Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Captain [he was a sailor] Gus [Augustus] Pierce [i.e. Peirce], American variety tent theatre entrepreneur and photographer

Captain [he was a sailor] Gus [Augustus] Pierce [i.e. Peirce], American variety tent theatre entrepreneur and photographer

1872
Glass photonegative

Gus Peirce (Pierce) was an American captain of Murray River steamers, who wrote a book of his adventures in Australia. He toured the goldfields with a panorama show, but soon after the first big rush at Hawkins Hill in 1871, he returned to Hill End and set up a tent theatre. Peirce was also a competent draughtsman and claims to have made £12 to £15 a day [25 times a miner’s wage] surveying and drawing mining claims, but that may be an exaggeration. He stayed in Hill End for eight months, building a three-room wattle and daub cottage for his family.

From The South Australian Advertiser, 13 Sept 1877

An advertisement for his show:

Captain Gus Pierce, The great American Clam Judge, The United States’ Fig Eater, The illustrious Murray Circumnavigator and Flat Boat Commodore, The Stanley of Inland Victoria, The Prestidigitator, Lecturer, Ventriloquist, Humorist, and often-ist, has volunteered his valuable services for this occasion, and will give his screaming side-splitting convulsing heart-rending sketches of Life and Character, entitled, ‘THE POCKET MIRROR HELD UPSIDE DOWN TO NATURE.’... Come and see this great Nautical, Comical, Historigraphical, Incomprehensible Delineator, ‘THE SPHINX OF THE 19th CENTURY.’ At the serene hour of 10 o’clock p.m. the attenuated but sylph-like form and 7 x 9 countenance of the martyr will gradually heave in sight, whereupon his sufferings will commence and endure for the space of 30 minutes. [The South Australian Advertiser, 13 Sept 1877, p1]