who had arrived in Australia in the mid-1950s.

In 1936, Molloy married Alice Maude Walker (1906–1974) in Melbourne, the daughter of Matthew Walker and Maud Youlten. [130] A few months earlier, Alice, Leo, and his sister Molly, had attended the VIHA and NISAA cabaret dance at St Kilda Town Hall on October 11th, 1930, with the Jacksons, Molonys, Mercovichs, MacGillicuddys, Winsome Thackeray, and Kathleen McGill (1903–1986), among others. That night, Molloy, Alban De Long, L Kelty, L Callaway, Cyril MacGillicuddy and NISAA president, Barney Allen, danced a burlesque performance of Tell Me, Pretty Maiden, the runaway hit from Floradora, the first big hit musical of the 20th century, in which "six absurdly dressed men and six equally fantastically-dressed girls took part". The girls were Molloy's future wife, Alice; Elsie Tuck, a graduate of Prahran and Wesley colleges [249]; ice skater and skier, Kathleen McGill; Winsome Thackeray, soon to become the first National women's champion (1933–4); Eileen Devine; Ethel and Lila Austin; Elva Meares; and Marjory Peck, Victorian women's champion that year, and daughter of architect yachtsman, Arthur Peck, who sailed with John Goodall. [165, 214] As it happened, MacGilluddy's sister-in-law, "Goodie", was the youngest daughter of Ada Reeve, the famous star of the original London musical (see Cyril MacGillicuddy).

Leo Molloy died in 1960 at Melbourne at the age of 71, soon after Melbourne Glaciarium had closed for the last time on its fifty-first anniversary, the year after its Golden Jubilee. [130] Glaciarium Ltd was delisted from the Australian Stock Exchange on 24th February, 1960 due to liquidation, but the rink had closed earlier in 1957, and the owners had taken over management of the Saint Moritz Ice Skating Palais in St Kilda from Harry Kleiner. Molloy's wife, Alice, died about February 19th, 1974, and she was buried at Springvale Botanical Cemetery at Clayton, Victoria (RC Monumental Compartment M, R 62). [131]

Leo Regis Molloy was a decorated ANZAC, a veteran of both Gallipoli and the Western Front, who had been promoted to Honorary Lieutenant, and who served for almost the entire period of Australia's involvement in the Great War. He was by all reports an expert administrator and the longest-serving rink manager in Australia, even given Dunbar Poole's huge pioneering contribution in New South Wales, Britain and Canada. Early in Molloy's term, Melbourne Glaciarium was twice sold from underneath him, at the very time that ice sports in Australia were re-inventing themselves. Molloy intervened and soon became the founding Managing Director and Secretary of Glaciarium Ltd, which secured the future of ice sports in Victoria, at the height of the Great Depression. The Melbourne rink had been sold four times during its first quarter-century, three times in the space of a decade, before returning to the control of ice enthusiasts. Yet, through it all, ice sports in Melbourne not only endured; they flourished, nationalised and internationalised.



KATE GARDNER ( – ) Member of the Playhouse group formed in 1925 to address the imminent sale of Melbourne Glaciarium. [145] Daughter of Catherine Forrest and Presbyterian clergyman Rev John Gardner (1809–1899) of Glasgow, Scotland. Her parents arrived in Adelaide in March 1850 and moved to Queenscliff, Victoria, in 1874. Her mother died in 1892 and her father in 1899 at Toorak, Victoria, survived by Kate and two other of their five children. In 1913, Kate was co-founder of K Gardner and Lang, estate agents, of 80 Swanston Street, Melbourne, which became prominent in up-market residential and commercial property in Melbourne. Her partner was Gideon Lang, one of three sons of pastoralist Gideon Scott Lang (1819–1880). Lang and his son, Deon, who followed him into the business, both served as presidents of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV) and were elected Life Members. This company auctioned the Athenæum Club property in Collins Street, Melbourne in 1928, and Coolullah, the South Yarra home of Sir John Grice in 1931. [260] In 1919, the Fraser family bequested their Queenscliff home, Picton, to the Presbyterian church for a memorial to Sir Simon Fraser. It was to be used as a rest home for Presbyterian ministers and their families (see Sir Simon Fraser).

