MARTIN, Carol Patrick

ST KILDA ROAD IS SHINY BLACK, wet as the moat I approach and the water cascade of the mouse-hole entry of Roy Grounds' masterful bluestone gallery. The crowds are here for the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces blockbuster. Selfie-seeking fans drawn by arguably the most famous painter in history, and the macabre cabinet of trophies to his torment. There is no better place in the world to exhibit Van Gogh and the Seasons, but I have come to see three lesser-known paintings by an Australian who worked in England and Ireland for 35 years from the age of 24.

Born a short distance north in Fitzroy, Max Martin took art lessons from a very young age, exhibited his first known work in 1912, then followed the artists' trail to London. I take the trail to Level 2, where I am reminded how this painting that now hangs before me in Gallery 7 took the 1922 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition by storm. The man staring back at me with his hand on the mantle is in his thirties, his wife seated on the left with their young daughter in-between. Their son, still one year away, was destined to become an ice hockey player.

Born July 1st 1923 in London, Carol Martin played at Wembley, making the Shamrocks team when he was 14 during the first years of junior hockey in England. By the time war broke, he had graduated to the Wembley Cubs at the Wembley Empire Pool rink (Wembley Arena) in the former English Junior Hockey League. Ex-NHL netminder Clint Benedict ran the junior hockey program there, followed later by Wembley Lions favourite, Lou Bates. The Wembley Cubs were the curtain raiser to the National League games of Wembley's Lions and Monarchs.

War interrupted Martin's budding senior hockey career, which he spent working as an attendant in the operating theatre of Charing Cross Hospital. After the war, his opportunities severely limited in the Canadian-dominated ENL, he found a senior spot in the Wembley Terriers in the new Southern Intermediate League. Captained by British national team player and Hall-of-Famer, Johnny Murray, The Terriers competed against Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Streatham Royals, Harringay Hornets, Royal Air Force, Richmond Ambassadors, Sussex and Southampton Vikings.

In 1948, his father moved back to Australia and settled the family at Victor Harbor in Adelaide, but not before he looked in on Melbourne Glaciarium. There he met Stan Gray, manager of the rebel Victorian Ice Hockey League comprised of the Black Hawks, Golden Bears, Wild Cats and the White Knights. Gray offered Martin a fortnight tryout with a team in July 1948, and the next year on March 22nd he signed Martin to captain the White Knights, the League's fourth club.

Martin moved to Eltham, 25km north-east of Melbourne, where his father had once painted, home to the artists colony, Montsalvat. He continued to work as an operating theatre attendant at St Vincent's Hospital, while his Club played 4 games of its 10-round schedule over 2 months, and lost them all: Blackhawks 5-1, Wildcats 6-0, Golden Bears 7-1, Wildcats 6-0. The Knights folded, the only club to be founded and disbanded during the three-year existence of the breakaway League.

"Growth in the last two years has been beyond expectations," he wrote in an April 1949 article for a London ice hockey mag. "Playing standard improved and general conditions of the game are of a very high standard, such as organisation, amenities and playing conditions". [1] In 1950 at 26, Martin joined the Raiders in defense, winning the VIHL premiership, the Gange Trophy, in the Club's inaugural season. It was the end of the VIHL, but the Raiders went on to win four more consecutive premiership titles in the VIHA.

Considered by some as the most underrated player of the star-studded Club, Martin went about his game quietly, using the grounding gained at Wembley to cover up openings left by the more spectacular, but less secure play of teammates. In the 1955 season, at age 32, he was among the state's Top 20 scorers on 8 goals, 1 assist from defence. He also played with the "Internationals" in various games against the Australians and, when the Raiders merged with Hakoah, he finished his playing career there, except for a season with the Demons. He never won a Goodall Cup.

A fine illustrator and cartoonist, Carol Martin designed the cover of the 1954 Goodall Cup program, and many of his works were accepted by leading Australian magazines and papers.