Nellie the Elephant …

I write this as a comment and a reply to an article by John Connelly in the last Weekend Australian regarding Nellie the Elephant … as created by British inventor Frank Stuart.

I exhibited Nellie the mechanical Elephant at the London Olympia Antique Dealers’ Fair in 1998. She is shown here being ridden by my daughter Emma outside the Olympia venue prior to her sale to America.

The Americans have seemingly ruined Nellie’s integrity with a sex change but hopefully they have retained her 10 hp 4 cylinder Ford engine, started with a crank handle up her backside. The engine’s exhaust gases came out of Nellie’s trunk.

Nellie – now Wendell – was sold last weekend at auction for $275,000.

This may amuse some of TT’s readers …

http://cyberneticzoo.com/walking-machines/1947c-parradine-mechanical-elephant-parradine-british/

Meanwhile … here is a report from a magazine …

*John Hawkins is a Sandhurst-trained former British army officer, now an Australian resident of almost 50 years. For the past 14 years he has been enhancing the Bentley landscape in the Chudleigh Valley, Tasmania. He is well known for his two-volume standard reference on Australian Silver, and for his knowledge of the Life and Times of Erich Abetz.

• Larry Gavette, Michigan, in Comments: Just a minor correction or two to the previous comment. The Wendell/Jumbo elephant recently sold was not the elephant he references although they are brother/sister/siblings with Frank Stuart as originator. I used to own Jumbo, and have seen the Nellie mentioned, both in England in 1980 as well as here in Michigan where it resides since arriving in Pennsylvania in the mid ’90’s I believe. The two machines, Nellie being an earlier model based on the changes between their mechanics, were together last year at the auction at which Wendell was sold this year, the owners of Nellie having taken their pet for a ride so that two machines could be in the same place for the first time ever. (I have been fortunate to have been on three of the four existing models, and videod the electric version as well). The Hawkins elephant resides in Michigan yet as far as I know, but I am unsure as to who the new owner of Wendell/Jumbo is…yet. The last working model gas powered elephant is in Adelaide, used yearly in the Christmas Pageant (can be seen on youtube ) Julianne, the owner, is the daughter of the man who saved Nellie after John Martin department stores stopped using her in parades. I thank you for the continued interest in the elephants, a subject I have been researching since 1979, and thank you for crediting cyberneticzoo.com on your site. Reuben Hogget, the site developer passed away in April, but like the elephants the information he collected, collated, and shared, remains for others to enjoy and be amazed at.