HAROLD " HARRY" GOLDMAN OBE (1871 – 1939) Member of the Playhouse group formed in 1925 to address the imminent sale of Melbourne Glaciarium. [145] Owner of H Goldman Manufacturing Co established about 1900, and located at 394 LaTrobe Street in central Melbourne between 1913 and 1927, after which it relocated to South Yarra. Goldman's specialised in custom-made, high-quality furniture winning several gold medals at international exhibitions in the first quarter of last century. The company fully furnished the Commonwealth Bank (1916) head office building at Martin Place in Sydney, and displayed work at San Francisco's 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, and the 1924-5 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in England. Goldmans had a reputation for church furnishings; it produced numerous notable honour boards for various Melbourne institutions including the RACV, Girl Guides and City of Melbourne; and it manufactured pieces for some high-profile clients, including architect Walter Burley Griffin and his wife, Marion. In 1916, Goldman manufactured the chairs designed by Marion Mahony and Griffin for the dining rooms of Café Australia in Melbourne, developed by the Lucas family. One is held by the Powerhouse Museum. Goldman had also registered designs for "The Westerfield" folding card table and a child's sleeping out cot.

Harry Goldman had been a member of the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures since 1904; a member of its Council since 1914; chairman of its furniture section committee for several years; and a member of its exhibition committee. He was also a member of the Soldier's Industrial Committee, appointed by the Federal government to arrange for the training of about two hundred solldiers in the furniture trade after the first world war. He was president of the Toorak Bowling Club (est 1913) and vice-president of the Victorian branch of the Australian Forest League. Harry and Millie Goldman lived at 57 Armadale Street, Armadale, then the large but unpretentious, Armadale House, at 117 Kooyong Road, Armadale in Melbourne, originally built in 1876 for Scottish-born businessman and politician James Munro, Premier of Victoria between 1890 and 1892 (Victorian Heritage Register H0637). Sir Simon Fraser was a minister in Munro's cabinet (see John Goodall). The Goldman's daughter, Gwen, married Hans Ivor Pincus of Alma Road, St Kilda, in 1932. That same year, the Old Melburnians presented a Gothic-style presidential chair to Melbourne Grammar School, which was manufactured by Goldmans to the design of architect, Clifford L Cummings. [247] Harry Goldman died at Parkville in Melbourne in 1939, and he was made an Officer the Order of the British Empire (Civil) for service to the Jewish community on June 13th, 1981. [56]

FRANCIS JOSEPH MERCOVICH (1898–1967) Member of the Playhouse group formed in 1925 to address the imminent sale of Melbourne Glaciarium. [145] Born in 1898 at North Fitzroy in Melbourne, he was the son of Francis Joseph Mercovich and Ellen O'Keefe. His brother was Thomas Anthony Mercovich (1896–1966) and his sister was Julia Mary Francis Mercovich (1901– ). [264] Frank was often runner-up to Jack Gordon in Victorian figure skating championships in the late-1920s early 1930s. He passed his first class skating test at Melbourne Glaciarium in August 1930. [561] He and Ted Molony were honourary treasurers for the end of season ice skating ball held at Melbourne Glaciarium organised in October that year by the Victorian Ice Skating Association and the National Ice Skating Association of Australia (NISAA). [214]

In 1931, Merkovich was appointed secretary to the first Council of the NISAA and a judge at the first nationally-affiliated Australasian figure skating championships held at Sydney late-August that year. [524] He was also a Victorian representative with Cyril MacGillicuddy, Jack Gordon, Robert Jackson, Winsome Thackeray, Phyllis Turner, Vera Pincott, and Dorothy Tickle. [134] In 1932, he was defeated by "a small margin" in Victorian Open ice-skating championships by Jack Gordon, the 1931 Victorian champion. Mercovich became Australia Men's figure skating champion representing Victoria in 1934 and 1936, when he was in his mid- to late-thirties. The title was not contested in 1935. He was also Victorian champion for 3 years and still secretary of the national association by 1940, the year his daughter Pat was born. [562]

In younger days, Mercovitch played 10 games for the Carlton Football Club, 1918-20, and kicked 11 goals. He was cleared to Melbourne Football Club in 1921, but did not play there. He married Joyce Macbeth, three times professional figure skating champion of the world. They met in 1934 on one of Macbeth's numerous trips to teach at Melbourne Glaciarium during the European summers. She had learnt to skate in Manchester, England, and was a personal friend of olympian, Cecilia Colledge. Frank Mercovich died on 12 October 1967 at Malvern in Victoria when he was 69 years-old [264] survived by Joyce and their four children, Pat, Dennis, Peter and Frank.

