Melbourne Antiques Roadshow

As we approach the end of this series, the Roadshow gathers itself for another giant leap.

A warm welcome to our second show from Down Under.

After the delights of Sydney, we've come south to south west

for about 500 miles to another great city of culture.

Marvellous Melbourne.

Apart from the splendour and the sophistication,

there's another element to life here which is creating a frenzy of anticipation, and that's sport.

Melbourne is about to host the Commonwealth Games -

just a few finishing touches, and one of the world's most renowned sporting venues

will be all set for 12 days of lung-bursting achievement.

'At 4.32pm on November 22nd, a flame enters the stadium.'

Melbournians are accustomed to mad dashes for gold.

The 1956 Olympic Games saw several.

And a century before that, there were some record-breaking sprints

in the direction of the nearby gold fields.

While most prospectors struck nothing but dirt, successful diggers

drank champagne from buckets.

Fortunes were made, empires were established.

One enterprising family started by selling assorted buttons and other necessities to the prospectors,

and now Myer is one of the largest retailers in Australia.

Others did it their way -

one young digger, name of Ned Kelly, gave up the shovel for the gun.

Ned aimed to make his fortune robbing banks and bushwhacking trains,

but he was caught and brought to Melbourne Gaol in 1880.

No medal for guessing what happened then. These days fossicking for Nedophilia

can be a bit of a goldmine in itself.

Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building

has achieved its own gold standard,

being the only building in Australia to be awarded World Heritage Status.

It hosted great exhibitions in 1880 and '88.

The prestige of the place was sealed

when the first Australian Parliament met here in 1901.

Today another historic occasion -

the first Antiques Roadshow in the State of Victoria.

We have a Commonwealth team of British and Australian experts

straining at the leash, so on your marks.

I'm looking at a tatty tin box which I can just about make out the words "Western Australia"

at the top - where did this tatty box come from?

It was rescued from a skip,

after a deceased estate being cleaned out, it almost made it into the skip,

fortunately it didn't, er,

and it turned out to be full of glass slides.

And that's the treasure revealed, because it really is a little treasure chest, and I have to say

usually glass lantern slides don't get my heart pounding, but when

I look at this first slide here,

it's a nugget the size of...

the size of a rugby ball.

In fact, you've just got a smoker's pipe on the top I think to give you an idea of scale, haven't you?

Yes, so it's quite a... quite a large lump

of gold, for want of a better word.

So this collection of magic lantern slides is all about the gold rush.

What it actually is is a history of the Kalgoorlie Gold Fields,

from about 1898 until about 1901.

There are photos there that are exceptional in their detail and quality,

and give a very good indication of the conditions people were living in, and working in, in that time.

It was Paddy Hannan who first discovered gold

in 1895 out in Kalgoorlie

and there was, of course, a stampede and within months,

the whole area was besieged by people

with strikes, but in the beginning, of course,

it was the Aboriginal people, they were the only people who had that land,

there they were, and then the tents arrived and then subsequently some of these frame buildings arrived,

until latterly,

it turned Kalgoorlie into really quite a substantial Victorian town,

didn't it?

Quite a large town with quite a large population and still going ahead as much as any country town can and...

Oh, this is nice, because you can actually see the people involved here.

See the people and the conditions they were living and working in and...

It's frightening, isn't it?

And, um, the safety concerns today -

-most of these places would be closed down immediately.

-Absolutely.

Gosh, it looks pretty precarious.

This looks like an entrance to a tunnel going down.

I'm trying to work out whether these images are amateur or professional.

I would say they were done by a professional.

They're too good, aren't they, really, to be snapshots.

-They're very very good.

-But I'm absolutely certain that some of these images will have appeared

and will be known images within the resources of the museums in Australia,

but I would have said we're talking about a general value of perhaps

50 a slide, and we've got 100 here,

so that means we're talking about 5,000 - 5,500 as a starting point,

which is, let's say,

around £2,000 - £2,500, so,

what a museum or what an enthusiastic collector...

-Will pay.

-..of mining memorabilia will pay in the end, the sky's possibly the limit.

Right, you know, the last time I saw one of these was actually

in a museum, and I think they must be incredibly rare -

this one is obviously incredibly fragile, and I think it's what they call...is it a leaving pennant?

