I'm sorry I combined these mistakes 3 times
I presented them to you in the first video
So I hope you enjoyed, please like the video
This is a creepy occasion.
There are lots of ghosts in the room tonight.
I don't know whether you're aware of them, but they're all around you, they're hovering,
and they'll stay with you, and they'll stay with the building that we're talking about
tonight forever.
Some of those ghosts look a bit strange to us.
They're all male because females had a hard time in that building.
They tended to work for others and be engaged in secret hero duties, but it was a male club
and has remained like that, I think, even into recent times.
So those ghosts, those male ghosts hovering around that building have a lot to tell.
Some of them are knights of the realm, or were knights of the realm.
Others quite humble men, down on their luck, shuffling around on street corners, spilling
out onto the roadway in King William Street during the great boom of 1887, just before
the exchange began.
At that time the stock exchange of Adelaide was conceived.
The brokers joined together, they realised that they would need to be united and to have
some sort of discipline.
Rafferty's rules at the 1873 Northern Territory boom couldn't survive any longer.
And they collected themselves together, organised themselves, set up rules of fair trading and
foul trading.
One or two of them wanted to observe the latter rather than the former and chose to settle
their differences out on the street outside.
And that was something that survived even later.
In fact, one of the old brokers told me that one of his distinctive memories as a young
fellow was going into McHenry Street and hearing two thuds.
The first thud was one broker striking another on the jaw, and the other thud was the other
broker hitting the ground.
So there was a raffish element to it, but from 1887 down to 1901 the brokers organised
themselves much more effectively, they disciplined themselves and out of that discipline came
the money, the capital, £8,000 to build the gem of the building tucked away there in McHenry
Street.
It's Federation style, it's red brick rather than stone, and that was unusual for Adelaide
at the time.
Remember this is a city where older colonial red brick is not so prominent as it was in
other cities.
Federation style, not so prominent here either.
But that building was brilliantly designed, it was very well built by a builder who already
had built the Elder Conservatorium, was working on other buildings, and he did a grand job
in the erection of the Stock Exchange building.
Some of the golden mile money through Sir George Brookman went into the window which
graces the building, and which as Dick Collison told me just a while ago had a hole punched
through it at the time of the Stock Exchange fire and being destroyed.
There are other fine features and they've still survived, cowery floors, and there's
a lovely draft instrument and arrangement so that cool air can be blown into the building.
One witch said it was necessary to do it because at times they have great despair, most people
need a cool draft of air blowing over them, and those cool drafts hit the brokers during
those declines in the booms and they occurred very quickly.
So the building that survives, one of the great gems of Adelaide, tucked away discreetly,
perhaps in keeping with Stock Exchange business, has survived to this day.
It tells many stories, it's got lots of ghosts, but one of the lovely things is that it's
survived and will have a new purpose.
And I think that new purpose would be in keeping with what people in the exchange always wanted
because despite the reputation some of them had, most of them wanted a better world.
And it's rather surprising often to realise that it was those brokers who, at the time
of the war war, or at the time of charitable enterprises contributed so much.
And I think it's fitting that this exchange building should now serve a higher purpose
perhaps to some, at least another purpose to others, but it's going to survive and I
think all the brokers in the Broking Fraternity, if I could speak for them, wish it will.
Thank you.
