In 1879 , this intriguing Shou Lao god of longevity riding a deer figurine was discovered wedged in the roots of a banyan tree at Doctor's Gully, Palmerston, Port Darwin, Northern Territory, by a gang of workmen making a road. A 2009 email about the statuette was recently dug up in this blog's files .
The man in charge of the workmen , a Mr Strawbridge, is said to have pocketed the find .
Sydney's Powerhouse Museum said the figurine was bought from Strawbridge by Thomas Worsnop, Adelaide's Town Clerk , for five guineas.
In l888, the curator of the Technological Museum in Sydney (later Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences) wrote to various bodies exhibiting at the Centennial International Exhibition, seeking donations of material for the Museum. In response, the South Australian Commissioner sent a plaster cast of the statuette.
After Worsnop's death there was an unsuccessful attempt to sell the figure to the South Australian Museum. Later the figure was placed by Worsnop's daughters on loan to the Art Gallery of South Australia, (apparently in the 1930s) but was withdrawn during WWII for fear of Japanese bombing raids.
The figure passed by descent to Mrs May Krogman, who offered it to the Australian Museum early in 1950. The curator at the Australian Museum suggested that it belonged in the Technological Museum and was purchased by that museum for 10 pounds.
John Wade (a former Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences curator) speculated that the most likely explanation for it's presence in Australia was that it came with Macassan fishermen engaged in the trepang trade with China.
Later comments on the office file by Claire Roberts ,Powerhouse Museum Curator, following discussion with Margaret Clinch (13/2/1996) of the Northern Territory Historical Society, suggest that the figurine,carved from pinite, was more likely to have been deposited in the tree some years before discovery.
The Macassan connection , it was claimed , was unlikely because trepangers did not usually come to Doctor's Gully / Darwin, preferring instead another area of the Northern Territory. Margaret Clinch felt the figurine was more likely left by local Chinese people already in Australia.
There were large Chinese gardens at Doctor's Gully which supplied the community, Darwin once described as a Chinese town .
In the l980s, the ALP Leader of the Opposition, Jon Isaacs, called for the figurine to be returned to Darwin , being part of its past .