-No, a paying-off pennant.

-A paying-off pennant.

And each foot of it is a year of his service in the navy, and it's flown on the very last voyage.

-Isn't that absolutely splendid?

-This was flown 1810 on the "Ville de Paris".

His name was Captain Cas Calladay.

-Right.

-And he's my husband's great-great-grandfather only, just great-great.

-Isn't that incredible?

-Yes, it's amazing.

-I mean that's certainly the longest one

-I've ever seen, but you can imagine how wonderful that would look!

-It would be flying.

-And it was done by the sailors themselves, wasn't it?

-Yes, yes, for the Captain or Master...

-They did it, so they must have thought an awful lot of him.

-Yes.

-Now here's the man himself.

-Right, yes.

Here he is. It's not a terribly good miniature, but the thing that I like

is this letter where he is trying

to resign from the navy.

"My Lord, with due respect I submit this letter to your Lordship's consideration

"after serving as Master of The Orion

"in the action of the 21st October".

So this is a survivor of the Battle of Trafalgar. And what you also have,

which you have very nicely and very neatly repaired, is this...

-The log book.

-The log book - well, my experience with log books is that they are terribly boring.

Well, I've been very good, I've actually read it and I can approve of what you're saying.

-Well, rather you than me!

-There are snippets...

-Because there are sort of floggings and, um...

-Yes, yes.

-Hangings and...

Not so many in the Mediterranean

-when they had very good food.

-Yes.

-The floggings came out in the Atlantic, which was interesting.

No, that is interesting, absolutely and they obviously...

-Falling off the masts and things.

-Oh, and they didn't eat as well or anything.

No, they had a lot of fresh fruit, a lot of wine. 180 gallons a night.

-180 gallons a night?

-Yes, yes, I thought that was very impressive.

Lots of biflavanoids...good, didn't have to have their limes.

Well, quite frankly, how can you drive a ship on that amount of wine?

-I don't know.

-Well, I think the water was too bad.

I think it's absolutely incredible, you've brought all this stuff,

you've brought this fantastic pennant

-from where?

-We've come, flown in from Perth, it's about 2,000 miles from Melbourne.

Well, greater love hath no woman! Anyway, back to the piece in point!

-Yes.

-It's impossible to put an accurate price on this, but I think it is so incredible,

I would say

no less than 120,000.

£50,000. I think it's, I think it's cheap at the price, relic of Nelson!

-Oh, my gosh.

-And this wonderful pennant, of which so few survived.

I-I don't want to carry it out of here!

Well, you have really made my day bringing these along, because the one thing I wanted to see

perhaps more than anything else here in Melbourne was a Royal Worcester coffee set with Australian flowers.

What's the family history?

Er, they were a present to my parents,

and all we ever knew about them was that they sat in the china cabinet and we were told not to touch.

Oh, right.

And they said they were a duplicate

of the set given to the Duke and Duchess of York when they came

to open the Federal Parliament, which was 1927, I believe.

Oh, right, well, that will fit in nicely with the date these were made,

because we're looking here in the mid-1920s and they're the result of a remarkable,

really, collaboration between Melbourne and Royal Worcester.

Yes.

-Because the Australian collectors here had always loved Worcester porcelain painted with flowers.

-Yes.

And I think they found a lot of the English flowers rather dull

and asked for specimens that were closer to home.

-Yes.

-And so here you've got really native flowers through and through.

-Waratah.

That's rich and red, isn't it there, on the cup and a matching saucer for each one.

And a matching saucer for each one.

-What's that? That's Christmas Bells, isn't it?

-Yes, yes.

Really bright colours, and of course, I recognise there an exotic

flowering gum, and how strange these flowers must have seemed

to the painter at Royal Worcester! These are the work of Reginald Austin, a Worcester lad

through and through and the flowers growing there in England are very different indeed to these flowers.

Would he have come out here to paint them?

Well, that's really the secret - Worcester were asked to make flowers

of these but they hadn't got any specimens to copy from.

-Yes, yes.

-So instead they got in touch with dealers in Australia who commissioned an Australian artist,

a Melbourne artist, Marian Ellis Rowan, to go and do a series of designs for Worcester porcelain.

-Yes.

