Edison Gem unearthed

Placing a 110-year-old cylindrical record on an even older device with a metal acoustic horn, Geraldton-Greenough Historical Society member Stan Gratte wound it up, lowered the needle, and played a once-popular dance tune. Mr Gratte said the 1904 Edison Gem phonograph was a link to Chapman Valley’s early history. “It was donated to the society in probably the 1960s by Miss Saunders,” he said. “Miss Saunders was a single lady, a spinster, and she lived at the fettlers’ village of Howatharra which doesn’t exist any more.” Mr Gratte said this consisted of about half a dozen cottages. “She had a private house in that little village and she said they used to play it at dances,” he said. “There must have been a little hall there for them to have a dance.” Having the early piece of equipment but no cylindrical records, Mr Gratte said he contacted his friend George Landwehr in Harvey who donated several. “The horn wouldn’t fit on so I made a little adaptor for the horn,” he said. “But we found that most of the innards had been removed from the inside of it.” Rodney House and Richard Rennie of the Vintage Wireless and Gramophone Club in Perth then offered to repair it, but they could not find the necessary parts. “At Christmas time my old school friend’s mate Sam Goddard died and his family gave me a rusty old biscuit tin full of gramophone parts,” Mr Gratte said. “Rodney House dug through the tin and he found enough parts to finish up our little Gem with some parts that he had and we got it going.” Mr Gratte has curated a small collection of working phonographs and gramophones, some of which he donated himself, at the Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage Museum in Bluff Point.