Page 26 - The Outdoor Showman October - December 2022

Eroni’s, a decade ago, traditional
Australian circus.
And that’s when Covid19 lockdowns hit - two years in Victoria.
It looked like the 170-year dynasty might come to an end.
Eroni’s holed up at Geelong. Tony drove semi-trailers to help pay the animals’ feed. Cathy looked after animals and assets.
Interstate shows were glad to book their two children, Kelley and Joseph, whenever they could show.
Kelley does six-ball bounce juggling, and is one of the country’s very
few girl rope-spinners.
Joe also does six-ball juggling, very fast whip-cracking, clowns and presents the
goats. The break came when Eroni’s won two successive bookings at Royal Toowoomba Show. They took two semis, tent, liberty horses, several trucks and vans, 1,500 kms each way from Victoria.
Friends pointed out, and Tony saw, all the surviving circuses were bigger, city-suburbs based, and needed two-week or longer stands.
That left country towns open, and fresh.
They opened at Springfield, the 50,000- population city that’s part of the old Ipswich City (population 250,000) on Friday, September16.
They advertised “traditional” circus. It is, and that’s just what local families wanted. It’s what they remember, before Covid.
It’s mostly very-well-practiced house acts: Kelley and Joe multiple acts, Tony
clowning, Cathy Ringmistressing back-stage, two good ring-waiters, good clowning, solo trapeze, descent rope and aerial hoop acts brought in from Brisbane, liberty horses and goats, smooth production with no gaps, good sound and a polished clown
car that spurts water in all the right places.
No globe or wheel of death, no flying trapeze.
Two 45-minute halves, goodly interval.
Everyone works happy, just what the family audience wanted. They loved it.
“We’re just thankful to be back performing,” Tony said afterwards.
So he should be. Not only had he kept his own show on the road, he had kept alive a 170-year family tradition. Everyone
in the business was happy for them.
By John MacDonnell
Barbara St Leon
The death was occurred in mid-October of Barbara St Leon, widow of the late Joe.
This closes a 100-year family history of highly-respected circus, film and show- business performers, across Australia, New Zealand and America.
Cousin Mark St Leon is the author of several histories of both the family and Australian circus, still available.
Gordon Lewis-Osmond
Gordon, who drove trucks and was
a general hand to many Australian circuses, died in QEII Hospital in Brisbane on Saturday the 8th of October 2022. Gordon was 73 years old.
Raised around Napier, he worked with most NZ showmen and some circuses, before he came to Australia about 40 years ago.
He’d been on kidney dialysis for several years, and gradually deteriorated. There was no funeral, by request.
Charlie Ridgway
Former New Zealand and Australian circus proprietor Charlie Ridgway died in hospital at Oakey, Qld in September.
Charlie’s father, Charlie Snr., with Bobby West, Merton Hughes and their families started Ridgway’s in New Zealand in 1949.
It became the Dominion’s main-stream circus over the next sixty years, with
two elephants, lions, chimps, monkeys, ponies, aerial trapeze, wire, clowning and a balanced two-hour program.
Charlie could do almost anything in circus. He’s best remembered for training and presenting Mr Muggins, the big chimp he brought to Australia in the 1990s, when he started his own Ridgway’s.
Poor health over recent years led to retirement at Oakey, first at the showground and later in town.
His widow, Carolyn, and stepson James and grandchildren led a small group for an intimate wake on a farm near Steve Robinson’s Darling Downs Zoo, Saturday, 8th October.
Mourners, mainly Kiwi-Australian show people Roy Richards, Jules Vaughn Honey and the Robinsons cast Charlie’s ashes over farmland, before adjourning to the zoo for the wake.
Pat Roberts
She was probably the last link between old circus and old showgrounds, back before World
War II. Everyone knew and loved her.
Born 26th March, 1937, the way it used to happen after The Great Depression, two- year-old Pat was raised lovingly by Captain Fred Ashton and Edna Fairborough, who ran the two-elephant Goldwyn Bros Circus.
By teenage, she performed as a dancer, solo trapeze artist, contortionist, all-round animal groom and circus hand.
A definite good-looker, with sparkling, friendly personality, she met and later
married equally-handsome respected showie, Doug Roberts.
Until death did them part, they and their growing family of four toured continuously in shows all over Australia.
If there was any showie or old circus hand anywhere on this continent, who didn’t know and like them, I’ve yet to hear it.
Years after Doug’s death, living on the Gold Coast, Pat kept in close touch with almost everyone in and out of the industry.
She succumbed after a long battle with cancer, on 5th September.
It was Royal Perth Showtime, but still more than 220 overflowed Allambie Memorial Park Parkview Chapel, Nerang- Broadbeach Road for the funeral service - a tribute to the respect the wide family and humanity Pat Roberts generated.
George Pink
More than 220 people over-flowed the Showmen’s Club, Yatala, Queensland, on Wednesday, October 19, for the funeral of former Showmen’s Guild of Australasia President, George Pink.
George had been in ill-health for the past two years. He was 78.
Short speeches were from his nephew Aaron Pink, President of the Showmen’s Guild of Australasia, and Angus Lane OAM, along with long-time show associates. The cortege went on to Logan Village Cemetery, and returned for a wake at the Showmen’s club.
24 THE OUTDOOR SHOWMAN