Norman Philip JOSEPH

(1890 - 1945)

BORN AT ST KILDA IN VICTORIA ON MARCH 10TH 1890, THE SON OF JEWISH BUSINESSMAN AND HATTER, Philip Joseph (1854– ) and Adelaide Rintel (1862–1916) of St Kilda and South Yarra in Victoria. [221, 222, 223] Joseph was the first honorary secretary and treasurer of the inaugural New South Wales ice hockey association. His appointments were made at a Glaciarium Ice Hockey Club meeting at Sydney in July 1920; organised by Leslie Reid, soon after the Reid family had relocated from Melbourne to Sydney. [2] This club was the forerunner to the Sydney Ice Hockey Club (1921) and the New South Wales Ice Hockey and Speed Skating Council (1923), aka the New South Wales Ice Hockey Association from shortly before 1925. According to his obituary, Joseph became president of the New South Wales Ice Hockey and Speed Skating Association in its start-up years and held the position for 12 years after which he became patron (1934). [419] However, surviving minutes of meetings of the Club- Association refer to him as Secretary-Treasurer for the first few years from 1921.

Joseph was one of three selectors of local and State ice hockey teams in New South Wales, with Leslie Reid and Jack H Pike. All three were elected by the club and its successors in July 1920, May 1921, and again in March 1922; the years leading up to the formation of the first ice hockey and speed skating association in New South Wales. [2] He was also manager of the New South Wales ice hockey team which visited Melbourne in 1925 for the first three of six tests in the annual Goodall Cup competition. This team won the cup with Jim Kendall (captain), Leslie Reid, Jack H Pike, N Turner, T Wells, Geoff Slade, F White, John Kerr (1907–1975), younger brother of Carl Kerr, and rookie goalie J Barnett. [221] Kendall retired after this series, and Reid and Pike were nearing retirement. But they were an attack and defence combination in a league of their own, and this was still one of the most formidable line-ups ever in amateur ice hockey in Australia. The results of four of these six tests are known, and Victoria were easily defeated in every one by three or four goals at a time.

Joseph's father arrived in Melbourne from a British port in July 1879 on the ship Kent. He was 25 years-old and he came alone. [230] His mother, Adelaide, was the daughter of Jewish minister, Rev Moses Rintel (1823–1880), who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, eight years before Rev John Reid, father of Henry Newman Reid. He was the son of Myer Rintel, rabbi of the Jewish community in Edinburgh, and his wife Sara. Rintel migrated to New South Wales in 1844, where he established the Sydney Jewish Academy in Pitt Street. He was called to Melbourne in 1849 to take charge of the newly established Hebrew Congregation in Bourke Street as 'reader' of the religious services, teacher of the children, and shochet. On August 22nd, 1849, he married Elvina, daughter of John Hart. [226] Adelaide, was born in 1862, one of their eight children, and she married Philip Joseph in 1888 in South Yarra, the same year Henry Newman Reid married there. [224] Elvina's brother John was a London-born accountant and secretary to the Shire of Caulfield. Two of his sons, both educated at East St Kilda Grammar School, were Anglican bishop John Stephen Hart (1866–1952) and scientist Thomas Stephen Hart (1871–1960).

The Josephs lived at 24 Charnwood Crescent in St Kilda, but they moved to Coogee during the Great War, a beachside suburb in south-eastern Sydney, New South Wales, where Norman's father operated a Speedwell bicycle shop at Carr Street. Norman's parents had returned to South Yarra by the early 1920s, where Philip owned a factory and shop in Yarra Street which produced blazers and hats. [223] A roller skating rink known as the South Yarra Skating Rink, aka Salon de Luxe, had been located in this street since before 1914. It was named Salon de Luxe around the time that Jimmy Bendrodt established his Imperial Salon de Luxe at Hyde Park in Sydney. Norman's brother, Frank Rintel Joseph (1889– ), lived at Coogee when he enlisted in the 17th Battalion, 18th Reinforcement, at the age of 27. Frank was a commercial traveler like Leo Molloy, his brother's counterpart in Melbourne. Norman did not enlist, but Frank saw action on the Western Front in France and Belgium for the duration of the war from November, 1916. [225]

