Featured on the front page of The Canberra Times on this day in 1974 was a photo of a German fairground organ which was on display at the Civic Boulevard. Shoppers were intrigued by its features.
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The instrument, owned by Mr Allan Kale of Harbord, NSW, was imported from Germany by Mr Kale's grandfather in 1912 for use with a steam-driven carousel. The organ was built in 1898 by Gebruder Bruder and has 320 pipes. Mr Kale said a small single-cylinder steam engine had been used originally to drive the organ. He had restored the organ in 1972 using a half horse power electric motor instead of the steam engine.
The organ had been used at Circular Quay, Sydney, for the arrival of the US fleet, just before World War I, at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932, and between 1930 and 1936 had been used with a carousel at the annual Government House garden fete. Also on the same page, it was announced that Larry Pickering, a top cartoonist, had won the 1974 Walkley Award for the best newspaper cartoon published in Australia that year. It was the third time he had been named as the best cartoonist of the year. Pickering worked for The Canberra Times as a political cartoonist, where his early work coincided with the Whitlam and Fraser governments.
