Just received in a welcome food parcel is the latest Josef Lebovic Gallery catalogue , the ears decorated with a Lionel Lindsay black cat and an early Thursday Island pearl diving scene. Midst the numerous items of great interest is a l919 Sydney official notice about the killer Spanish Flu with instructions on how to cope with the situation and attract help .
By Peter Simon
There is so much of personal interest in the list that I wonder if Josef would accept a cheque drawn on the Bank of Nigeria to cover my purchases .
Several items relating to Rosaleen Norton , the notorious Kiwi witch of Sydney's Kings Cross , an artist, model and journalist , brought back teenage memories of the time I worked on The Sun as a copy boy and then a cadet reporter in the l950s .
At times, I and callow mates frequented Kings Cross coffee lounges , some of which sported some of her demonic drawings on the wall . I was in the Arabian one night when wild eyed Rosaleen reeled in and out .
There is an 1889 watercolour and pencil of Townsville, a circa 1880 lithograph of the Queensland Gympie gold mining area , including the fact that Gympie had been known as Nashville ( sounds like Townsville, named after Towns) after James Nash , who discovered gold there in 1867, later changing to an Aboriginal derived name .
In the form of a carte-de-visite is a circa 1875 albumen paper photograph , by a Brisbane photographic company , of Sir William Wellington Cairns, governor of Queensland from 1875-1877, later governor of South Australia for only eight weeks , retiring due to ill health .
The theatrical boxer Snowy Baker , about whom I had done research in connection with a colourful Northern Territory identity and other matters , features in this beaut catalogue . There is an American Barnum and Bailey Travelling Circus poster ; missionary period photographs from the Chinese Boxer Rebellion; an 1889 presentation copy by songwriter Frederick J. Davis of Oceanus , an album of songs, with a lithograph photo of Dame Nellie Melba on the front ; a pen and ink entitled What Makes A Film Censor Wild ? by artist , critic , gallery director and art historian Allan McCulloch , who wrote the Encyclopedia of Australian Art , a battered copy of which is nearby .
One of the few women photographers to operate in Sydney during WWll, Margaret Michaelis , is represented in the collection by two circa l940 photos , Young Man With a Stopwatch , $2950. Born in Austria, she emigrated to Australia in 1939 and a year later opened her own studio . During the next 12 years she specialised in portraiture and dance photography . Her clients included European Jewish and also many in the arts .
