Elephant-spotting in Olde Sydney Town
By the middle of next year there will be no more elephants in Australia's largest city, Sydney. This is a good thing. But, until the 1950's it was possible to glimpse an elephant or six on the streets
Hello Friends,
I recently attended a fascinating presentation by historian Mark St Leon, a descendant of the famous St Leon circus family. His talk was on early pleasure grounds and menageries in Sydney. During questions, a discussion surfaced about whether any elephants had been buried around Sydney.
Elephants buried around Sydney?
My ears pricked up. I asked Mark if he would mind if I wrote a post on the subject. He agreed and shared some research and images. I soon discovered the history of ‘imported’ elephants is a colourful narrative spanning more than a century.
Elephants are such majestic creatures. And so far from home. People would have read about them in books and encyclopaedia. Imagine the excitement of a circus or a zoo, however questionable we’ve come to regards these institutions now. So I decided to make this a two-part essay about elephants who may have been sighted on the streets of Sydney at one time or another. The series features much loved pachyderms or elephas maximus indicus, Jessie, (a bit about Jumbo) Princess Alice and Alice. The posts are longer than usual. But I hope you enjoy them.
On 1 December 1883, the Sydney Daily Telegraph reported on the arrival of a steamer from the Calcutta Zoo via Melbourne carrying a female Indian elephant (and thirty-eight mongeese). There was comedy at the wharf when the elephant was packed into a van, only to step out before the vehicle doors could be properly bolted. From there Jessie, as she was named, continued to delight the crowds. She was bound for the Zoological Gardens, then situated in a part of eastern Sydney called Moore Park. The news report put her weekly food bill at £6 (now $900) and her age at seventeen years. Jessie arrived with two mahoots or handlers from the Calcutta Zoo. She was already well-trained. According to zoo officials, “she (would) lie down, roll over, and do a great many other things at the word of command, no stick of any kind being necessary.”1
At the zoo, Jessie joined her co-worker Jumbo, a male, and a gift from the King of Siam (Thailand). Jumbo had landed in Sydney three months earlier. Unlike Jessie, Jumbo’s reputation suffered a major blow after he attacked his keeper in 1894.2 After that, Jumbo was quietly retired.
Apart from life as a zoo exhibit, Jessie’s role, was to carry passengers around a circuit for the price of two pennies. Visitors mounted a ladder to reach a seat called a howdah while the handler steered the elephant. In 1891, the popular elephant rides reportedly earned the zoo more than £680 a year (more than A$100,000 in today’s terms) suggesting 81,677 rides3.
Jessie, not surprisingly, won the hearts of all who visited Moore Park Zoo. But the zoo itself was not to last in that location (now known as Centennial Parklands, a sprawling green reserve eastern Sydney). The Moore Park zoo was beset by problems. There was a flood due to a burst water main. Then drought. At one stage neighbouring residents complained to the Department of Nuisance about a ‘stench’ emanating from food-preparation yards behind the public zoo. In 1902, the zoo closed for six weeks due after the kangaroos contracted bubonic plague. In addition there was the constant pressure of a growing zoo and a finite amount of space. In 1911 a decision was made to move the zoo across the harbour to a verdant headland in the suburb of Mosman. A new state-of-the-art facility, Taronga Park Zoo, was opened in 1916 complete with a fabulous Elephant Pavilion. Lucky Jessie.
The new zoo opened seventeen years before the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In those days the only way to get to the northern side of Sydney was by vehicle and ferry boat. So this is where Noah’s Ark met The Long March. All the animals in the zoo had to be moved. Many of the smaller animals and birds could be transported by van, a 12.5 kilometres (7.77 miles) to the new premises. But Jessie weighed four tons and zoo officials were concerned she would not take the journey well.
On an autumn morning, Sunday 24 September 1916 at about half-past five in the morning, Jessie walked out of the zoo gates for the first and last time. In attendance were her keepers and a zoo official following behind in a motor vehicle. This would have been at dawn; not too early for a few surprised inner Sydney residents to open their curtains, rub sleep from their eyes only to glimpse this odd procession.
The newspaper reported, “now and again, when any strange object boded danger, she (Jessie) would feel around her with her trunk to make sure that the two keepers were beside her. A pat on the shoulder, or a reassuring grip on her ear, and she would pass through narrow streets or across tram rails, with a nervous glance to either aide.”
It took about thirty minutes for the group to meander downhill through the city streets to the site of what is now the Sydney Opera House on the iconic harbour foreshore. From the Fort, the procession boarded the Kedumba, a vehicular ferry owned by the Sydney Ferries Company. No cars or passengers joined them. Kedumba steamed across the harbour reaching Taronga Park wharf just before 7 am. There was a moment of hesitation when Jessie stepped onto the landing pontoon and it began to dip under her enormous weight. But despite the lapping water, she was urged to keep moving until finally reaching the solid deck of the wharf.
At Taronga Zoo, Jessie was a star attraction. A much-loved veteran for fifty-six years until her death in September 1939.
In 1936 Taronga Zoo celebrated Jessie’s 64th birthday with many adoring fans, a big cake (which Jessie enjoyed an elephant-sized slice of) and plenty of flashing cameras. A year later, she began to lose her sight and was officially retired from carrying passengers. There were more birthday parties to which thousands of gleeful children were invited, but Jessie by now, yesterday’s news. The attention was now on cute baby Sarina, the new elephant. The papers reported that Jessie’s ‘worth’ had depreciated from £750 (A$114,000) to just £50 (A$7,600). Fortunately, she couldn’t read the newspapers.
Publicly, there was no fanfare when Jessie died in 1939. Her demise rated a tiny ninety-five word column in the newspapers, saying that she had been put down by the zoo veterinarian and then cremated.
You can still see Jumbo’s skeleton in the Australian Museum in Sydney where it’s on permanent display. In 2021, an exhibition called How To Move A Zoo told the story of Jessie’s walk through the streets of Sydney, onto a ferry and to her new home at Taronga Zoo. Earlier this year, a children’s book was published telling the 1916 story for youngsters.
Thanks for reading, friends. Part 2 will come later this month.
Sydney Daily Telegraph 1/12/1883 page 7
After attacking his keeper, Jumbo was confined to his enclosure for the next two years and died of natural causes on 18 January 1896. After his death, his skeleton and hide were sold to the Australian Museum in Sydney.
From the publication, The First One Hundred Years of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales 1879-1979 by J.H. Prince
With thanks to Mark St Leon, the Randwick & District Historical Society for hosting the presentation, and the City of Sydney Archives.
Other sources: National Library of Australia (Trove)
NSW State Archive Collection:
https://mhnsw.au/stories/general/jessie-elephant/
https://mhnsw.au/stories/general/story-how-move-zoo/
My wife’s gran and great aunt (now 104) used to have elephant rides at Taronga Zoo when they were little girls in the 1920s.
They certainly were different times Jane. I remember the elephant rides at Melbourne Zoo when I was a child. The elephants certainly must have been a sight strolling through the CBD