WHILE we now have the latest in timepiece technology and a digital clock on every appliance imaginable, Melburnians in the 19th century had to rely on public clocks.
     Jewellers would set up accurate clocks in their windows. And landmarks such as the General Post Office and local town halls became the sources of accurate time.
     Dr Richard Gillespie, Head of Australian Society and Technology at Museum Victoria, says these street clocks have become "part of the fabric of our city".
     "I think for many people public clocks, especially historical public clocks, continue to play part of their daily life," he says. "(Although) not in the same critical way that they used to..."
     Ingrams Clocks has been looking after Melbourne's clocks since the late 1800s. Horologist (or clockmaker) Henry Ekselman says many people have the mistaken belief that the city's old clocks are controlled by ancient systems.
     While the tower clock at the Elizabeth Street end of Flinders Street Station is still run by its original weights and three-metre-long pendulum, most other clocks in Melbourne have early electric clock mechanisms or have been modernised.
     "The clock at Melbourne Grammar School is a lovely old clock but it is controlled by a device that actually picks up its time from satellites - at two o'clock in the morning daylight savings time it changes to the right time on its own."
     Originally known as Ingrams Brothers, Ekselman's company built the Catani clock on St Kilda's Esplanade in the early 1930s. It was one of the early electric clocks, run by electric impulse movements.
     The clocktower is a memorial to Carlo Catani, who was largely responsible for the creation of the Esplanade. Catani was an engineer with the Victorian Public Works department from 1882 to 1917 and was a founding member of the St Kilda Foreshore Trust in 1906.
     Norman Schefferle designed the clock tower in 1930, taking inspiration from the Italian "campanile" (bell tower) in honour of Catani's birthplace, Florence. The unveiling ceremony was performed on August 22, 1932.
     Another local clock influenced by Europeans with vision is the famous floral clock, which was a gift from the watchmakers of Switzerland in 1966. The clock is in the Queen Victoria Gardens, off St Kilda Road.
     Its face, 10.5-metres in diameter, is replanted twice a year. Each design uses about 7000 plants, which need regular clipping (anything higher than 25cm restricts the hands).
     One of Port Phillip's oldest timepieces is at South Melbourne Town Hall. The clock, which was awarded first prize in horology at the 1880 International Exhibition held in Melbourne, was installed in 1881. Thomas Gaunt, of Bourke Street, built the clock, while Langlands Foundry cast the bell. Weighing one and a half ton, it outdid the Richmond Town Hall's clock bell as the largest yet made in the colony. The modern clock face is different to the original.
     The clock tower was repaired during major works last year with funds from Port Phillip Council and Heritage Victoria.
     Blank spaces instead of clock faces were visible on Port Melbourne Town Hall for nearly 10 years after construction in 1882. According to Pat Grainger, secretary of the Port Melbourne Historical Society, the mayor of the time, Philip Salmon, ran a fundraising drive for the clock.
     "He didn't do a good job of it and ended up paying for it himself," Grainger says. The clock was launched on St Patrick's Day 1891 and often showed the wrong time.
     The glass faces of the clock were badly smashed some years ago by kids taking pot shots with .22 rifles. Ekselman, of Ingrams Clocks, went up the clock tower and found the faces riddled with bullet holes.
     "There was nothing holding the clock face, and a good gust of wind, it would have fallen down and killed somebody," he says. The clock faces are now fitted with bulletproof poly-carbon. "You couldn't shoot a hole through that with a shotgun!"
     St Kilda Town Hall was designed to accommodate a clock but it never eventuated due to the Depression. However, there are some beautiful old clocks inside in rooms such as the mayor's office. There is an historical timepiece, of sorts, in the former St Kilda Railway Station. Like the timetable clocks at Flinders Street Station, it was a train time indicator rather than a traditional clock. The stationmaster would crank a vertical rod to change the time before each train.
     Despite damage caused by one of the fires during the years the station was unoccupied, staff of the former St Kilda Council managed to salvage the clock. The Metropol developer received the timepiece in 2001 and it was fitted with a modern electric clock mechanism.
     One of the most important clocks rests at the Melbourne Museum. The Melbourne Observatory bought the Frodsham Regulator Clock in 1865 from London's leading clockmaker Charles Frodsham. It was accurate to about a 10th of a second per day.
     Government astronomer Robert Ellery used the Frodsham in conjunction with a telescope to chart the stars of the Southern Hemisphere and set standard time in Victoria.
     The Observatory would drop a time ball at 1pm every day to give time to ships so that navigators could recalibrate their chronometers in order to correctly chart longitude on their voyage to Europe.
     The Frodsham Regulator also sent out signals by telegraph to update other Melbourne clocks. It was eventually retired in the 1920s.
     According to Ekselman, Melbourne's old clocks are still capable of keeping accurate time. Wrong time is usually due to power failures.
     Ekselman has "brand new spare parts that are 100 years old" sitting around his premises. "Most old clocks that fail very rarely need spare parts," he says. "They don't wear out. They need lubrication, cleaning and resetting. Once you motorise them they are pretty idiot-proof, they just run for years."
    

Written by:
Sandra Langdon ©

Published by:
The Emerald Hill Times, June 16 2004
Ph; (03) 8417 7000
email;   info @ metmedia.com.au

Reproduced with permission from   The Emerald Hill Times

Photography by:
Darren James, Peter Weaving, Sandra Walker and/or Orien Harvey.
(12 photos originally published in EHT)