De Garis on one of his promotion tours for "Sun-Raysed"
Clement John ("Jack") De Garis (22 November 1884–17 August 1926) was an Australian entrepreneur and aviator. He worked in the dried fruits industry in the Sunraysia area around Mildura in the early 20th century, and was noted for his vibrant personality and colourful marketing style.[1]
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the largest country in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country by total area. The neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north; the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east. The population of 25 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, and its largest city is Sydney. The country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.
Dried fruit is fruit from which the majority of the original water content has been removed either naturally, through sun drying, or through the use of specialized dryers or dehydrators. Dried fruit has a long tradition of use dating back to the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia, and is prized because of its sweet taste, nutritive value, and long shelf life.
The Sunraysia is an ill–defined district, sometimes incorrectly referred to as an economic region, located in northwestern Victoria and southwestern New South Wales in Australia. The region is renowned for its sunshine, intensive horticulture including grapes and oranges, and grain farms. Its main centre is Mildura, Victoria.
Jack De Garis was the son of Elizee De Garis, a noted irrigationist, and the younger brother of Mary De Garis, a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery who served as a Chief Medical Officer of a field hospital in Serbia during World War I. Jack went to Mildura State School where he was described as an above-average student.[2] However, he left at the age of nine to work in his father's businesses in Mildura. He returned to school for his secondary education at his father's urging, boarding at Wesley College, Melbourne from 1899 to 1901, where he rose to become dux of his class.
Elisha Clement "Elizee" De Garis was an Australian irrigationist.
Mary Clementina De Garis (16 December 1881 – 18 November 1963) was an Australian doctor. During World War I she worked at the Ostrovo Unit in Serbia for the Scottish Women's Hospitals and after the war worked at Geelong Hospital in Australia. She was an advocate of antenatal and postnatal care.
Serbia, officially the Republic of Serbia, is a country situated at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe in the southern Pannonian Plain and the central Balkans. The sovereign state borders Hungary to the north, Romania to the northeast, Bulgaria to the southeast, North Macedonia to the south, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west, and Montenegro to the southwest. The country claims a border with Albania through the disputed territory of Kosovo. Serbia's population is about seven million. Its capital, Belgrade, ranks among the oldest and largest citiеs in southeastern Europe.
Described as being short in stature, he capitalised on an affectionate smile and a magnetic personality. He excelled in school cricket and football, in which, despite his size, being only 150cm (4ft 11in) tall and weighing only 43kg (95lb), he confounded opposition players and coaches.[2]
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a 20-metre (22-yard) pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striking the ball bowled at the wicket with the bat, while the bowling and fielding side tries to prevent this and dismiss each player. Means of dismissal include being bowled, when the ball hits the stumps and dislodges the bails, and by the fielding side catching the ball after it is hit by the bat, but before it hits the ground. When ten players have been dismissed, the innings ends and the teams swap roles. The game is adjudicated by two umpires, aided by a third umpire and match referee in international matches. They communicate with two off-field scorers who record the match's statistical information.
Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, or simply called Aussie rules, football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of eighteen players on an oval-shaped field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by kicking the oval-shaped ball between goal posts or between behind posts.
Career
De Garis' father, Elizee De Garis, had established a successful market garden business in Mildura from about 1885.[3] In 1908 the day-to-day business was left to Jack, and Elisha moved to Melbourne establish a selling agency for the business. Jack was just 17, but had a strong self-belief and effervescent charm. Theatrical entrepreneur Claude Kingston described him as the 'prince of ballyhoo'.[1]
De Garis expanded the business rapidly, and in 1910 borrowed heavily to establish a packing shed, Sarnia Packing Pty Ltd, which later became part of the Sunbeam Foods Group. In 1913 he borrowed again to purchase the 10,009-acre (4,050ha) Pyap Village Estate at Pyap, near Loxton in South Australia.[2] The estate was moderately successful as a farm produce settlement, but in 1921 it was broken up and sold to fund De Garis's Kendenup venture.[4] £23,000 was raised from the sale.
Pyap is a locality in the Riverland region of South Australia. It is on the left (south) bank of the Murray River about 7 km downstream from Loxton. It includes both flat land near the river and higher land away from it. The environment is dry, so vineyards and orchards are irrigated from the river. It lies on the Kingston Road from Loxton, at the junction with the Stott Highway towards Swan Reach.
Loxton is a town on the south bank of the River Murray in the Riverland region of South Australia. At the 2016 census, Loxton had a population of 4,568. It is a service town for the surrounding districts. The area near Loxton is a significant citrus fruit and summer fruit growing area. Loxton is also the main town for the northern part of the Murray Mallee which is a dryland farming and grain cropping area.
South Australia is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of 983,482 square kilometres (379,725 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, and fifth largest by population. It has a total of 1.7 million people, and its population is the second most highly centralised in Australia, after Western Australia, with more than 77 percent of South Australians living in the capital, Adelaide, or its environs. Other population centres in the state are relatively small; Mount Gambier, the second largest centre, has a population of 28,684.
In 1919, a shortage of shipping space hit the dried fruits industry which was, at that time, highly dependent on British markets. Realising his ability to market, the Australian Dried Fruits Association funded De Garis to undertake an Australia-wide American-style publicity campaign to increase domestic consumption.[5] He also expanded into book publishing, as well as producing the Sunraysia Daily newspaper in Mildura, which employed nearly 100 staff.