From its inception in 1920, Joseph played for Sydney's North Shore IHC, founded and captained by Leslie Reid, the youngest son of Henry Newman Reid. This early team also included Reginald Boyden, Henry Hinder, C Gates, H Ives, W Watkins, D and L Cathro and S Green. At the same time, Joseph's brother, Frank, joined Eastern Suburbs IHC, founded and captained by Jim Kendall, [2] and so a few years later he also became one of the foundation members of the first controllling authority for ice hockey in New South Wales. The Josephs had a long association with the Reids, stretching back a century or more, to Edinburgh in Scotland. John Reid, father of Henry, was lecturer for the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society, and he had lectured before notable men at Oxford, including Dean Stanley (1815–1881), the leading liberal theologian of his time in England. [364] He was also a family member of the Earls of Derby to which Lord Stanley of Stanley Cup fame belonged. On the Reid's arrival in Sydney, the ice hockey club was reorganised such that all members attended meetings, and all held equal voting rights. Norm Joseph was four years older than Leslie, a trusted friend and ally, and he was given the responsibility of drafting the first constitution and by-laws of the NSW association when he was in his early thirties. He also drafted the local ice hockey rules, which were adopted on August 11th, 1921.

Tange once wryly remarked, "...Mr Norman Josephs [sic] must have been an extraordinary person to draw up a constitution (the first) in such a short time...," [2] but, of course, Joseph had worked closely with Reid on the constitution articles. They had as a model the organisational structure developed by Reid's father for the Victorian Ice Hockey Association (VIHA) thirteen years earlier in 1908. In fact, from the moment Reid had arrived in Sydney, the organisation and conduct of these meetings of Glaciarium Ice Hockey Club resembled the modern day VIHA. They were the Reid protocols. The one exception was the absence of the position of president for some years, due to the change in direction from Dunbar Poole to a club committee, democratically-elected at the Annual General Meeting, and responsible for day-to-day administration of ice hockey and speed skating. Tange has noted from the association minute books, "... from the date of this meeting, June 22nd 1921, until the last entry on May 23rd 1924, there is only vague reference of Annual General Meetings of the Association... apart from the Secretary-Treasurer Mr N Josephs, no mention of Patron, president (D. Poole) or vice-president." A chairman was elected at each meeting, and these arrangements probably continued until the 1930s, by which time the association structure was firmly entrenched, and Harold Waddell Hoban (1890–1950) became president, a position he held from 1934 until 1946. [2]

The New South Wales association may not credit anyone as its inaugural president, but they do incorrectly credit Hoban as second. Both Tange and the association's first honoured life memberships imply first honours belonged to either Dunbar Poole or Life Member, Carl Kerr (1901–1961). In the days immediately before the New South Wales association was formed, when ice hockey resumed there after the war, Jack Pike was president of Gaciarium Ice Hockey Club, and Poole was club patron. Poole became president in 1921, with Reid as vice, but he was never president of its successor, Sydney Ice Hockey Club, nor the New South Wales Ice Hockey and Speed Skating Council, the first association, which had replaced both clubs by 1923. In fact, Poole had little practical involvement after Reid arrived, and he certainly did not preside over the formation of the first State controlling authority. Although he may have occasionally attended its meetings as Tange suggested, the management committee communicated with him by letter, [2] and he had just taken up a position as a professional skating instructor in Canada (see Dunbar Poole). The administration and federation of ice sports in Sydney had not advanced sufficiently under Poole. He was not a business administrator, but he had also spent the larger part of these years overseas with Ramsay Salmon, learning artistic figures, and pursuing personal ambitions (see Leslie Reid and Mireylees Reid). Reid never used the title of president, perhaps in diplomatic deference to Poole, who had helped train him from the age of ten. More to the point, Reid encouraged others to chair meetings of the management committee, developing an organisational culture that was pointedly different from anything that had preceded it under Poole. Reid was first and foremost a sportsman, and it is doubtful that he had ever aspired to the presidency over Poole. But he had been given a mission and Poole was moved sideways politically. Although Reid shared the chair at meetings, he did assume the responsibilities of a founding president and he was followed by Norm Joseph who retired from the position in 1934, soon after Reid died. [419]

