Paul Seaman is a well know Wagga Wagga mechanic who has owned the remnant, central part of the Grand Garage complex in Fitzmaurice Street for over 40 years and trades there as the Swift Service Centre. He lives onsite in the back portion of the building with his partner and their cat, Misty. I made contact with Paul through the Lost Wagga Wagga Facebook Group and we exchanged messages about the garage’s location having been, in the late 19thC, the site of the Chinese camp in Wagga Wagga with original buildings extant until as late as 1954. Paul shared with me some interesting newspaper cuttings, photos and a plan of the site. The latter included a tantalising note saying that Chinese graves were discovered adjacent to the Murrumbidgee river bank during construction of the levee in 1957 and the evidence submerged. Recently I visited him to ask him if he had discovered any vestiges of the Chinese presence on his property and to see what remains of the swanky Grand Garage.
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| The Grand Garage/Swift Service Centre as in looks today (my photo). |
The old Grand Garage building retains the distinctive P&O style curved profile depicted in the Daily Advertiser’s article about its opening and opulence in 1954. Its stucco façade, windows, main door and some external fittings are original and Paul has cleverly incorporated a coffee kiosk that follows the architectural lines. Inside, the customer service desk and main workshop occupy the part of the structure that once housed the ballroom. It has an attractive timber sprung dance floor which for practical reasons has been overlaid with concrete in some parts. Paul pointed out small surviving details of the ballroom’s 1950s art deco glory: vents, cornices and a couple of chrome door handles with the style’s characteristic geometric design. He said there was once concealed lighting around the walls. He must have worked that out from the old wiring as neither he nor I have been able to find photographs of the ballroom, or indeed of any part of the interior, of the Grand Garage. I mentioned that the parents of a Wagga-born friend of mine attended dances at the Grand Garage and Paul told me that the wife of proprietor, Alf Ludwig, grew tired of attractive single women ‘hanging around’ and put a stop to the dances sometime in the 1960s.
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| Art deco plaster vent given a touch of gilt by Paul (my photo). |
Paul opened one of the doors that feature those art deco handles, it is framed with cream painted timber and has a bubble patterned glass inset, all of which are original. The door leads to the ‘waiting room’ which is how the space is described in a 1954 advertisement in The Daily Advertiser listed along with the garage’s other amenities: ‘hot showers, telephone, writing facilities, boiling water, electric iron’. It was likely designed as a rest area adjacent to the kitchenette and men’s and women’s showers and conveniences and now serves as a storeroom. Paul thinks it may be haunted as he has felt shivers along his spine when in the room alone at night. I wonder if it is the spirits of Riverina travellers or of Chinese gamblers that are restive in the rest room!
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| Original door to 'Rest Room' (my photo). |
The network of rooms that contained these facilities
has been extensively modified and now contains modern toilets and a bathroom, a
kitchen and Paul’s living quarters. His bedroom does still incorporate a 1950s
fireplace converted to bookshelves but other than that there are not really any
hints of Alf Ludwig’s ‘ultra-modern’ facilities for visitors / prospective used
car buyers as they existed back in the day.
We looked at the workshop area /lubritorium spruiked
in the 1954 advertisement as follows:
Our
new lubritorium is in charge of a specially trained man whose job is not only
to grease every working part of your vehicle but to report to you any worn
part. For 15/- he will check your car
thoroughly replace any broken nipples, grease it, inspect gear box and diff and
change oil if required.
Still attached to the ceiling are the now non-functioning 1950s lubricating device and compressed air hose that the ‘specially trained man’ would have employed. Paul, ever the vintage car enthusiast, is currently using the area to restore a couple of 1970s Holdens.
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| Original 1950s lubricating device (left) and compressed air hose (right) (my photos). |
Paul’s office occupies the bow fronted area to the right of the ex-ballroom. It reflects his long tenure in the building with many mementoes and photographs relating both to the business and his family. There are several pictures of his sons, who have both entered motor trades, one is a mechanic, the other, a panel beater. Paul’s collection of historical clippings is in a filing cabinet beside his desk. In addition to what he had already generously shared with me he gave me copies of images of George Lloyd’s grocery shop, which preceded Knights next door, inundated by 1950s flood waters, and an image of George himself at the counter of his shop.