The Sunraysia Daily is a daily newspaper in the north-western Sunraysia region of Victoria, Australia. From its first publication in 1920 until 14 September 2007, it was published in broadsheet format, changing to tabloid-size the following day.
Also in 1919, De Garis exposed a con-man, with a 'rank but not-too-well-sustained American accent', named George Henry Cochrane. Cochrane wrote for The Bulletin as "Grant Hervey", and had recently been released from prison for forgery and uttering. Cochrane emerged in Mildura and presented himself to two thousand Mildura citizens, selling the idea that the town should secede from Victoria. He started receiving ₤5 subscriptions before De Garis revealed his true identity and criminal record.[6]
As part of his dried-fruits marketing De Garis travelled to Western Australia where, in 1920, he purchased the 47,000-acre (19,000ha) property of the Hassell family at Kendenup, for the purpose of building a new settlement to grow apples, potatoes and farm produce.[7] He subdivided the land into blocks ranging from 10 acres (4ha) to 60 acres (24ha), and set up the De Garis Kendenup (W.A.) Development Company, and the Kendenup Fruit Packing Company, which ran a dehydrating factory to process vegetables and fruit grown by the 350 settlers who he had encouraged into the area. In December 1921, De Garis was living there himself, and the enterprise was under way, with a townsite being established. However the settlement eventually foundered. It had insufficient capital and the lot sizes were uneconomically small. De Garis travelled to the United States to raise urgently needed capital, which was promised but was never forthcoming. After two years, only 30 settlers remained.
The collapse of the settlement was the subject of a 1923 Western Australian Royal Commission into Kendenup land schemes, in which fraud had been alleged.[8] De Garis was eventually cleared of any charges.
Artistic Endeavours
De Garis wrote a four-act military drama Ambition Run Mad, which was published both as a booklet and in serial form, in the Murray Pioneer newspaper in 1915.[9]
As part of his publicity campaign for the Australian Dried Fruits Association, De Garis engaged the services of popular composer Reginald Stoneham to put tunes to promotional lyrics he had written. The resulting Sun-Raysed Waltz was published as sheet music.[10] This collaboration must have enthused De Garis, as he and Stoneham then worked on an ambitious "mystery" musical comedy F.F.F., which had a short but successful season for Hugh D. McIntosh's Tivoli theatres in Adelaide, Perth and Melbourne in late 1920.
Aviation
De Garis described himself as an aviator, and he owned several aeroplanes, but the reality was that he employed pilots to ferry him between Australian cities to carry on his business interests. Nevertheless, in an era of pioneer aviation, his intense involvement was considered relatively dangerous, and at one stage he was asked by investors to refrain from use of aeroplanes for transport.
With his pilots, De Garis set several interstate flying records.[1] His first plane, which he acquired in June 1920, was a 90hp (67kW)Boulton Paul P.9, and was flown by pilot Lieutenant A.L. Lang (AFC).[11] Later in 1920, after the P.9 had crashed, De Garis purchased a Sopwith Gnu for £1,800. In July 1920 he employed Lieutenant Francis Stewart Briggs as his permanent pilot.[12][13] He also purchased an Airco DH.4.
De Garis's first major interstate flight was in the DH.4 from Melbourne to Perth, the first time Australia had been crossed by air from east to west, a distance of 2,169 miles (3,491km). The plane landed at Belmont Park Racecourse on 2 December 1920, after 19 hours 10 minutes. One stretch of 1,105 miles (1,778km) was done in 8¾ hours. De Garis, Briggs and their mechanic, Sergeant Stoward, were given a mayoral reception on their arrival in Perth. On 14 December they flew from Perth to Sydney, a distance of 2,462 miles (3,962km) in a time of 21½ hours.
Another notable flight was from Mildura to Sydney (5½ hours) and on to Brisbane (4 hours 50 minutes), in January 1921. Then, on 16 January, they set off on a one-day flight from Brisbane to Melbourne, leaving at 6:15 am and reaching their destination at 7:20 pm, a flying time of 10½ hours. Stopovers were made in Grafton, Sydney and Cootamundra.[14]
Decline
The Kendenup collapse coincided with a number of other financial failures within his empire. With mounting debts, he faked his own suicide by drowning in Port Phillip on 5 January 1925, having written almost seventy farewell letters.[1] His letter to Stoneham read:
"You will have the papers by now, and will have seen what has become of me. The strain has been too long and too strong, and I have cracked up under it. I hope, however, for the sake of dear Vy that my new song "Moonoloo", turns out a winner, for she will need to get every penny she can. Think as pleasantly as you can of me, who came nearer to being a big success than people think; and who consequently became the greatest failure. Regards and regrets.–De Garis." [15]
Suspicions that De Garis was still alive soon surfaced and he became the subject of an eight-day nationwide search. He was apprehended the following week after arriving in Auckland, New Zealand, on the SSMaheno.[1][16] On 17 August 1926, with debts of £420,000, De Garis committed suicide by gassing himself at his Mornington home.[2]
Shortly before he died, an autobiographical novelVictories of Failure: A Business Romance (1925) was published in which he described his life and business career in great detail under the pseudonym of "K.J. Rogers".[2][4]
De Garis married Rene (née Corbould) in September 1907 and they divorced in May 1923. The following month he married his former private secretary Violet (née Austin), with whom he had one daughter. De Garis is buried at Brighton Cemetery in Melbourne.[1][2]
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The Herald 13 & 14 January 1925, 17 & 19 August 1926.
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