The hero of this story is Richard Ford, arguably one of the town’s most well known and revered artists. He was born in 1875 the second son of a Cornish miner and a miner’s daughter, one might say he had mining dust in his veins.

Over the course of a long life he was a council foreman, horticulturalist and park curator. In addition to these many talents he was a prolific painter. Where Ford received his artistic training is unknown but his skills were considerable.

Richard brought his young family to Clunes from Dunach near Talbot in about 1910.

In Clunes, he established himself as a talented artist, producing several townscapes. He executed works of Clunes and its surroundings very much in the tradition of English landscape painting, casting the town in a soft bucolic light. (4) An interpretation which was in great contrast to the many photographs of the period featuring rickety shacks, industrial-scale mining operations and denuded hills.

He also painted still lifes and, in later life, created smoke-etched plates of scenes including the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings and Captain Cook’s Cottage. We recently received a number of these items from Richard’s grand-niece. Many of his artworks are in private collections in Clunes and elsewhere.

However, this particular story begins in about 1916, when he worked as Foreman for the Clunes Borough Council. In this capacity he was tasked with re-arranging the stage and décor of the Clunes Town Hall.

The Town Hall is itself a work of some significance, originally built in 1873, was designed by Percy Oakden, and features a decorative ceiling and lunette windows. Anecdotally, it is modeled on the Great Hall of the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings.

A century ago, town halls were one of the main spaces for regional dwellers. There, people would gather to dance, listen to music and watch plays. And the proscenium framing the stage was as essential as chairs and lights. Generally, stage decor featured a painted backdrop, movable wings and a physical proscenium arch.

Unfortunately, no images of the stage before Richard’s work have been retained.

With his artistic talent, Richard was ideally placed to carry out the work, and in collaboration with the Borough Engineer, he set about this task with a will, submitting an estimate of £14.16s.9d together with sketch plans to the Council, which approved the expenditure on 7th June 1916.

Work was carried out over several weeks, resulting in what we see today, (some 109 years later) a grand panoramic back wall, depicting a paved patio bracketed by neo-classical balustrades looking out over a sumptuous lake and dramatic mountains, side wings and a front oleo cloth. The duck cloth for the oleo drop alone was purchased for the then princely sum of £2.10s.

It was also around this time that the stage was widened and deepened, with the addition of a pressed tin proscenium arch, plus infrastructure to support the wings and arch. The new stage fittings were opened by the Mayor, Cr Rowe, in November 1916.

Needless to say the council and town loved the final result and many spoke in “..most eulogistic terms of the fine painting executed by Mr Ford,” as reported by the Clunes Guardian and Gazette. In response: “Ford said he could hardly express his feelings. He had done the work to the best of his ability and he was pleased to know that his efforts had been appreciated.”

The new décor featured an ‘oleo drop’ – an Oleo being ‘a vaudeville number, a short dance or song, or a set of same, performed as a filler, solo item, or encore after a performance’. By extension an oleo is any flown painted drop. In our case, the front, or oleo drop, is stored on a roller above the proscenium arch, and would have been regularly used as a roll backdrop for a solo performer – ventriloquist, magician, singer, etc, while the main stage was reset for the next act. The term is often applied to a decorative front curtain used in vaudeville. Without the luxury of a fly tower, the cloth is rolled up and brought in by pulley.

Popular during the heyday of Vaudeville from the 1880s to the 1930s, oleos were typically canvas curtains that were attached at the top to a tube formed from timber battens and at the bottom to a tail batten. An oleo drop – also called an oleo curtain, roll drop or simply an oleo – is designed with colourful murals or paintings. Oleos became a popular stage element in vaudeville acts and variety entertainment shows because of their simplicity and ease of use.

Ours is a particularly fine example, as Richard managed to squeeze in many landscape elements with his design, featuring a sweeping panorama of a presumably fictional landscape, with castles, a fishing village, tropical forest, white cliffs and a very tranquil seashore. The panel was made up of several pieces joined vertically.

Over the years, this cloth has been damaged through regular use and was taken away and conserved in 2010. It is now stored permanently above the pros arch and only very rarely rolled down as it is, understandably, quite fragile.

The side wings, or legs, are set on swivels, so that one may view either a continuation of the countryside panorama featuring sturdy oak trees thick with foliage or smaller vignettes of subjects such as native flowers and swaggies by water holes, complete with deer and snowy mountains. With the flick of a latch, the stage could go from a European theme to Australian theme in moments.

Several years later, on the side wall of the Town Hall, Richard also painted a magnificent Rising Sun emblem, commemorating the “…Glorious Part Played by Clunes and District Boys”, with no mention of the girls who also did their bit.

Clunes Museum recently engaged Neil Newitt Photographer to document these various decorations, so that we may have a permanent record.

In his retirement, Richard taught woodwork (called ‘Sloyd’) at the Clunes Higher Elementary School.

Throughout his life, Richard was a keen gardener and is seen in his beloved garden in Smith Street, Clunes where he died peacefully in 1961.