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IN SEARCH OF UNCLE HARRY

TRACKING DOWN THE ELUSIVE T. H. ESLICK
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One of the few known pictures of T.H. Eslick.

"It is easily concluded that Thomas Eslick was indeed a man of countless facets and various aptitudes. Besides constructing Luna Park as well as the Cloudland dance palace, his amazing brainchild, his boasts about his unique abilities stretched to engineering, architecture, building and managing projects. As he tied such powers to the years prior to his supposed arrival in Australia, 1911, this oversight makes all his claims and counter-claims so wildly unbelievable. His latter boast, organising, suggested he possessed the skills as a self-publicist in the realm of the public domain and work relations. In such aptitudes as these, though, he had often displayed a canny facility."

James Lergessner - Cloudland: Queen of the Dancehalls (page 42).

A scene from the long-defunct Lotus Isle amusement park in Portland, Oregon - one of Uncle Harry's projects.

The period of the early 1900's through the beginning of World War 2 marked the golden era of amusement parks and these combinations of sideshows, carnival rides, entertainment, and dance ballrooms sprung up at locations throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia.

Among the prominent developers and promoters of these parks was one T. H. Eslick, AKA Thomas Henry Eslick, AKA Thomas Harold Eslick, AKA Tallemache Heriot Eslick, AKA Uncle Harry. Harry was married to the sister (Florence) of my grandmother (Ethel) and I would occasionally hear stories about him as I grew up in Oregon.

Florence Eslick (far right) and three of her four sisters (from the left): Ethel, Pearl and Mae.

In the last years of his life, my father passed on to me a slim file of information he had collected about his uncle - he always called him Uncle Harry and the name stuck with me. My father had long been intrigued by Eslick whom he characterized as the most interesting person on his side of our family. Although I have no recollection of Uncle Harry (who died when I was a young child in the late 1940's), I have clear memories of visiting my great-aunt Florence in Portland when I was growing up in the 1950's and early 1960's. When we dropped by to see her, we would often leave with an odd item or two that had been pulled from a chest full of curios that she and Thomas had somehow acquired in the their travels. These included such items as a copper bowl reputed to be from Pompeii, a small Egyptian statue of unknown antiquity and provenience, and a knife from Fiji that was made from a human femur. At the time of his death, Uncle Harry and Florence had moved back from Australia to Eugene, Oregon, and he was reportedly busy trying to put together yet another new project in the Blue River area of the Western Cascades.

I was able to track down a few shards of information about some of his projects in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, Australia, and in the United States in Oregon and California, but information was scant and the demands of my full-time job didn't leave much research time to spare. Now that I'm retired, I can hopefully finally satisfy some of my curiosity about Thomas Eslick and his escapades with amusement parks. I'll let you know what I find out ...

Eslick's most ambitious Australian project, Brisbane's Cloudland, survived from 1939 until its demise and demolition in 1982.

A VERY INCOMPLETE TIMELINE FOR UNCLE HARRY AND HIS PROJECTS: REAL AND IMAGINED

1877: Born Tollemache Heriot Eslick in Wales
1912: Luna Park - Melbourne, Australia
1913-1917: White City Amusement Park - Sydney, Australia
1924-1963: La Monica Ballroom - Santa Monica, California USA
1930-1932: Lotus Isle - Portland, Oregon USA
1939-1941, 1947-1982: Cloudland AKA Luna Park - Brisbane Australia
1948: Died in Oregon, probably in Blue River. Buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Leaburg, Oregon


RESOURCES: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF T.H. ESLICK

A sample of Uncle Harry's letterhead from his tenure in Australia.

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Finally, I leave you for now with this fascinating final Eslick project ...

ISLAND UTOPIA LURES LUNA PARK DESIGNER

Mr. T. H. Eslick, designer of Luna Park, is searching for people to join him in establishing a little commonwealth of perfect peace on a Utopian island in the Pacific.

First news of his quest is when an advertisement appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald describing “a permanent home in a Pacific island where life is lived easily - security, health, and contentment under blue skies and soft breezes in a community-owned non-profit commonwealth of intelligent people, who are tired or working to pay taxes, of living to please neighbours, of surrendering personal liberty to keep faith with a regimented, over-governed, soul-tiring civilization.”

Inquiries revealed that the advertiser was Mr. Eslick. In an interview in Sydney, he said: “I have spent my life visiting crowded cities in four continents. If civilisation is what we know to-day, then I’m better off without it. I spent years working in America and when I came back to Sydney in 1938 I found it had become a metropolis and King’s Cross a microcosm of the world’s dissipations. I don’t object to these things, but I have had enough of them.

“I want to make my dream a reality because I believe there are thousands of people like myself who are longing to float into a safe harbour of peace, content, and simplicity. If that is not so, then I shall still start an island community - just myself and my family”.

Mr. Eslick, who is an Englishman, has been the designer and constructing engineer of amusement parks in many parts of the world. His Australian Work includes Luna Park, Melbourne, and White City, Sydney, as well as Luna Park, Brisbane.

From an article reproduced from the Sydney Morning Herald, January, 1941, in Cloudland: Queen of the Dancehalls (page 69) by James Lergessner.

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03/01/2024

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