The organisation of this fledgling New South Wales controlling authority was anologous with the structure of a public company, in which the roles of Reid and Joseph were similar to chairman of directors and the all-important company secretary, respectively. The founders of ice sports in Australia were experts at this and, as the first NSW association meeting minutes show, [2] the new club's management committee and office bearers were elected by members in much the same way as a board of directors is elected by shareholders of a public company. Leslie Reid was a qualified accountant with experience in trade insurance, and the financial performance of Sydney Glaciarium was now of critical concern to Melbourne-based investors of Sydney Cold Stores, its publicly-listed management company. Ice sports represented about one-third of the Sydney business, cold storage about two-thirds, and its finances were managed by the company secretary in Melbourne, from inception until about 1923, when Melbourne Glaciarium was sold. Joseph had no need to concern himself with shares or finances but, for all other administrative matters, he had direct access through Leslie to Henry Newman Reid, who had set up the ice sports administrations in Melbourne, and who had been a founding member and honorary auditor of the Victorian Branch of the Australasian Institute of Secretaries (now Chartered Secretaries Australia Ltd). At the time, this organisation was a world leader in training and standards for professional business administrators. Henry Newman Reid lived in Sydney from mid-1917.

In May 1923, shortly before the New South Wales and Victorian associations were federated, Joseph proposed establishment of a second grade in each of the four Sydney ice hockey clubs, to be known as the "reserve grade". [2] It was a response to the need to develop younger players for future senior ice hockey. As a result, senior reserves were formed the next season around a nucleus of Interstate "relay" (substitute) players. This system was first introduced in Victoria at the 1926 Interstate series in Melbourne [129] and 6-men a side with two relays continued at least until 1930, as recorded by Luxton. [205] It may have been introduced at an earlier Interstate series held in New South Wales, a year or two prior, but the Melbourne series is the first on record. Joseph's proposal allowed the selectors of the four Sydney-based clubs to determine the reserve grade roster, on the condition that recognised senior players did not compete in reserve grade matches. This system lasted well into the 1950s. [2] Joseph was the association gear steward and he paid approved gratuities to rink staff. He was also responsible for maintenance of the first NSW rule book, coordination of some of the first referees and rule changes in Australia, and the design and production of the first NSW association badge in 1923, for players and officials of Interstate teams. [2]

Norm Joseph was the first secretary-treasurer of the first New South Wales ice hockey association and its second president after Leslie Reid. Joseph and Reid played key roles with the Victorian administrators in establishing the New South Wales Association during the early 1920s. They transformed organised ice hockey in New South Wales, and with the VIHA in Melbourne, founded the first Australian federation of ice hockey and speed skating associations in 1923. They developed the first association constitution, rules and reserve-grade structures, which ensured the ongoing supply of new senior players in New South Wales and Victoria. Joseph was also an ice hockey player for a few years until he reached retirement age in the early-1920s; an active participant representing New South Wales as selector and manager of interstate teams; and one of handful of pioneering ice sports administrators in Australia. It was through his hard-working administrative effort that Leslie Reid, Jim Kendall, Doc Murphy and others, were able to implement the New South Wales components of a National ice sports agenda. At the time of his death, Joseph had been president of the New South Wales Australian National Football League, a life member of the Coogee Surf Life-Saving Club; a member of the New South Wales Sports Club (1896 – 2013); and the Commercial Travellers Association (CTA). He was president of the Australian Rules League for 10 years. Joseph was made the second honoured Life Member of the NSW Ice Hockey Association in 1934, one year after Dunbar Poole. [419] He had retired as president of the NSW Association that year. Norman Philip Joseph died unmarried at the age of 55 at Sydney, New South Wales, on 24 December 1945.