-And then her designs were sent back to Worcester, where they were copied so carefully.

At the time, I think, they were selling for something like about the equivalent of about £5 a set,

or we're looking about sort of 12 a set when they were new.

They've certainly gone up in value over the time -

I mean nowadays ,the last set I know

that were sold I think made 8,000 for a set, I think about £3,000

and really, you've got a super thing here and makes me feel at home from Worcester to Melbourne.

You can't take them back.

-Please?

-No.

-All right, then.

Do you know, at first I thought these must be just stuffed editions

of your dear pets, but they're papier mache, aren't they?

-Yes, they are.

-How old are they?

I've got a book at home with some children's toys, and between 1860 and 1880, made in France.

So they went in for these sort of grotesque growlers, didn't they?

-Yes, they did.

-What do they do? They stand there looking sort of menacing?

No, they don't, they growl when you pull the chain.

-Wow!

-And they've got little wheels on, they were children's toys so...

-And this one works the same, does it?

-Yes.

Ooh, more ladylike, this one, isn't it, than yours?

Let's hear yours again. Wow, that's some bark.

So here we are looking at a photograph

of this very building in 1901 with an amazing ceremony happening.

-Absolutely.

-Here on this balcony, in this same building, underneath that very painting on the wall here.

Tell me about what this occasion was.

We're looking at the opening of Federal Parliament -

the first sitting of Federal Parliament in 1901.

The actual opening of Parliament happened during the day and then

in the evening, 10,000 people, we're led to believe, came back

and enjoyed an evening reception and concert, and this is the programme of events from that concert.

It says "In celebration of the opening of the Parliament of the

-Commonwealth of Australia, to meet their Royal Highnesses and Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York".

-Yes.

And how did this come to be in your family?

Well, it was actually amongst the possessions of my, um, my husband's father,

and we have no idea how he got hold of it, other than it was handed down through a couple of generations.

I think you're going to have to do a bit more sort of family homework to try and find out who this!

-I think you're right.

-Let's just open up and have a look inside, because...

here we are, we've got a complete list of what happened during the day.

Do you know about any of the performers here?

Basically, the people who appeared in this concert were

the sort of great and the good of the Australian theatre world of the day.

Ah, well, I'd love to know what Madame Slapovski did

-and Herr Slapovski on the other side, over here.

-Yes.

I bet they were quite some double.

This programme would not have been given to everybody that turned up,

so there weren't 10,000 or so programmes done, this would have been only given

to the most notable people, so someone in your family

had quite an important role to play, I'm sure. So as far as value is concerned,

I would think about 1,000 to 1,500 Australian dollars

which is about £500 to £700, just as it is.

If we can find out something more about who owned it within your family, that may increase the value.

What I find amazing, actually, standing here in this fabulous building and looking at this

photograph here is that just down there, you know, what is only, what,

a hundred and something years ago...

-Yeah.

-..the Duke and Duchess were starting the first Federal Government in Australia.

-Yes, the birth of a new country.

-Amazing.

Well, I found it in Melbourne, um, at a garage sale -

do you want me to wind it up for you?

Oh, go ahead.

He is quite unusual, actually.

It's beautiful, isn't it?

That is...!

I won't let him walk off the table, I will turn him around a bit.

That's wonderful.

That's great fun,

and do you know anything about it at all?

Look, I have no idea, I believe he was from the days of the British Raj,

so I would imagine he is from India.

Well, the peacock dates from round about 1890-1900.

-Right.

-Um, it was made in Paris,

but then could have been exported anywhere, but certainly it's a French automaton and they weren't

made as toys so much for children, but they were toys for grown-ups,

because the condition of this is remarkable.

I've seen them before, but never so complete,

so whoever owned it and used it, children weren't allowed to, to mess around.

You say you paid quite a lot of money for it, so I'm slightly daunted about giving you a price,

but I would have thought we're talking about 4,000 or 5,000

which converts to about £1,800 to £2,500.

-Do you remember what you paid for it?

-Yes, 1,500.

Well, you've got a fantastic eye, then. You'll make a fantastic antique dealer.

Coming as I do from Britain, I think over there we have a view that

we simply filled Australia up with transported violent criminals

and I'm very keen to talk about this, as I think in a sense perhaps

this is a chance to redress the balance.

