Page 14 - CinemaRecord Edition 3-2003 #41

Glenelg Beach

Memories

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By POSTSCENIUM A great deal more history steeped the vicinity of our
shelter. Near the alley, mounted on the wall of a beachside
aves were crashing over the seawall at Glenelg Beach
mansion, was air-ace Jimmy Melrose’s propeller. Next to the
Win metropolitan Adelaide. It was late 1948. I was four
jetty was the Glenelg Town Hall, where Glenelg Animated
years old and sheltering in an alleyway behind my mother
Pictures/Glenelg Theatres Limited screened movies
and grandmother.
occasionally.
Eventually, section-by-section the seawall succumbed.
Behind the town hall were the sideshows, with the beach
Then the jetty and the associated sea water baths. As I
on one side and the lawns of Colley Reserve on the other. In
watched I tried to re-imagine the story of the building of the
fine weather the carousel spun to plenty of oorn-pah-pah
wall; how a very narrow gauge steam engine pulled wagons
emanating from its mighty Wurlitzer; Lipizaner horses
of fill back and forth along the new sections. Now the jetty
prancing to the Blue Danube.
at the birthplace of European settlement of South Australia
At one time a less than salubrious outdoor cinema had
shamefully displayed its landward and seaward sections.
occupied the southern or town hall end of the reserve at the
rear of a Moseley Square café. A second outdoor cinema
was nearby on the beach itself. East over Colley Terrace
from the reserve had stood the beautiful Glenelg Theatre
(1917) with its fotoplayer organ. From 1945 to about 1960
this theatre became the Seaview, then a bowling alley. Now
it is the site of an apartment block.
Immediately behind the Glenelg, in a house owned by a
relative, lived for a time my dear old dad, and close by had
lived great-grandfather Tolley. A Lieutenant and Mrs. Tolley
were listed as being present at the opening of the Glenelg
Theatre; great grand-dad however had died young in the
1890’s, having been dux of Trinity Hall College at Cambridge.

Photos: Steam train at Glenelg’s Moseley Square with the
Rendezvous Cafe and (left) its open-air theatre bio box.

14 2010 CINEMARECORD