I'm in Adelaide for a conference.
When Arthur Conan Doyle visited Australia in 1920 to lecture on spiritualism, he stayed at the Grand Central Hotel, which was located on the corner of Rundle Street & Pulteney Street. I've been spending quite a bit of time lately digesting ACD's book describing that visit to Australia (and NZ), titled 'The Wanderings of a Spiritualist' and published in 1921 (https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1307001h.html ).
In Adelaide, there is a plaque mounted to commemorate the fact that ACD and his family stayed at the Grand Central Hotel. I knew this because of the wonderful Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia web page that lists "all" known Doylean plaques ( https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Plaques ) including Australian plaques in Adelaide and Sydney. The text on the ACD Encyclopedia page notes that the plaque was "unveiled in 1995 and 2004" - what does this mean?
There's just one thing though - the Grand Central Hotel on the corner of Rundle & Pulteney Streets was demolished in 1975-76 "to make way for the multi-story carpark". Certainly a fall from grace for that particular plot of land, and the carpark remains standing on that site almost 50 years later. It is interesting to note that Mark Twain also stayed at the hotel on his visit to Adelaide.
Left: BEFORE - The Grand Central Hotel. Right: AFTER - A multi-level car park with a Hungry Jacks fast food store on street level (the building won an award for design according to a plaque by the elevators...).
So the moment I arrived I beat a (jet-lagged) path to the historical carpark to inspect it a take some photos. The plaque took me a moment to find. It is mounted on one of the light blue vertical girders (visible above on the corner) at eye height, close to the edge of the street (rather than on the wall of the building itself.
Transcription of plaque
The Case of the Wandering Spirit
Arthur Conan Doyle in Australia
On the vast curve of an Adelaide beach
Doyle reflects that conjuring
Sherlock back from the grave
Was elementary work
Real death is harder to persuade
Though it lets through whispers
And exposes the occasional ghost
The afterlife theory he tours
Packs curious thousands into lecture halls
But his proof of miracles is not enough
They can't connect the clues
And without Holmes himself
There to declare the mystery solved
The case remains open
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), creator of Sherlock Holmes
visited Adelaide in 1920 and stayed at
Gibson's Grand Central Hotel
which previously occupied this site.
Artist - Rick Martin, Poet: Steve Evans
With the assistance of the Department for the Arts and Cultural Development
The plaque is mounted on an upright girder (supporting the multi-level car park overhead) immediately at the corner of Rundle & Pulteney streets.
Another view of the plaque set against the backdrop of a Hungry Jacks 'restaurant'. Hungry Jacks is the Australian trading name for the American 'Burger King' chain. The reason for the different name is outlined at the Wikipedia site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Jack%27s .
Set into the plaque is a 'medallion'. If one looks closely, the word 'Elementary' is ghosted into the apparently opaque circle. The medallion is the worse for wear.
Generally speaking, the plaque appears quite worn out. Comparison with the ACD Encyclopedia images make this quite clear. It could do with a good cleaning.
How did this plaque come to pass? I went to the expert, and asked the Captain of Australia's premier scion Bill Barnes, the Sydney Passengers. The 'Passenger's Log' (of Sydney, first published in 1997) started after 1996 when the plaque was installed in Adelaide, so there are no articles describing the plaque history (I think we'll fix that). But Bill did dig into his files and shared two articles from the 'News From The Diggings' newsletter published by the South Australian scion that existed at the time - 'The Sherlock Holmes Society of Australia' (dissolved in 2002 and transferred into the Sydney Passengers).
Bill provided two articles from 'News of the Diggings, and a newspaper article. Together, these tell the story of the proposal by Allen Olding from Adelaide, and the creation and slightly delayed installation of the plaque.
News From The Diggings, vol. 16, September 1995
COMMEMORATION OF THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VISIT TO ADELAIDE OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE - SEPTEMBER 1920
September of this year brings with it the 75th anniversary of the visit to Adelaide of the creator of the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle came to Australia in 1920 in the course of his world-wide crusade on behalf of the Spiritualist movement, and he have give lectures in Adelaide between 25th and 30th September of that year, to capacity audiences at the Town Hall. His lectures were advertised and well reported in both the Register and the Advertiser.
He and his family stayed at Gibson's Grand Central Hotel, which stood on the corner of Pulteney and Rundle Streets. (The building became a department store (Foy and Gibson's) and was demolished in the mid 1970's to make was for a multi-storied car park of very functional design!
Doyle wrote quite enthusiastically of South Australia in Chapter Three of the autobiographical 'Wanderings of a Spiritualist'. The chapter runs to about 50 pages, and begins with his welcome by a letter from the then Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, followed by a description of the part played by Colonel Light in the foundation of Adelaide, his high opinion of the manner in which the city is laid out, and its amenities, etc. Then effects of the Australia-wide drought; then a couple of pages describe his visit to a winery, which I was able to identify as Hamilton's Ewell Winery at Glenelg. Now alas no more, replaced in part by a Trans Adelaide Bus Depot. Doyle spoke highly of the wines, the champagne in particular.
He writes of a dinner as guest of some Adelaide doctors, whom he describes as 'a very prosperous body of men'.
The follows a 3 page account of his visit to the Humbug Scrib Wild Life Sanctuary, to meet Tom Paine Bellchambers, a self-taught naturalist who had written articles which Doyle had read in an English magazine. The Sanctuary is still there, run by T. P. Bellchambers' grandson.
Interspersed are reports on the success of his lectures, meetings with Adelaide spiritualists, and of the support he received from the State Governor, Sir Archibald Weigall, and Lady Weigall.