Now, first of all, here is a sign about transportation

and how you got sent here -

how did this get sent to you?

We actually found it in a small country museum about an hour and a half out of Melbourne,

-in a town called Ballarat...

-Yes.

-..that was closing down and they

were auctioning off everything in the museum to the public,

we put in a bid and were successful.

Good. What we've got to understand is that you could undertake a very minor offence in Britain

and be sent to the colonies -

you could steal a sheep, you could get into financial difficulties,

very minor misdemeanours which today probably would hardly

even get you a fine, and you would be sent out, so it wasn't just axe murderers and lunatics and maniacs

who were sent out, it was people who had simply fallen foul of the law in a very minor way, because Australia

was built by craftsmen, by artists, by people of all levels of society,

who had simply made a mistake.

This is obviously about 1830 - we've got George IV,

so it's right at the end of his reign.

I take "30" to be 1830. I think it was in the County of Middlesex which tells us it's a bridge

probably across the Thames, and cast iron notices like this were put up frequently in Britain -

very durable, it's nice the notice itself made its way to Australia

as well as, you know, the crime it recorded.

-Maybe it was stolen.

-Maybe it was stolen, wonderful, I'm sure it was.

You bought it in this funny, or private, auction, can you remember what you paid?

-150.

-Well, I think that was a pretty good buy!

I'd have bought it myself because I think it's great social history.

I'm going to say today even with this damage, which of course was

probably done when it was prised off the bridge,

I would say this would now fetch 1,200 - £500.

So because it's such a rarity to see, it's a great piece of history, and I wish I'd bought it.

Even if I might have been transported for having it.

Right, well, I'm a collector of vintage cars,

so I've been picked out to come and talk about motorcycles

but before I display my ignorance,

tell me, what is a Waratah, because I've never heard of it.

Waratah, it's a 1917 Waratah, Australian bike, made in Australia

by Healey Brothers who made the pushbike, and it went

to Williams & Company

and they produced the Waratah until 1948.

Right, so what year would this one be then?

-1917.

-OK, single cylinder?

Yes.

-Do you ride it?

-Yes, yes. It's rideable

-and very comfortable.

-Did you come here today in it?

No, because it's too cold.

Too cold today.

Right, well, I'm sorry about my ignorance because I just,

you know, haven't been to Australia before and I've certainly never come across one of those in England.

This I have come across - the Bradbury, but I've never seen a twin cylinder.

No, they're probably quite a number of single cylinder Bradburys around, there may be as many as a hundred

or more, worldwide, but twins, as far as we are able to make out, there's only two left in the world.

One's in the British Motorcycle Museum.

They had a terrible fire.

-Yeah, so we don't know if that one still exists.

-Could be crispy bike.

-It could be, it could very well be, yeah.

-Hopefully not, yeah?

-And this one.

-This one here is made in 1915, 750cc and we still use it -

we just use it as it is.

The original owner had it locked away in a shed for 65 years, and he wasn't allowed to ride it,

and so it was dug out about the early '80s and, er...

-Just like this?

-Yeah.

-I mean it looks to me absolutely stunningly original.

-It is.

-We've got hand shift. Yes.

-This is not a pressure tank, is that an oil...?

-No, that's an oil pump,

-and it's got a gear change on the side.

-Right.

-It's got a foot clutch or a hand clutch, carbide lights.

Carbide lights, and I noticed actually when I was looking

at it, it's not only got carbide lights on the bike, but also on the chair.

-That's correct, yes.

-With a transfer pipe running over.

-This thing, yes.

-That's brilliant.

Well, coming to valuations, on my part, it's going to be a bit of a guess but that

looks something like sort of 10,000, £4,000.

-That's it, that's about it, yeah.

-OK but this - if it is, well...

if it's one of two, the other one's in a museum, then who knows?

25,000, 50,000 - £10,000, £20,000?

-That's right, we don't know, we don't know.

-Wonderful, thank you very much, it's great.

-Thank you.

So here we are, standing in this completely magnificent building

and here is a portrait of LL Smith,

one of the men who made this building possible, by one of Australia's great painters,

-Tom Roberts. It's a wonderful thing.

-Yes, it is.

-How did it come to be in your family?

