Darwin resident, Jo Brandt, displays a batch of Normeys she recently made as a special treat for morning tea at the bespoke Nightcliff Uniting Church Op Shop. Made from sultanas, raisins, almonds and walnuts, they look like rumballs, and are bedded in coconut . Ms Brandt was raised on a farm at Irymple in Sunraysia and says Normeys were popular throughout the district. On being shown old sheet music from the Little Darwin Collection which mentioned Normeys, she set to and made some of the rare treat.
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There was a time in Australia's history when confectionery with the “grotesque name” of Normeys was all the go . It was made from dried fruit from the Sunraysia region and pushed by the dynamic entrepreneur , C.J. De Garis , Director of Publicity for the Australian Dried Fruit Association, Mildura, Victoria . With a flair for publicity and full of big ideas , "Jack" De Garis pushed the sale of dried fruit , including “Good Little Normey Lolly” through advertisements , film , sheet music, cook books and stunts . As far back as l920 he ran a full page advertisement in a magazine extolling the advantages of regular consumption of dried fruit and Little Normeys, the latter , he urged, should be kept on the office desk and become a habit The advertisement claimed “Sun-Raysed” dried fruit enhanced the physical and mental capacity of consumers .
One “Big Stunt” De Garis pulled was a contest which in l920 had a one thousand pound , $2000 dollar, first prize, a large amount of money in those days .It was won by an Adelaide girl , the money handed over in the Adelaide Town Hall to a large audience at which the Sun- Raysed film was screened . As part of the energetic drive to get the public to eat more dried fruit, there were exhibits at important shows . Large amounts of dried fruit and The Good Little Normeys were sold at the Melbourne Royal Show . Using dried fruit , show cases were packed in designs of a map of Australia and the Australian coat of arms . De Garis was also an aviator and used the sky to advertise SUN-RAYSED , see below ,which later changed to the regional name, Sunraysia . He also founded the provincial newspaper, The Sunraysia Daily , with a large staff , for which he wrote, got involved in land development in Victoria and WA , hoped to make millions through oil exploration , dabbled in the theatre .
Unfortunately, the lolly, reduced to just being called Normeys, struck a problem. If kept in hot and damp conditions for any length of time , a small grub appeared. Querulous growers began to criticise and attack De Garis when market conditions were bad . One asked why he called the confectionery The Good Little Normey. He replied because it made the questioner and others ask what were Normeys, sold for one shilling (10cents) in half pound packs . De Garis said the confectionery became so popular that every poor unfortunate boy or man , whose name was Norman , and who came into public notice, was called The Good Little Normey. This, he said , had applied to world famous men such as Norman Brookes , the Australian tennis wizard, Norman Ross ,the world’s champion swimmer and artist Norman Lindsay, whose pictures of nude women invariably caused controversy.
De Garis got into financial difficulties and faked his own suicide by drowning in Port Phillip on January 1925, leaving behind about 70 farewell letters . He was apprehended soon after on a boat bound for New Zealand . The following year , with debts amounting to $840,000 , he gassed himself . In his autobiographical novel Victories of Failure: A Business Romance , written under the pseudonym of K.J. Rogers, he dedicated the book in memory of his mother and his second wife and former secretary ,Violet May De Garis, of whom he said her brightness shone most resplendently in “THE DARKEST DAYS”- an indication of his deep depression .
FRUITY UPDATE : Tennis ace Novak Djokovic took home a lot of “lolly” and the Norman Brookes Trophy after his latest triumph at the Australian Open . As pointed out earlier in this post, Brookes , like so many other Normans ,was called Normey because of the successful Good Little Normeys campaign.
