Back in 1934 and 1935, the City of Albury received a number of Dutch Uiver-related gifts.
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There was no municipal museum, so none were catalogued and their provenance not recorded.
The municipal Library Museum opened in 2007, and in 2014, the quest began to reconstruct the story behind each of these objects.
CLAY-LIKE UIVER PLAQUE
One was a clay-like round plaque with a central KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Douglas DC-2 Uiver aircraft.
Below this is a shield, on either side of which there is a rampant crowned lion from the coat of arms for the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Around the perimeter of the plaque are the words "London Melbourne Race", the dates and total flight time for the Uiver.
One of the mysteries confronted was whether the Uiver plaque came from the Netherlands or the Netherlands East Indies. How and when did it get to Albury? What is it made of?
IN OTHER NEWS
All that was known was that it did not replicate the KLM logo, and therefore had nothing to do with KLM.
Additionally, it must have been in Albury by March 20, 1935, the date upon which Albury photographer Duncan McPherson took a photo of Dutch gifts and their recipients, including mayor Alfred Waugh representing the City of Albury. The photo included the plaque.
The Dutch National Museum of Flight, Aviodrome, has a plaque that is identical with the one in the Albury Library Museum, but with one exception - the Albury plaque's central shield had been signed by the four Uiver crew members.
Like Albury, Aviodrome had no provenance details for its plaque.
ON THE CASE
Recently, Aviodrome aviation historian Will Porrio began checking Netherlands East Indies digitised newspapers for clues.
He successfully located an issue of a Batavia newspaper, De Kourier, dated March 21, 1935, which contained many answers. It even published a letter from Albury mayor Alfred Waugh, written by him upon his return to Albury on February 5, 1935 from a goodwill trip to Java with the president of the Albury Racing Club and local solicitor, Frederick Tietyens.
Porrio also discovered an article in a Semarang newspaper De Locomotief dated November 6, 1934, which gave details of the planned signing of the plaque by the Uiver crew.
ORIGINS EXPLAINED
It transpires that soon after the Uiver reached Melbourne in the London to Melbourne MacRobertson International Air Race on October 24, 1934, Mr Burgers of Bandeong in Java commissioned well-known sculptor A. Maas from Djamblang near Cheribon, Java, to create an Uiver plaque. Several identical plaques were sculpted from French limestone.
By pre-arrangement, Uiver crew members signed at least one of the plaques during their stay in Bandoeng from November 9-14, 1934, while on their return flight to the Netherlands.
Albury mayor Waugh then visited Bandoeng on January 14, 1935.
It was then that one of these plaques was offered to him.
However, because of its size and weight - and the fact that Waugh and Tietyens were on a motor tour of Java with Soerabaja in East Java as their ultimate tour destination - it was inconvenient for him to take the plaque with him.
Instead, arrangements were made for the plaque to be delivered to the senior marine officer on board S.S. Nieuw Holland, Commander C.M. Schilling, at Batavia, on its arrival from Singapore on January 20, 1935.
The Nieuw Holland departed Batavia on January 21 for Soerabaja and on January 24, departed Soerabaja for Bali.
On January 25, 1935, when the Nieuw Holland reached Bali, Alfred Waugh, who had caught an earlier steamer from Soerabaja to Bali, boarded it, and Commander Schilling gave Waugh the plaque.
The steamer then sailed to Brisbane and Sydney, reaching Sydney on February 4, 1935. There, Waugh and Tietyens disembarked.
As far as is known, the plaque eventually reached Albury on February 5, 1935, along with Alfred Waugh. And so, a mystery is solved!
GRAND HOTEL PREANGER MENU
Immediately to the top right of the French limestone Uiver plaque in the Duncan McPherson photo is a rectangular paper object.
What is it? Will Porrio again came to the rescue.
Based on a digitally enhanced and greatly enlarged version of that part of the photo, he identified the object as an Uiver menu from the Grand Hotel Preanger in Bandoeng.
The image in the McPherson photo matched one of these menus held by Aviodrome. It was for a grand lunch held at the Grand Hotel Preanger on November 9, 1934, in honour of the Uiver crew.
The image in the McPherson photo matched one of these menus held by Aviodrome.
It was for a grand lunch held at the Grand Hotel Preanger on November 9, 1934, in honour of the Uiver crew.
Porrio's identification solved the first part of a second mystery.
But why was something that was not a gift in Duncan McPherson's photo? To whom did it belong and how did that person acquire it?
An item of this kind was not held by the City of Albury.
Alfred Waugh, in his letter to H.J. Burgers in Bandoeng published on March 21, 1935, in De Koerier, mentions Bandoeng's "first-class hotels", which would include the Grand Hotel Preanger.
As the Uiver crew stayed there, it is highly likely that Waugh and Tietyens did too.
What is likely is that during their stay at the hotel, its proprietor George J.P. André, repeated for Waugh and Tietyens the repast he turned on for the Uiver crew just over two months earlier.
In that case, one of the dishes consumed by Waugh and Tietyens would have been kangaroo tail soup of Albury.
It is no wonder that upon Waugh and Tietyens' return to Australia, Waugh pronounced that they had been treated like princes.
Porrio's identification of the Grand Hotel Preanger Uiver menu in the McPherson photograph was the key to solving the second mystery.
It turned out the menu was given to Alfred Waugh when dining on January 14, 1935, and brought back to Albury by him.
The Albury Library Museum has since acquired Uiver pilot Jan Moll's copy of the Grand Hotel Preanger Uiver menu.