Actually, LL Smith was my husband's grandfather, so it's been in the family since it was painted.

I see, now Tom Roberts himself was a fascinating artist, a man who interpreted the Australian landscape

in a truly individual way, but of course, like many many artists,

-he had to make his money selling the commissions for portraits.

-Yes.

And here you have a wealthy man, Dr LL Smith.

-Yes.

-How did he make his money?

-He left England in 1852.

-Right.

As an impoverished doctor.

He landed and went straight to the gold fields up at Castlemaine.

-Did he find any gold?

-Yes, he did - not enough to make a living off,

but he kept a little sample in a medicine bottle.

Look, completely wonderful, this is real gold?

-It is real gold, yes.

-Well, obviously he was rich enough not to have to spend it quite yet.

I think he had so little that he thought he might as well keep it as a souvenir.

-Right.

-And he got dysentery - the conditions on the gold fields were absolutely terrible.

-Oh, dear.

-Where dysentery was rife,

so he came back to Melbourne and he set up a medical practice.

He advertised widely, and he...

Is this what you've brought here? This advertising bell, is that for him? That's it?

That's for a line of vegetable pills he produced.

Oh, right.

This is hilarious, "Dr Lewis L Smith's vegetable anti-bilious

"or cooling opening pills." Opening what?

Well, opening one's bowels, I imagine.

And at one stage he had, he set up travelling carts that took the pills

-and his medical ointments out to the gold fields.

-Oh, how brilliant.

Well, you can see how he made it.

-Yes, he lost it a few times too.

-Did he?

He speculated in everything, he had racehorses, he produced champagne.

-He was involved in a great number of things.

-Yes.

He was a parliamentarian for something like, um, 28 years.

He was very interested in public entertainment.

-Yes.

-Because he had come from a theatrical background - his father had been in the theatre in London.

-I think that this portrait really captures that, don't you?

-Yes. It shows his...

-Because it's got, it's got the light in his eyes.

-Yes.

-And he's obviously making a point here.

-Yes.

-And he's going to be very sure that his colleagues get it, but there's humour in his face as well.

-Yes.

-He's not lecturing them, he's making it a bit jokily, isn't he?

We've always felt that, Tom Roberts must have quite liked him, because it's a very...

-It's caught him well.

-Yes.

Psychologically, you feel you've met him, don't you?

-There's a lot, yes.

-Yes, it's very powerful.

So there are quite a few portraits by Roberts around, perhaps not of such important figures,

nor even so successfully done, because it really is very lively.

There must be a few institutions that would like to have it, mostly in Melbourne,

because it's to do with the gold rush, it's to do with a founding father of the city, it's a lot

of history wrapped up in this picture and he's quite a character.

-Yes.

-I think, if I was putting a value on it for sale, which would have to be its insurance value,

it would be something in the region of 80,000 Australian dollars,

£35,000 - £40,000 back in England.

My uncle collected beautiful things.

This is a collection of a few bits and pieces that he had,

which...he actually died about four years ago and left them to me.

-Ah, well, your uncle had pretty good taste.

-I love that.

-You like that?

-That's my favourite.

I like it lots.

-I like it, and if it could speak to you, it would say that it came from near "Doodley".

-OK.

I say Dudley, but people who live in Dudley call it "Doodley" which

is basically in the West Midlands of England. Now let's have a...oh,

it's a treasure. First of all, let's have a look at it end on because we've got, we've got an overlay

in four different colours, so you've got white, clear, white again

and then you've got this sort of primrose yellow, but you know,

when you actually see the piece carved through,

it's a very vibrant yellow,

so this is a classic piece of English cameo glass,

almost certainly from Thomas Webb.

It doesn't get much better than this, because one layer of glass carved through to another,

to another and on top of that, you've got, if you look here, you see this sort of feathering effect.

-Yes.

-Date-wise, probably around about 1885-1890.

-Is it?

-So this is pure Victoriana.

-It's very old.

You need serious money to buy this today.

I think you wouldn't get away with paying less than £5,000 sterling,

-that works out at 12,000 Australian dollars.

-Ooh, OK.

-OK, and let's put that on one side a moment, because the pulse is racing here.

-That's just beautiful.

And show me this woman! Let's take her out - slow, ooh, she's a weight!

