POOR MAN’S HOBBY

Hokitika Guardian, 21 January 1927, Page 4

POOR MAN’S HOBBY

FIVE HUNDRED TIMEPIECES. SYDNEY. Jan. 13. All sorts .and conditions of men have all sorts and conditions of hobbies. Some men grow up with their hobbies and grow old with them, but whereas Joseph Quigg. caretaker of the Bunnerong cemetery, at Botany, near Sydney. is growing old with his. ho did not acquire it until he was in middlelife. And surely there is no hobby stranger than Quigg*s. It is the collection of clocks. In the 20 years he has l>een engaged in his hobby. Quigg has gathered together nearly five hundred specimens of the watchmaker’s art. His cottage is full of clocks and Watches, practically no two of them alike. SIX HOURS TO WIND.

Once Dir Quigg used to have them ali going, and the work ■of winding them took six hours one day a week. Not ail of them needed winding so often, for several clocks in the collection will run for a year without being wound. It was Quigg’s mechanical turn of mind and clever fingers which enabled him to gather so large a collection at so small a cost, for he is a comparatively poor man. Ho never

bought a watch or cock that was in good running order, hut found his bargo ins in salerooms, where often a number of clocks, apparently useless, would he knocked down to him .at a nominal price. He bought them, like dukes, ;tr two or three a penny. Once he pair! £3 for on English grandfather clock, and that is the most costly in his collection. though many others now ale far more valuable. For some of his clocks Quigg has had some tempting offers, but he loves them like children, and would not part with them. ANIMATED CLOCKS. Of musical clocks there are several, besides cuckoo clocks. One has a huntsman who steps out and sounds Ids horn at the hours, the blast being followed by a merry hunting tune. Another has a hoary monk, who heats a hell severely at the hour and half hour, while another has two bell-ring-ers, who pull laboriously at string ropes to tell the hours. Quigg’s love for the bizarre is shown in his choice of pendulums. One is made from what is said to he the key of the first prison van in Sydney, (another front a shoe of a pony killed on a Sydney racecourse. The 'Largest, clock is one that is stated to have been the first post office clock in this city. There is a clock built entirely of wood and dating from 1640. (another is said to have been at St. Helena during the time of Napoleon’s imprisonment there. The only really modern note in the collection is a working model of Charlie Chaplin and Diary Pickford. Every hour the former goes through the actions, of emptying a teapot over Diary Pickford’s picture hat.