REV MOSES RINTEL (1823 – 1880), maternal grandfather of Norm Joseph, was the son of Myer Rintel, a native of Poland and rabbi of the Jewish community in Edinburgh, Scotland, from before 1819. He was educated in Scotland and London and was authorized by Rabbi Solomon Herschell, chief rabbi of London, to officiate as a shochet (slaughterman for kosher food) and minister. His first post was in Brighton, England, before he immigrated to Australia in 1844, where he established the Jewish Academy in Sydney, then became the first Melbourne Hebrew Congregation clergyman. After many disputes, Rintel resigned from the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation in 1857 and established the Mikveh Israel Melbourne Synagogue at the eastern end of the city. The second congregation in size and status, it received a grant of land from the government and built a synagogue at the corner of Exhibition Street and Little Lonsdale Street. In 1877, the congregation dedicated a new synagogue in Albert Street, East Melbourne. Though the East Melbourne Synagogue was known as 'Rintel's Shool', it was many years before he received a salary for his pastoral work. His marriage and his family connexions brought him a small private income which enabled him to be financially independent. He was trustee, secretary and minister of the synagogue's Board of Management and, while officiating at the congregation as reader, opened an associated school for Jewish boys. Rintel helped to establish the first authorized rabbinical court (Beth Din) in the British Empire outside London and eventually became its chairman. In 1868 after a dispute with the rabbi of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, the chief rabbi named Rintel senior minister of the Melbourne Hebrew community. Rintel's career was marked by endless quarrels with his community about proselytes and the children of mixed marriages. He was active in communal and philanthropic affairs and was a distinguished Freemason. Well known throughout Victoria, he died on May 9th, 1880 of tuberculosis, from which he had suffered for many years. He was survived by his wife and eight children and left an estate valued at £3,831. [226] Moses Rintel was a steadfast upholder of Orthodox Judaism and was widely esteemed in the Australian colonies. He published two sermons, one on Yom Kippur (Melbourne, 1859), which are among the earliest Jewish publications in Australia.

Rintel's synagogues | 1841 on | South Yarra Skating Rink | c.1914 |

Historical notes:
[1] The Australian brand "Speedwell" had its beginnings with Charles Bennett who was an accomplished bike racer on pennyfathings and the Intercolonial Champion of Australia in the days before Australia existed as a nation. In 1882, he first started to import and sell pennyfarthings from Britain. In the early days of the twentieth century he began to manufacture bikes under the Speedwell brand name. Within the next few years Speedwell became the best known bicycle brand in New South Wales. Speedwell was primarily a mass market manufacturer of bicycles. At the top of their range though were high quality racing machines. The most famous rider of Speedwell bikes was "Dunc" Gray who won Australia's first cycling Gold Medal in the 1000m time trail at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games. The bike that he rode to the Gold medal is now on display at the "Dunc" Gray Velodrome in Sydney Australia.

[2] Catherine Reid, a cousin of Henry Newman Reid, left her Balwyn estate "Larino" to Frances Barkman (1885-1946) who initiated a home there in 1939 for thirty-two Jewish refugee children whose parents were thought to have little chance of getting away from the ever-worsening, even life-threatening, persecution of Nazi Germany.

[3] Peter Rintel was manager of the temporary ice rink at Ballarat in Victoria established in 1970 by the Burley family, and team manager of three Australian World Championship ice hockey squads in 1986–7, 1987–8 and 1988–9. [7] His wife, Liz, was a national figure skating judge and their son, James Rintel, competed in the 1988–9 ice hockey World Championship.

CARL O VILBAD CARLSON KERR (1901 – 1961) Third Honoured Life Member of the New South Wales Ice Hockey Association in 1935, the year after Norm Joseph. He was born in Sydney in 1901, the eldest son of John Alexander Kerr and Annie Sophia Carlson, who had married at Sydney in 1899. Carl played for Western Suburbs IHC, captained by Jim Pike since its inception in 1921. In 1926, at Paddington, NSW, he married Mabel T Boyce, the daughter of Taree solocitor, Charles Macleay Boyce. Her father was the son of newspaper proprietor and Taree mayor, Charles Boyce (1835–1917). Carl's younger brother, John Alexander Kerr (1907–1975), was born at Glebe, and he had also played for Western Suburbs since its inception. He married Dorothy Edna Lindbergh at Sydney in 1841. The Kerr brothers had two sisters, Annie Sophia and Jennie. [227]
HAROLD WADDELL HOBAN (1890 – 1950) Born at Newtown, NSW in 1890 to parents Daniel James Hoban (bef 1872–1932) and Jane. His father was Sergeant of 16th Railway Company, 1917-18. [85] At the age of 14, Harold was among the first patrons to skate on the opening night of Reid's Adelaide Glaciarium Ice Palace in 1904. In 1921, he married Alma I Wormald (1903- ), daughter of George and Margaret of Newtown, in the Sutherland district of NSW. [81] He lived at North Sydney and became the second president of the NSW Ice Hockey and Speed Skating Council between 1934–46. In 1941, he was awarded Life Membership of the NSW Ice Hockey Association. He donated the Hoban Trophy for skating (and/or hockey) which was contested in NSW during the Second World War and he retired as president in 1946, the year Norm Joseph died. Hoban died at Chatswood, NSW in 1950 at age 60. [2, 81] His daughter Margaret was one of the first recipients of the S R Croll Award. She achieved Gold Medal skating standard, became an International ice skating judge with ISU, served as president of the NSW Ice Skating Association, and was made an Honorary Life Member. The NSWISA Margaret Joynton-Smith Trophy is named in her honour. She married Jeffrey Joynton-Smith AM MBE (1925-1991) in 1954. He became General Manager of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (AETT) and he was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE), then a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1985 for service to the performing arts. [81]