I deal in Art Deco and have done for 30 years, and from 100 paces

it's quite obvious who this bronze and ivory figure is by.

Because the name is here, it's Gerdago.

-Yes.

-Now date-wise, around about 1925-1930, I mean,

this girl to me looks as though she could have had a walk-on part

-as a Star Wars princess, don't you think so?

-Yes, very much so.

Because the thing about Gerdago is that he is such a dramatic

sculptor, and he is very happy to include plenty of colour.

-He's not big on ivory, if you look, just the face.

-Yes.

And just look at those lips, I mean they are kissing lips, are they not?

1925-style, and those fingers are so elegant, you know, they're beautifully, beautifully carved,

and then as for the actual skirt itself, it's enamelled

in wonderful bright colours

and then set off on a base of polished green Brazilian onyx.

If she was a car, she'd be a Rolls Royce.

-Oh, good.

-OK, the last selection of Gerdago bronze I remember turning up in London

were sold as part and parcel of the Elton John collection.

-Oh, OK.

-So you're in good company actually when it comes to...

-Oh, good.

-..collecting pedigree. They tend in the main to be

desirable, consequently expensive,

so I'll start with Australian dollars this time,

and say you're looking nearer 48,000 Australian -

we're talking about £20,000 sterling.

Oh, my God,

oh, my God! Yes, OK.

-Are you a deep-sea diver?

-No, I'm not at all.

What about conchology, are you keen on that?

No, I'm not into that either.

Because this is an extremely nicely formed conch or conc shell,

but it's a conc shell with a difference - here we go -

wow, look at that!

Quite disgusting, really, isn't it?

Quite disgusting, you reckon?

Well, anyway, you said it! Actually, I think it's absolutely the most kitsch thing I've ever seen.

-It is, isn't it?

-Yeah, and of course they filled it with natural coral

but they've re-coloured the coral in this particularly kitsch way.

Tacky colours, the bits actually rearrange, you can rearrange your bits anywhere you like them.

Oh, I say!

-And then you ram a light bulb underneath and then the whole thing is illuminated.

-Yes.

So, do you love this thing to bits?

No. I was always told when I was young that it was very special and don't touch it, so when

my grandmother went to a nursing home, I said to her "You know that lamp, would I be able to have it?"

and she said "Oh, no you can't have it till I die",

-and I thought "Ooh".

-Where did she used to have it in her house?

-Sitting on top of the television.

Never had the television on without the conch shell on, is that right?

-Basically that's that.

-That's fantastic, isn't it? So you nicked it, really?

Well, I did, I went around and thought well she's close enough to death anyway, so...

-That's...

-I might as well take it, and I thought it was so tacky.

-That's a terrible thing to say.

-I thought it would go to the Salvos, though.

-Anyway, you took it home.

-Yeah, I did.

-And do you have it on every day at home now?

No, I don't, I turn it on occasionally when friends come around as a bit of a joke really.

-When you're feeling depressed? You put it on when you're depressed?

-Could do, right.

-Yeah, you could do,

-couldn't you? Because it would jolly you up.

-It would.

And that's the whole point, it's a jolly little object.

Frankly if the thing was in a sale in the UK I can see it bringing between 250 and 350, £100 to £150.

-A lot more than I thought it would be worth, anyway.

-Really?

-But it's so amusing.

-It is.

Should your face look familiar to me?

Well, maybe, you might remember my father, but it's going back a long, long time.

-When?

-Well, you and he were evacuated together during the, during the war, to Chard.

-In Somerset?

-Yes.

That's right.

Yes, so he was there for two years,

I think you were there for four or something like that.

-Yeah, nearly five, well, where was he from?

-He was from Earlsfield.

-Earlsfield! Where I was from.

-Yes.

-What's his name?

-Peter, Peter Dodd.

-Peter Dodd, Peter Dodd,

little Doddy, clipped him round the ear once.

Well, funny you should say that, because there's a story there!

His sister Barbara was also evacuated with him, and she clearly recalls you punching him in the nose.

And actually he wasn't small at all, because you're not a small chap, I must have been very brave then.

-I think you must have been.

-I wish it was true.