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| George Lloyd's grocery store, now Knight's Deli, marks the northern boundary of the Grand Garage site pictured here during floods in the 1950s. The Grand Garage's bowsers and signage are on the right (source: Lost Wagga Wagga Facebook page). |
Paul told me that originally the garage, its showrooms
and workshops, all the customer amenities and several outbuildings covered the area
from where the side wall of Knights deli now stands to Meccanico’s café and the
Cadell Place development. That explains why the address is given as 167 - 183
Fitzmaurice Street in the old advertisements whereas the Swift Service Centre’s
is just 175. This approximately 3000 square metre site is where Wagga’s Chinese
camp was situated from the 1860s. We know from newspaper articles that the Joss
House/ Free Mission Hall was demolished in 1938 and that a church constructed
behind that building to the rear of the site was still in use as a storeroom by
the Grand Garage in 1954.
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| The boundary of the site as it looks today, Knight's Deli has a similar profile to the grocery store that used to occupy the site (my photo). |
Two Chinese businesses existed where Meccanico’s and the rest of the Cadell Place development now are. Foon Kee, herbalist and grocer, had a cottage and store on the site until the 1930s when he departed Wagga after 60 years to return to his home province of Canton for his final years. His next-door neighbour, Tommy Ah Wah, a successful business man who owned property in Wagga and Junee, is credited in Tracking the Dragon with operating the first garage at the Fitzmaurice Street address however according to a Daily Advertiser report of 1927 two ‘NRMA-trained’ mechanics, ‘Messrs. C E Kent and W E Pulsford have opened the Grand Garage in Fitzmaurice- street, near the Hampden Bridge, and hope, by expert advice, to have a share of the patronage of resident and travelling motorists’ so perhaps Tommy Ah Wah bought it from them or was their landlord.
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| Foon Kee's cottage and store in the 1920s, he is just visible in the doorway (source: Wagga Wagga City Council website). |
Back to my tour…
Paul told me that the forecourt area of the building
would have originally been lined with used cars for sale as shown in The Daily
Advertiser’s 1954 photograph. Now it has a driveway and a row of petrol bowsers
as well as parking spaces for Swift’s and visitors’ vehicles. The concrete is
heavily crazed and a gravel drive leads out into a back lane that runs beside
the new levee completed in 2020. Within the garage site’s boundaries are several
ageing structures. Sadly none is the remnant church where Chinese characters
and drawings could still be clearly seen in 1954. Paul said he believes that
was probably demolished later that decade.
Meccanico’s Café and Cadell Place incorporate some of the older structures on their sites and recently, just up the road, the Prince of Wales Hotel (1865) created a restaurant that includes some of the pub's heritage features. Paul said he would love to see the Grand Garage restored to its art deco grandeur and functioning as a restaurant at some point in the future. The wooden floor would come up a treat and he has already experimented with adding gold lustre to some of the stylish vents. The building is well equipped with a kitchen and multiple toilets and there is ample room at the back to extend the premises. The large curved windows make the interior light and they could look out onto some plantings and statuary instead of the bowsers. It just needs someone with the vision!
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| Alf Ludwig at Wagga's Gold Cup racing carnival probably in 1999 (source: Wagga and District Historical Society collection). |
Our conversation touched on rumours relating to the Chinese occupancy of the site which still need research, but which will more likely forever remain mysteries. These include the purported graves, the supposed network of tunnels under Fitzmaurice Street and a legendary statue appropriated from the temple. Paul said a man of Chinese descent called by one day and told him an ancestor of his had been buried somewhere on the site. That seems unlikely but not impossible depending upon the year of death. There are Chinese funerals recorded at the Wagga Monumental Cemetery from 1874. A person has posted on the Lost Wagga Wagga Facebook page that there are multiple tunnels under Fitzmaurice Street connected to David Jones, Romano’s Hotel, the Courthouse and, of course, the Grand Garage (he cites Alf Ludwig as his source for that one). Their purposes are variously described as giving a magistrate quick access to his liquid lunch, a route for Chinese gamblers escaping a police raid and use as conduits for WW2 military communications! However, the only substantiated story of an underground cavern in Wagga Central relates to the now filled in men’s lavatories outside the Union Club Hotel in Forsyth Street. Lastly, the ‘holy grail’, a missing religious statue, possibly gilded, liberated from the Chinese temple. Paul told me Alf Ludwig lived in hope of discovering gold somewhere on the Grand Garage site. He reached 86 years of age so he had ample time to search, but from what I’ve read he had more success making his fortune taking bets on the horses and as a purveyor of used cars and television sets. Is it just possible that he enjoyed fuelling this urban myth?
References:Lost Wagga Wagga Facebook Group
1 comment:
An interesting and accomplished article, Jan. Worthy of a publication like NRMA's Open Road.
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