Jack PIKE

(1890 - 1961)

BORN JOHN HERBERT ARTHUR PIKE IN 1890 AT RYDE in Sydney, the son of John Francis Pike (1860 – 1933) of Hobart Tasmania, and Clara Eliza Annie Archer (1862 – 1937), the second daughter of Captain Archer of Melbourne. The family moved to Hobart, where Pike was educated at his father's school in Macquarie Street. An uncle in Launceston was a doctor and another, Justice H. Pike, was a well-known Sydney barrister who later became a Land Court judge. Pike returned to Sydney where he worked as a draftsman for the Public Works Department in Bridge Street. He was a New South Wales representative player in the historic, first ever interstate ice hockey series against Victoria at Melbourne in 1909, and also an amateur wireless inventor and experimeter who came to prominence in the field in 1910 when he was just 20 years-old.

The first ever Goodall Cup was a best of three series won by Victoria, 1-2, 1-0, 6-1. New South Wales won the first match and proved to be a brilliant, very fast side. The Victorians, on the other hand, were very light by comparison but still had the advantage of a greater knowledge in actual play and the science of the game. The press reported it this way: It was generally supposed that the New South Wales strength would be overcome by Victorian skill; but from the first moment the visitors put their heads down, they soon carried the Victorians off their feet, with the scores at the interval being New South Wales 1 goal to 0, hit by Norm Ducker, the first captain of New South Wales. Shortly after the resumption of play, Turnbull got a second goal for New South Wales, and Victoria was only able to reduce the tally by one goal before time was called. For the winners Lane (in goal), Cuthbertson, and Ducker showed excellent form; for Victoria Andy Reid stood out as best man and all the remaining members made capital play at one time or another, more often than not a bump from a big New South Welshman brought a fine run to sharp termination.

By 1920, Pike [281, 282] had become the first president and captain of Sydney Glaciarium Ice Hockey Club and a selector of local and State ice hockey teams with Leslie Reid and Norm Joseph, elected by the club and its successors in July 1920, May 1921, and again in March 1922. [2] He was succeeded as club president by Dunbar Poole for a year in 1921, but he remained a key organiser in the earliest administrations of NSW ice hockey for many years. He was founder and Captain of Western Suburbs IHC in 1921, when Leslie Reid and Jim Kendall became founding captains of North Shore and Eastern Suburbs respectively. He was also a key selector of NSW State teams from the early 1920s, at the start of the long period of NSW dominance of the Goodall Cup, during which time he shared the captaincy with Kendall and Reid. When hockey resumed after the Great War, Pike invariably played centre in State teams, with Leslie Reid at cover-point (defence), and Jim Kendall at point (defence). His last game on record was the 1928 Goodall Cup held in Melbourne, by which time he was at least 36 years-old. [132] New South Wales defeated Victoria in the first and third test, and tied the second. The final results were NSW 2–1, 4–4, 4–0. [218] He returned to local club hockey for at least one game in 1930.

