Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

Warne. In 1882 it was set aside as a place of public recreation and described in a Guide for Excursionists from Melbourne as a ‘gem amongst the jewels of nature’s scenery.’ 46 Royle noted: ‘The roads were very bad indeed. Went to the top of the gully and had a very fine view.’ On 7 January the party crossed to Tasmania. 47 They travelled from Launceston to Hobart on a single-line train track, and Royle recorded: ‘The curves on it are simply a caution, the end of the train in many cases being only a few yards from the engine.’ At the Lower Domain Ground, a ‘very funny ground for cricket, but beautifully situated’, they beat eighteen of the Southern Tasmania Cricket Association by six wickets, Lucas making 26 and 45 not out and taking five wickets. On the first evening of the match, they attended the Hobart Town Assembly Ball and, on the second, Governor Wells’ ball at Government House, both given in their honour. On 12 January they returned to Launceston and in the evening went to see a waterfall called the Cascade but ‘we had rather a steep hill to climb which was very hard work after dinner’. Perhaps it was all rather too much for Lucas, because in the next match, against Eighteen of the Northern Tasmania Cricket Association, he made a duck. There was not time for the Tasmanians to complete their second innings, so Haygarth in Scores and Biographies recorded the match as a draw, but Royle thought that ‘as it was only a one-day match we won easily’. After returning to Melbourne, the tourists left for Sydney and on 19 January stopped off at Wagga Wagga, dismissed by Royle as ‘a very dusty place.’ It had been the home of Arthur Orton, the infamous ‘Tichborne claimant’, who in the 1860s had tried unsuccessfully to pass himself off as the missing eleventh Earl of Tichborne. It was only in 1874, after a prolonged trial, that he was found guilty of perjury and imprisoned for fourteen years. Doubtless intrigued by the coincidence with his father’s forename, Bunny visited Orton’s former butcher’s shop at Gurwood Street, but found that it had become a doctor’s surgery. Arthur Orton was the son of a Wapping butcher and had nothing to do with Orton Lucas. The small town of Wagga Wagga later became famous for producing a remarkable number of top-class sports players, including the cricketers Mark Taylor, Michael Slater and Geoff Lawson. The party arrived in Sydney the next morning, and ‘were driven in a drag and 4 horses to the Exchange Hotel, Gresham Street, where we were very glad to get a wash, etc and a good breakfast. It rained the whole day.’ On 24 January began a match with New South Wales. It was pretty even throughout and on the fourth day the home side still needed 110 with five wickets in hand, but ‘after lunch our fielding was atrocious, missing several chances’, so Charles Bannerman and Hugh Massie knocked off the runs The Australian tour, 1878/79 49 46 From Daniel Catrice, Victoria’s Heritage: The Fern Tree Kiosk, Victoria Parks Service, c1996. 47 Some of the detail in this paragraph differs from that in Haygarth’s Scores and Biographies. I have preferred Royle’s account because it was written at the time.