“AT Exhibition Theatre today, Edison’s marvellous invention. Five scenes on view, “The Indian War Dance”, “The Boxing Cats”, “The Skirt Dancer”, “Buffalo Bill” and “Sandow the Strong Man”.
This diary extract – from one of a clutch of small notebooks held by the State Library of Victoria — refers to the Thomas’s Edison Kinetoscope peepshow when it went on display in Geelong.
It’s an entry penned by a young telegraph switchboard operator named Alexander Goodall in arguably the most vibrant account of life in Geelong during the late 19th century.
Goodall had a good eye, a curious nature and an addiction to getting everything down on paper, with illustrations as well.
His diaries, scribbled between 1892 and 1897, tracked all manner of enterprise and carry-on in and around Geelong.
They recorded cricket news from England, drunks sacked by their bosses, wild storms, camping at work, barbershop shaves, gym workouts, Bream Creek picnics, court scenes, lectures, cycling pursuits, elocution and life lessons, house-fires and firemen, shipboard engineer strikes, sweltering summers, steamers, lightning strikes.
Goodall penned accounts of euchre and chess, bachelor life, his Tom Cat Alley lodgings, religious schisms, trips to Melbourne and around Victoria, operas, pubs and parties, books and plays, economic debates, country rambles, rough and tumble football battles in the rain and mud at Kardinia Park – even growing radishes in Newtown.
The State Library holds four distinctively embellished Goodall diaries, covering the years 1892-93, 1895, 1896 and 1897. It is not clear if he kept more diairies but the next few years were difficult for Goodall, who was diagnosed with tuberculosis and died at just 26 in 1901.
The latest edition of Geelong Coast magazine sees reporter Noel Murphy delve deep into these extraordinary time capsules.
GC magazine is out now at your nearest newsagent.