Well, some people will go to absolutely enormous lengths to bring things to the Antiques Roadshow,

but here we've got something a bit more, a bit more manageable in scale - an Aboriginal painting

which reminds me of the colours of the desert - is that in fact where you collected this work?

Yes, I did, this was in the late '70s,

just out from Alice Springs, that's way out in the desert, and this guy

who was obviously a painter, and he'd just finished this painting

and I asked him would be interested in selling it, and he said yeah, so I bought it for 30.

-30?

-Yeah.

Wow, you've got a lovely work here. Um, natural ochres - if we have a look here,

you've cleverly written on the back your notes which is fabulous.

I wish more people would do that, it gives us indications

of, about the story.

But you see this Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri who is quite a well known Aboriginal artist,

he was born in the 1930s and died in 1986.

I'll just put this back now but this is really part of the early stages of the Aboriginal Art Movement.

I don't know if you're aware, but traditionally Aboriginal art took the form of body painting,

of ground paintings, that sort of thing, so it was something that was created for ceremony and then

disappeared or destroyed, whereas in the early 1970s, a group of men,

elders, began to transpose those traditional designs onto,

um, hard materials for portable art,

-and quite often, as you said, you were right up in the middle of the desert, weren't you?

-Yes, yes.

Canvases, you know, oil paints, those sort of things weren't available

-and so they were painting out of necessity on this type of thing.

-Yeah.

The interesting about Aboriginal art, it's not really designed to be set up on an easel like this.

No.

Um, it's probably better to look at the painting in fact this way,

because it would have been painted flat on the ground, the same

as Aboriginal canvases are painted flat on the ground now.

We're looking at the story of the lizard serpent

moving through the landscape, and shaping the country as he moved,

and apparently these little dots are the fruits that he ate

along the way, so you can see it's a bit like

a terrain map of his country, it's not a literal map

of the country, but it shows how those creation stories

tie in with the landscape in which he lived.

But I understand there are other meanings behind that, that there

are sort of sacred meanings as well as a kind of a map?

There are certain stories and rituals which are only for men's business, and women's business.

Certainly as a woman, it's not something that would be shared with me,

and as an uninitiated man he would share a certain level of meaning

-with you, but not the whole meaning.

-Yeah, ah.

So quite often with these sort of stories, we don't have access

to the many levels of meaning in this.

-Yes.

-But it's quite a lovely work. Conservatively,

on the current auction market,

it would be worth between about 3,000 and 6,000 Australian dollars.

-Wow.

-Which is about £1,200 - £1,500,

so, um, apart from having a wonderful experience to go behind

this work, you've also made a good return on your original investment.

-Fantastic, thank you.

-Thank you.

Now Norman Brooks is known as the father of Australian tennis.

What relationship is he to you?

He's my grandfather. In his tennis career, he won many, many events

but he won Wimbledon 1907,

being the first foreigner to win Wimbledon,

which was considered a mammoth effort, because the British

weren't going to let it go easily, and, and again he won it in 1914.

-Right.

-We believe this trophy,

and the 1914,

are the only full-size replicas in existence.

Other than that, everyone else has only got miniatures and I think that was borne out due to the fact that

they never expected to lose in '07, so they just made another one,

you know, as it were, and, er, and then from there to '14,

there was no-one outside Britain that won it, in fact even Tony Wilding,

who was a New Zealander, he lived in Britain.

-Right.

-So he got, he got a miniature, but grandfather,

you know, got, we believe, the only two full-sized replicas.

And even when we enquired at Wimbledon, they didn't even know.

Which makes it exceptional, because I mean I have to say when I initially saw it,

I just thought, "Well, somebody's stolen it", you know, and brought it over here.

-Exceptionally rare.

-Yes.

-Didn't he also in 1907 win the Doubles too?

Yes, he won the Doubles in, er , '07 which was the maiden year,

as they say, from the point of view

that the he was the first man to win it, but he won the Singles and the Doubles

which was, which was quite staggering really.

Purely in financial terms, I would have thought the Doubles jug is going to be worth,

to a collector, let's put it that way,

well in excess of 20,000 or £8,000.

The racket - did he use that to win one of the Championships?

I'm not sure, I really don't know, but I know that that was a racket that he used,

but whether it was in that period, I don't know.

But certainly used by him, it's probably 5,000 or £2,000.

