Fran Zilio's presentation to the Sydney Passengers

The most recent Sydney Passengers meeting hosted Fran Zilio, who is the Manager, Archives, Library & Australian Polar at the South Australian Museum. 

I met Fran when I contacted the Museum as part of my research into the passing acquaintances of ACD (a plan to write a biography of every person mentioned in his book), seeking Museum records related to ACD's visit to Thomas Bellchambers (I recently posted the article here). Fran was incredibly helpful to me, and we had a flurry of e-mails back and forth.

Furthermore, I was stunned to learn that Fran and her colleagues had recently researched and created a display on Arthur Conan Doyle's visit to Adelaide. How, I wondered, did the Sherlockian world miss out on this? Well, they didn't have to, and I connect Fran with Bill Barnes at the Sydney Passengers who arranged for Fran to deliver a presentation at a meeting of the members, on 28 April 2024.

Virtual meetings of the Sydney Passengers are posted to Youtube, so the great news is that everyone can watch Fran's presentation here (permanent link https://youtu.be/UL25Hav7c-A) :

Fran and colleagues became interested in Doyle via reading about his visit to the Museum of South Australia in a book about the history of that museum:

Adelaide was the first true stop on Doyle's tour of Australia. This map from the ACD Encyclopedia :

The team at the South Australian Museum did an amazing amount of investigation and archival searching to piece together how ACD's time was spent in Adelaide. While Doyle referenced some activities in his memoirs (Wanderings of a Spiritualist), some were fairly non-specific and indirect. Other activities were (understandably) not mentioned at all.

I wanted to highlight an example of the impressive discoveries Fran and her group found. 

Doyle mentioned visiting a winery ; and the team eliminated possibilities, tracked down the visitors book for that year (!) held at the National Museum of Australia, and confirmed it was indeed Penfolds that Doyle visited.

They found that both Doyle and Major Wood were made honorary members of the Adelaide Club, and that this was likely where Doyle had dinner with a group of doctors.

While it is NOT mentioned in Wanderings, Fran and team also discovered that Doyle lunched at Government House with the Governor

What a spectacular presentation, and a wonderful piece of Doylean research !!!!