Pike was also one of Sydney's oldest amateur wireless experimenters at Arncliffe from about 1908, then Greenwich on Sydney's North Shore. He had communicated with ships as early as February 1910 when he was in constant contact with HMS Powerful steaming in the Tasman Sea. This was the first Trans-Tasman radio transmission and was widely discussed in naval circles at the time. It earned Pike a trip to America as a wireless operator on a passenger ship. He received radio messages from New York as early as 1926, on a special super hetrodyne set designed for the New York wavelength. [228] There were wireless experimenters in most states of Australia from about 1897, very soon after Marconi's demonstrations in London.

The PMG had granted J H A Pike an Experimental Licence by August 1911 (4a XJP J.H.A. Pike Arncliffe, Sydney). Charles Maclurcan (1889–1957) also held an experimental license at this time (10 XDM Maclurcan & Lane Hotel Wentworth, Sydney). Some "transmitters", as they were called, requested specific call signs, and Maclurcan, a leading transmitter, obtained X2CM in the 1920s. [380] Maclurcan was an electrical engineer and a Director of the Wentworth Hotel in 1916 on Church Hill, near Wynyard Square, Sydney, which was operated by his mother Hannah Maclurcan. Charles used the flat roof of the hotel for his pioneering experiments in wireless transmission. [379] His brother-in-law and business partner, Cyril Lane, was also a player on the first team with Pike (1909 team photo opposite).

Jack Pike was likely the most dominant force in the first years of ice hockey in New South Wales, from inception until well into the 1920s. By 1928, in his late-thirties, he was still reportedly one of the best players in the New South Wales team, yet one of the first to ever play ice hockey in Sydney. [281, 282] He had scored 29 Goodall Cup goals for New South Wales, the highest of any state player in Australia between the wars. Pike, Leslie Reid and Jim Kendall were largely responsible for the transformation of New South Wales ice hockey from the early 1920s. Jack Pike died in 1961 at Chatswood NSW. He was survived by his wife Mary Leila Alphen whom he had married in 1912 and three children, Elizabeth, Phillip and Malcolm.


Images | 1910 |

Isidor George BEAVER

(1859 - 1934)

BORN IN MANCHESTER ENGLAND in December 1859, he was a recreational skater and patron of Victorian ice sports from inception in Melbourne until his death at the age of 75. He was a partner in the architectural practice of Wright Reed and Beaver in Adelaide. In 1890 the practice opened an office in Melbourne for construction of the National Mutual Life Buildings at the south-west corner of Collins and Queen Streets. At eight stories in height, it was one of the 19th century "skyscrapers" that sprouted in the land boom period. Better known as Goode House, today it is the home of the Bank of New Zealand Australia.

Beaver went to Melbourne to supervise the construction and remained there. He was the namesake of the Beaver Ice Hockey Club (pictured left), one of the original four ice hockey teams in Australia formed in 1908 at Melbourne Glaciarium. In 1915, he formed the architectural practice Beaver and Purnell with Arthur William Purnell. Rather appropriately, this practice designed the Wattle Path Palais de Danse and Café in 1922 in which Harry Kleiner opened the Streets of Paris dance salon a decade later. In 1933 it was home to Efftee Film Productions operated by its owner, film producer Francis William Thring Sr, until Kleiner took it over a second time in 1938, transforming it into the St Kilda icon still fondly remembered by many: the St Moritz Ice Skating Rink on the Upper Esplanade St Kilda.

Beaver was a member of the Playhouse Group formed in 1925 whose chief concern was the imminent conversion of the Glaciarium to another form of entertainment, or an altogether different use. He became a founding director of the company that leased the Glaciarium in 1926 with Leo Molloy; Cyril Macgillicuddy; Hector Kendall, husband of Victoria's second state women's ice hockey captain, Madge Morris; F G Turner; Barney Allen; and Arthur Outhwaite, managing director of Perpetual Trustees and husband of illustrator Ida Outhwaite. [543] Beaver was president of the National Ice Skating Association of Australia in 1928, perhaps longer, [544] president of the Victorian Ice Skating Association in 1931, and also a long-time member of the Melbourne Hunt Club, founded by George Watson in 1853 on the Mornington Peninsula.


Part III — Next Wave

© 2007 - 2013 Ross Carpenter B Arch (RMIT) M Des (Urban Design) ARAIA.
All Rights Reserved. Original Research Nov 2007.

Reproduction prohibited without prior written permission of the author except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

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