A Long Gully resident has welcomed recognition of a local hero’s achievements with the Shackelton expedition, saying it was important at a time when much of the suburb’s history was being lost.
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Richard Richards sailed on Ernest Shackelton’s 1914-16 expedition to the Antarctic, was marooned for two years there and helped save scurvy-riddled comrades.
His achievements have been honoured with a plaque on the grounds of a former Long Gully School near to where he grew up, thanks to funding from CVGT Australia and the lobbying of local men George Ellis Snr and his son.
Mr Richard’s party was stationed with the Ross Sea party they were tasked with meeting the Shackelton party on the other side of the continent once the crossing was finished.
Ross Sea party suffered extreme privations. As scurvy set in Mr Richards and two others helped weakened dogs pull sleds, even carrying a man piggyback back to base camp.
Mr Richards was later given several awards including the Albert Medal for devotion to duty.
Mr Ellis was a member of the now defunct Long Gully History Group, which was set up to instill in residents a sense of pride in the history of the suburb.
He feared people were forgetting the suburb’s contribution to history.
Over time Long Gully’s geographic size had diminished as newer parts of town developed. Those living in what remained now often wrote their address as “Bendigo” for postal purposes.
With that shift people’s sense of history had been ignored.
“The people who lived here (in Long Gully) and who made Bendigo have all been forgotten,” Mr Ellis said.
Mr Ellis said Mr Richards and his family was part and parcel of Long Gully.
He was the son of a Cornish miner – one of many who moved to the area in part because of it’s proximity to major quartz seams, with suburbs then known as Long Gully responsible a vast proportion of the city’s total gold production.
He was a physicist by training, perhaps pushed by his family into further study to avoid the dangers of the mines.
“There was a saying in Long Gully at that time that ‘at 18 the boy goes down the mine, 20 years later we bury the man’,” Mr Ellis said.
Mr Richards died in 1985 at Point Lonsdale aged 92, after a career culminating as director at the Ballarat School of Mines, now known as Federation University.