At the end of the month Sir Arthur and family set off by train to fulfill speaking engagements in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, with a side trip to New Zealand in between. He was prevented from speaking in Perth due to the constraints imposed by the sailing schedule of his ship, the S.S. Naldera and Tasmania by a threatened dock stike!
Bearin all this in mind, some months ago your President wrote to the Minister for the Arts of the State Government, suggesting that it might be an appropriate gesture to commemorate the anniversary by installing a plaque in the pavement adjacent to the site of Gibson's Grand Central Hotel, which was in those days the 'posh' establishment, to which most of the celebrities of the day repaired during their visits to Adelaide.
The Minister's response was favourable, as a result of which ACO has attended conferences with representatives of the Department of the Arts, and the Adelaide City Council. (In addition to the Ministerial OK, City Council approval was needed, as the proposal had to be in line with their policy about plaques in pavements.)
ACO was asked to submit a Briefing Paper, whereupon some local artists were invited to submit designs for a plaque. The Department of the Arts is so please with the idea, they are talking of installing other plaques in a 'Writers' Walk'. commemorating visits by other famous authors, such as Mark Twain, who was here in 1895.
In the meantime, members in the other States have been alerted to the fact of Conan Doyle's visit to their capital cities, and it has been left to them to make whatever arrangements they wish to commemorate the visit. (There is already in place at Circular Quay in Sydney a plaque remembering Doyle's visit to that city.)
LATE NEWS
As will be seen from the feature published in the Arts Pages of the Adelaide Advertiser (27/9/95), the plaque has received official blessing. Designed by local artist Rick Martin, the bronze plaque will feature the word which will immediately call to mind the great detective - 'ELEMENTARY', viewed through a hand lens. It will bear the following inscription:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), creator of Sherlock Holmes, visited Adelaide in September 1920, and stayed at Gibson's Grand Central Hotel, which stood on this corner.
It is anticipated that the plaque will be fabricated, installed, and ready for unveiling by the end of November. It is hoped that the Minister of Arts, Diana Laidlaw, will officiate.
Upon being advised of the forthcoming event, Dame Jean Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur's daughter, now in her eighties, sent her greetings, saying that she has very happy memories of Australia, and the Australian people, and of the kindness with which the Conan Doyle family were received by the Australian people. Dame Jean adds that she is touched by the plans, and will be thinking of them.
As well as being an attraction for visiting Sherlockians, the plaque will provide a centrally sited focal point for future commemorations and other events. By way of a small celebration, Adelaide are to meet for lunch 'on site' - that is to say at the Hungry Jack's fast food outlet, situated on part of the street frontage where the hotel used to be, on Sunday, 1st October, 1995. Of necessity, libations will be drunk in whatever non-alcoholic beverages are available,
The Advertiser, Wednesday September 28, 1995
There is a very illustrious history to the corner of Rundle and Pulteney streets. It is now home to a Hungry Jacks restaurant but it is there, 75 years ago, that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stayed.
The Gibsons Grand Central Hotel was there and Conan Doyle, his wife and family were guests from September 25-30, 1920. So it is fitting that the Sherlock Holmes Society will lunch at the fast-food restaurant on Sunday in honor of the visit.
Conan Doyle, who is best known for his creation of the eccentric detective Sherlock Holmes, visited Adelaide to lecture in spiritualism, a cause he dedicated himself to after the death of his son from wounds incurred in World War I. He gave five lectures at the Adelaide Town Hall, all of which were reported in The Advertiser of the time.
Doyle wrote enthusiastically of South Australia in his autobiographical novel Wandering (sic) of a Spiritualist. Adelaide is also written into Sherlock Holmes stories. In The Adventure of the Abbey Grange, the character Mary Fraser comes from Adelaide and, in The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, the villain is recognised as Henry "Holy" Peters, who "had his ear bitten in a saloon fight in Adelaide in '94".
There are now more than 300 branches of the Sherlock Holmes Society worldwide, with about 30 Adelaide members who meet once a quarter and publish a quarterly newsletter, News from the Diggings.
To further mark the 75th anniversary of his visit, Art for Public Places and the literature program of the Department for the Arts and Cultural Development, in conjunction with the Adelaide City Council and the Sherlock Holmes Society, have commissioned artist Rick Martin to design and produce a plaque to be placed in the pavement. Also, poet Steve Evans has been commissioned to write a commemorative poem.
News From The Diggings, vol. 17, September 1996
THE CONAN DOYLE COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUE
It is exactly 12 months since we announced that the installation of the plaque commemorating the visit of ACD to Adelaide was ready and about the be installed. (NFTD, September 1995) Well, yours truly failed to take into account the wheels of bureaucracy, which, like the mills of God, grind slow, and it is only now, as this Issue is in the course of preparation, that the Plaque is being affixed outside the fast-food outlet which stands where Gibson's Grand Hotel used to grace the corner of Rundle and Pulteney Streets. It is expected that a small dedication ceremony will be held at the site on Sunday, 22nd September 1996. Our thanks are due to the Minister for the Arts in South Australia, Diana Laidlaw, for taking up the idea with enthusiasm, to officers and staff of 'Art for Public Places', and the Literature Program of the Department of the Arts and Cultural Development for putting up the finds: especially to Jennifer Layther, Manager of A.P.P. for the hours of work she put in. To the officers of the Adelaide City Council, without whose co-operation the thing could not have come to fruition, and to Councillor Jane Lomax-Smith, whose assistance at a critical juncture was invaluable. A.C.O.
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