Page 25 - eMuse Vol.9 No.08

Old Marconi’s dead
Knocked on the head
Goannas are glad
Children are sad
Old Marconi’s dead.
Playground rhyme 1922
The Good Oil

On a Popular Lizard Wizard Cure All

You’d think by the sound of his name Joe Marconi was of Italian
stock. You’d also be forgiven for thinking he had something to do
with the invention of radio. Joe was many things but he was not
either of these. He was a puppeteer, an astrologer, a showman,
an entrepreneur, an inventor, a rogue, a businessman and philan-
thropist.
Joe was born 21 April 1876 to Cornelius
Joseph Mahoney a cooper, and Eunice
Clara Proud in London. In 1886 the whole Brisbane Ekka 1017
family emigrated to Sydney and Joe as-
sisted his father in his building materials When the product was first manu-
business. factured real goannas were used. The
The world of show business beckoned dead goanna was split lengthways then
him and he became a member of a trav- laid on a piece of corrugated iron in the
elling vaudeville and puppet show crew sun. Oils and fats were collected as they
and adopted the stage name of Marconi. oozed from the corpse. Perhaps not a
During this period he managed Lyn Vane’s sophisticated technique but one well
snake bite act and was associated with within the reach of bush kids seeking a
“Professor” James Morrissey who also bit of pocket money. They bottled the
toured with snakes. The Professor sold a Showman August Eichorn oil and sent it to Joe at Bulimba.
snake bite specific “cure.” allowing himself to be Some Aborigines claimed this tech-
During his association with Vane and bitten on the neck by a nique of extracting the oil destroyed its
Morrisey, Joe assisted in the collection of brown snake to demon- curative properties.
native plants that they both used in their strate the effectiveness of Jim Morrisey’s However that point became irrel-
“secret antidotes”. Snake Bite Antidote. evant in 1918 when the Queensland
According to legend, these plants were Government declared the goanna a pro-
supposed to be those which goannas sought if they were bitten by tected species in some areas. Today the only contribution goannas
snakes. (Sounds similar to the plot in Banjo Paterson’s poem “John- actually make to the product is the name itself.
son’s Antidote doesn’t it. One wonders if Banjo was influenced by For the rest of his life Joe ran a successful business and his mod-
this story.) ernised product is still available. After his death, Joe’s family con-
In the process of collecting plants, Joe claimed he learned from tinued manufacturing the product until 1982 when they sold the
Aborigines about the healing properties of goanna fat. They used business to the Brisbane based company, Herron Pharmeceuticals
goanna fat, especially that from the kidneys, to dress cuts and which is now part of Sigma Pharmaceuticals company. Sigma have
wound as well as for stiffness in muscles. since moved the manufacturing part of the business to Victoria.
By 1910 Joe set up a manufacturing business in Brisbane, first at Joe’s life came to an untimely end in what we would call a “cow-
Paddington and later he moved to Bulimba. ard punch today.
Being a skilled entrepreneur and showman, Joe’s product sold As reported in the Brisbane Courier-Mail Monday, 23 October
like hot cakes. People quickly grew confident in his bush remedy 1922: “Mr. J. C. Marconi, the well-known manufacturer of certain
with ingredients including oils distilled from eucalyptus, herbs and ointments, received fatal injuries during a fracas in Elizabeth-street,
goanna fat. near the Sovereign Hotel, about 5 o’clock on Saturday afternoon.
Goanna salve was claimed to bring relief to sufferers of ailments Mr. Marconi received a blow which felled him to the ground. He
from arthritis to varicose veins, from dandruff to catarrh and pre- was unconscious, so the Ambulance Brigade was summoned, and
mature baldness and infantile paralysis (polio). A great advertising after giving first aid removed him to the General Hospital, where he
myth was that the product’s remarkable penetrating qualities were was admitted, but died about 6.30 the same evening.”
so great that they could not be contained in a glass bottle. Joe’s assailant, Arthur Eddington, was caught and arrested by
Joe’s product was familiar to Australian troops during World police. After a hung jury in the first trial, he was tried a second time
War I. It was said to be as “welcome in the trenches as a flask for the unlawful killing of Marconi and found guilty, although the
of Scotch. Diggers used it to soothe their piles, clean foot sores jury recommended clemency because the death resulted from a
and lubricate their guns.” Joe said, “Any goanna that died between melee.
1914 and 1918, died for its country.” Eddington was sentenced to a year’s hard labour.
August 2020 eMuse 25