But what's this worth? I mean,

only one other replica known, which you also own.

-Yes.

-And obviously the original which is at Wimbledon.

So a massively important trophy to tennis enthusiasts.

It's difficult to come up with a price, but I would think

at auction you're talking about a figure well in excess of 75,000,

or £30,000, so a fantastic piece.

I believe, and I believed grandfather believed, these belong to Australia, not an individual.

Be great to go into one of the sporting museums.

-Yes, it really would, and it's that's what we'd like to, you know, we'd like to do.

-Good.

I also have a personal interest in this because, I don't know if you noticed, but, if I can pick it up

here, on the side there is 1893.

-Yes.

-W Baddeley, Wilfred Baddeley.

Well, my name's John Baddeley, and he's a distant relation of mine.

-How wonderful!

-So I hope you don't mind if I give it a quick kiss.

The classic.

-Thank you very much.

-That's wonderful, John.

I'll take it with me, now!

Picture yourself in 1912.

There's been this terrible disaster, the Titanic has been sunk,

hit by an iceberg.

And I don't know whether one can say that the Steiff factory in Germany

were very sensitive or were very switched on to a marketing opportunity,

but the Steiff factory produced a whole series of bears in black,

mourning bears they said, to mourn the loss of life on the Titanic,

and this is what you're holding.

Now tell me about, tell me about him, is he a family piece?

No, I had sent one of my bears to South Australia to get repaired and when she sent him back,

she sent a photograph of my bear, plus this one in the photograph.

-What, it was just lurking in the background?

-Yes, oh, they were sitting side by side, and about

a year later we got a phone call

saying that it was for sale and was I interested, and I said yes, I was,

so we met the lady in the city and I bought the bear from her. It's just wonderful.

"Just wonderful" is about all one can say about this bear!

Just look at him! He's got this great luxuriant mohair plush,

but the thing that I'm surprised at, really, is how good the condition is.

When you look at things like his felt pads on his feet and on his hands here,

they are always when we see them in Britain, they've always been got at by moths,

they've been nibbled away, but this one's in incredibly good condition.

There's one particular aspect of this bear which I think is very sweet,

and very touching and that is that around these lovely black eyes here

we have red.

A red background which shows the eye up very clearly, but also

it's what your eyes do when they cry, you know, this bear

-has got red eyes from crying.

-Yeah, I wondered about that.

And there we have the Steiff button which is absolutely right for that date,

that particular button came in in 1905 and was used for many years after that,

so everything about it is right.

So I've got to ask that question, how much did you pay for him?

Er, 40,000 Australian dollars.

I mean that's a lot of money - 40,000, I mean that's £17,000 - £18,000.

But I have to say

that a Titanic bear just like this, five years ago

at auction, fetched just over 200,000.

200,000?!

So who knows?

Maybe that was a lucky day,

maybe yours wouldn't fetch 200,000,

which is about £90,000,

but even if it fetched half that,

-you're still getting a pretty good return on your 40,000.

-He's not for sale!

-He is a bear that is so rare, we've never seen a Titanic bear on all the British Antiques Roadshows.

-Really?

And to find him down here, in Melbourne,

well, it's a real eye-opener, and thanks so much for bringing him.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!

Well, it may be Australian winter time, but we've received a very warm welcome everywhere we've been

on this trip, and you always know you've got friends when people tell you how far

they've come to join the Roadshow, and here are two ladies who've come how far?

From Perth - almost from London to Moscow.

Wow, so that's 2,000 miles!

-You must be real fans.

-Very much so. Yes, yes, ten o'clock every night,

-we both watch.

-And did you get the full support of your family on this trip?

No. They thought we were mad, but we thought we were clever.

-And were you?

-Yes. Wonderful shopping spree in Melbourne.

And how about the show itself, did you have a good result?

-Oh, very exciting, wonderful. Result, yes, 120,000.

-For what?

It's the log book of just after Trafalgar -

-the paying-off pennant which is about 28 feet long.

-So a very long trip, but very worthwhile.

Yes, wonderful, thank you.

-We really enjoyed it.

-You're the lifeblood of the show -

now you've got to go all the way back again!

-All the way back.

-And so do we, so from Melbourne, thank you

very much indeed for having us, until the next time, goodbye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd - 2006