Coogee Media

Ocean View on the corner of Alison Road and Arden Street Coogee (370 Alison Road) was completed in 1916 for Philip Wirth (1864-1937) of the Wirth Circus Family. It is a Federation style (Edwardian) two-story mansion (with a recently added lower level). It is a grand mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Coogee, with panoramic views from the highest point of the district.

Ocean View at 370 Alison Road, Coogee

When it was built, it originally stood on almost an acre of ground - a huge size for densely developed Coogee. During the 1960s, about a third of the land was used to build a three-story, red-brick block of 12 apartments with the address of 119 Arden Street. It used to bear the building name "Wirth Court", but was removed a few years ago following a change of ownership status. What remained of the land was divided again into a vacant block and the 1500 square metre block on the corner of Arden Street and Alison Road on which Ocean View sits.

Greatest Show On Earth
The Wirth name has a special place in Australian circus folklore. Billed as Australia's own "greatest show on earth", the Wirth Brothers' Circus was indeed one of the world's great circuses. The Wirth family's involvement in the circus business began in the 1870s when sons of a German immigrant, the Wirth brothers, began their show careers as members of their father's travelling band which grew into a huge entertainment business that toured Australasia and the world by train and ship until 1963.

Grand House
Ocean View was built to match the status of the great circus show. It boasted 6 spacious bedrooms all with ensuite bathrooms, it was said, an unheard of luxury for the times. Its spacious grounds and gardens also accommodated circus animals and equipment, such as a seal's tank.

Following a judicial separation in 1923, Mrs Wirth petitioned the divorce court for permanent alimony from Philip Wirth and described the house in these terms: The family lives very sumptuously and Miss Willis [Philip Wirth's second wife] dresses expensively, and entertains largely. Respondent's residence at Coogee is controlled by a big staff of servants, and is furnished without regard for expense. The house at Coogee, Ocean View, was furnished by Messrs. Beard Watson and Company, at a cost of nearly £2000.

Philip Wirth

When the Bulletin ran a 1963 article on the demise of the circus in Australia, it also carried an interesting description of Ocean View

Outside the 60,000 pounds Wirth Circus family house at Coogee, three white stone lions squat proudly staring defiance at the visitor. Ponies crop the parched grass of the three-acre lot, derelict power plants (one of them said to be powerful enough to light a town) stand idle, a seal cage with disused swimming tanks rusts quietly on silent wheels. The once beautiful garden, where passers-by reported seeing lions, tigers and leopards, is now run to seed. Yet inside the house itself, the Australian 1916 furniture, huge stuffed dolls used in riding acts, Queen Anne china, strange Maori carvings, and massive rooms (each bedroom with private bath) still carry an opulent and bizarre flavour of a better circus past.

Greatest Show on Earth? Wirth's Circus is bigger and better than ever exclaimed Melbourne's Age newspaper in October 1933. These justly famous showmen and animal trainers, it went on, spared no pains to attract the most thrilling acts of daredevilry and intrepid skills from the four corners of the world. Madame Prince had fifteen marvellous performing monkeys, and then there were the "Flying Nelsons" a team of unique aerial acrobats. There was a spectacular troupe of six women acrobats whose tumbling and somersaulting gradually increased in pace till it reached a riotous crescendo of frightening-like movement. The circus animals, the "menagerie" was always of great popular appeal. These included performing lions, trained by a Captain Flyger, wheeling and dancing elephants and horses, and tiny Shetland ponies with monkey jockeys. Aloys Peters: Man with an Iron Neck One of the most remarkable acts was that of Alors Peters, described as "the bravest man in the world", and the "man with the iron neck". Peters toured with Wirths during 1932 and 1933 and thrilled audiences with his dangerous "hangman's act" during which he climbed 75 feet to a platform suspended in the air, put an elasticised rope tied in a hangman's noose around his neck, and dived towards the ground. Audiences gasped in horror as he seemed to be certain to plummet to a certain death, only for the rope to snap back at the last moment, and Peters to settle down unhurt! Luck Runs Out - Accidental Death On October 23, 1943 while performing in St Louis, United States, Aloys Peters performed his last stunt in front of 5,500 spectators. This time something went wrong and the horrified audience watched as the rope fell taut and Peters desperately struggled for 20 minutes. St Louis firemen were able to cut him down and despite attempts to resucitate him, Peters was dead. He had married a fellow circus performer only four years earlier, and tragically his wife was in their dressing room when the drama unfolded. Just one of the fascinating - if grisly - stories that went into the rich tapestry of people and performances that made Wirths the circus to bring wonders of the world to Australia.

Elephants - Double Trouble
Stories abound in Coogee about the Wirths' keeping circus animals at Ocean View, and it is not long before the conversation will turn to the supposed burial of an elephant in its backyard.

A great deal of mythology surrounds the origins and life of a Wirth circus elephant dubbed "Princess Alice". In fact there were two elephants called "Alice" and their lives have been conflated into one by some reports.

One of the elephants, Princess Alice, was reported to have been born in 1789 in northern India but this is disputed. She was supposed to have been 152 years old at the time of her death. The Wirths liked to publicise her as the oldest elephant in captivity. Princess Alice had been in Regents Park Zoo where, according to Wirth legend, Queen Victoria let her son the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, ride her. Princess Alice came to Australia from England with Bostock & Wombwell's Circus and Menagerie, which opened in Sydney in July 1906. When Bostock & Wombwell's disbanded in Melbourne and sold its assets, William Anderson bought the elephant at auction and in 1906 shipped her to Sydney to provide rides for children at his amusement park, Wonderland City in Tamarama. By November 1908, Princess Alice was once again a circus elephant, having been bought by Wirths.

When not on the road as a circus attraction, Princess Alice sometimes joined another elephant named just 'Alice' in the backyard of Ocean View. Alice was a larger beast and used as a utility animal renowned for moving large loads. Alice, viewed across the fence to Ocean View's backyard, became a local Coogee celebrity much admired by beachgoers.

Elephant Ghosts
Princess Alice died at Wirth's Melbourne headquarters in 1941, and was buried in that city. Alice, the utility elephant, died in Coogee in 1956. She was said to have been buried in the backyard of Ocean View. Some locals say, if you listen closely, that you can still just hear Alice trumpeting and see her ghostly shape appear on dark nights.

End of a Dynasty
Australia's most outstanding circus continued to be run by Philip's family and was the only one permitted to travel in Australia during World War II, but on a reduced scale and with its itinerary limited by petrol rationing. Wirth's Circus flourished after the war, declined with the advent of television, and in 1963 disbanded.

When Marizles Wirth, the youngest daughter of the renowned ringmaster who built the house, died in 2007, the house was sold and new owners began a long and extensive restoration of the home - so that is beginning to look once again as one of Coogee's finest residences.

If you click on the link below you can watch a short video from the Australian National Film and Sound Archives that shows a theatrical play circus shot in the grounds of Ocean View in the 1920s. We see George Wirth and Philip’s wife Alice Wirth (nee Willis) arrive arm in arm; they are seated and entertained by an exotic troupe of performers. The young woman seen toe dancing and wearing a tutu is Philip and Alice’s fourth daughter, Madeline Wanda Wirth. After the play we see footage of Philip Wirth with some of his daughters (possibly, Eileen, Doris & Madeline) walking out front of his home with a white cockatoo is perched on his shoulder.

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