Semaphore History

Welcome, comrades, to the Semaphore Workers Club, beachside bastion of the Labor movement.

Once it was the meeting place for bosses and shipping agents when Port Adelaide was a bustling commercial centre.

Back then the billiard table was the centre of the social scene as wealthy merchants kept an eye out for passing trade.

Now it’s union organisers and workers who call in for a quick round of the table.

At the turn of the century this place with its pressed metal ceiling and leather-bound benches was home to the local Yacht Squadron and later the exclusive Semaphore Club.

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Does anyone know if this Honour Roll still exists and its location and any information about the letter that came with it in an email from Darren and Naomi Lundberg?

“I have this postcard sent to my grandfather, who was in the 48th Battalion in World War I.

“We are looking for some more info, and there is a letter on the back, which we are hoping you may be able to give us some more information on either whether this board still exists, or who the person was that sent it.

“Hope you can help.”

Regards
Naomi

If you can help, email us.

When South Australian Premier Mike Rann attended the ANZAC Light on the Water Tribute to the lost crew of HMAS Sydney on ANZAC Eve, Tony Iles met him on arrival.

Tony was one of 70,000 fifteen to seventeen year old boys who passed through the merchant navy training vessel Vindicatrix at Sharpness in the UK between 1939 and 1966.

There on the picturesque Sharpness to Gloucester canal they did their basic training before going to sea.

Sadly, in World War Two many of the boys were on vessels torpedoed by German submarines and sent to a watery grave not long after finishing their training.

Tony is “Skipper” of the South Australian branch of the Vindicatrix Association.

About 2700 former “Vindiboys” belong to Vindicatrix Association branches in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The South Australian branch has regular meetings at the Seafarers Centre in Port Adelaide and is the only one where wives have equal status with the former merchant seamen.

Activities of the Australian branches include volunteer work, participation in a range of ANZAC commemorations, reunions, social functions, Sea Sunday and soon the newly recognised Australian Merchant Navy Day on September 3.

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The History Trust invites you to be a part of SA History Week this year from May 16 to 25.

Are you a local history group or museum, or the custodians of one of our wonderful heritage buildings and sites like the Maritime Museum where our colourful ship’s figurehead reflects some of our maritime history.

Do you have a collection to share?

Do you have a story to tell or places to explore?

Involvement in SA History Week is a perfect opportunity to promote what you do, or try out something new, and enjoy the benefits that come with being part of a State-wide event.

Click here for details of how to participate in SA History Week.

An international visitor to our website from Rhyl in North Wales, Peter Trehearn, has a number of old photographs of Warrinilla and is keen to link up with Semaphore descendants of people in them.

Can anyone tell us if the car in the picture is Dr Bollen’s De Dion Bouton, the first motor car in Semaphore?

And Margaret Ann Jones and Erina Bollen are shown here perhaps dressed up for a wedding or just your average Semaphore weekday.

We will keep in touch with Peter and post more pictures as we receive them and try to help in his search for descendants.

The Semaphore Signal Station in 1877. The Pilot is seated at the end of the wall and Signalman William Uden is leaning on the post.

In the enclosure is the old wooden shack in which the pilots on night duty slept.

The two-storey house was owned by Richard Jagoe, the shipping reporter.

The Time Ball tower on the extreme left was completed by December 1874 and the time service began on August 2 1875.

• State Library of South Australia image B2408.

Photograph of the same scene today by John Williams

Newspaper report

December 9, 1929

“Semaphore is to have one of the most up to date “talkie” theatres in the Commonwealth and the ceremony of opening it will be performed by the Mayor of Port Adelaide tonight.

“It occupies an admirable position at Semaphore, immediately facing the local railway station, fronting the tramline and being within a stone’s throw of the jetty.

“The “talkies” have been installed by the Radio Corporation of America, the plant being of the latest and most complete character.

“The theatre is designed to seat 1,000 people and an admirable view of the stage can be obtained from every part of the auditorium.

“The seats are upholstered in leather.

“The Ozone Company takes great pride in the fact that everything used in the construction of the theatre is of local manufacture.”

The South Australian Governor George Grey opened the building in 1884 as the Semaphore Institute. Today it houses our community library with the interior décor of the Ozone Cinema preserved.

The first film demonstration in the Institute took place as early as 1896.

The building then became the Semaphore Town Hall and it was used by early picture show proprietors such as Miragraph Pictures, The People’s Picture Company, which screened there on Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons.

By 1929 the building was showing its age and the Ozone Company agreed to spend £10,000 on converting it to a cinema.

From a story by Colin Flint in Kino, the journal of the Australian Theatre Historical Society.

Want to sit where Elvis Presley sat on the Ferris Wheel on the foreshore at Semaphore when making the 1964 movie, Roustabout?

Anybody who saw the movie would know it was carriage number 2.

The original seats were sold off long ago, but the Ferris wheel is definitely the one from the movie and you can still sit in number 2.

You’ll find bargain-priced Roustabout DVDs on eBay.

The purple shading shows the Semaphore Historic Walk.

On the opening day of the Palais on Semaphore Beach in 1922 two-thirds of the people of Adelaide flocked to the event.

For the next 45 years it was a landmark destination for city and country South Australians and at various times housed a tea room, bathing house and a dance hall and for many years the Palais Ballroom featured big bands and functions.

In the late 1950s many local bands played at dances on Saturday nights including the famous Penny Rocketts

In the late 1960s the Semaphore Surf Lifesaving Club occupied the building, but after 1981 the Palais fell into disrepair. A fire in 1994 gutted the once majestic icon. Restoration began in 1996 and took 18 months to complete.

Today the Palais has been restored to its former glory and is once again a spectacular tourist attraction as well as an integral part of the local entertainment and hospitality scene.