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March, 1918: Alick Wickham, AKA: 'Prince Wikyama', completes a world record high dive in Yarra Bend Park in front of 60 000 people.
Alick Wickham was born in the Solomon Islands in 1886.
Strongly built, handsome, and athletic, Wickham excelled at sports from a young age, and showed a particular aptitude for swimming and diving. After an uneventful childhood, in 1901 he was sent to Sydney, living with relatives while he completed his schooling.
After he left school, Wickham decided to stay on in Sydney, and found work as a house boy.
In his spare time he would swim laps in the sea baths at Bronte Beach. While doing so, he used a stroke that was commonplace in the Solomon Islands, but relatively unknown in Australia; freestyle.
Watching him one day was prominent local swim coach George Farmer, who (if you believe local legend) remarked: 'Look at that boy crawling!'
The 'Australian Crawl' was born.
What Farmer also saw that day was an immensely strong young swimmer.
He would subsequently recruit Wickham for the East Sydney Swimming Club, and install himself as his coach and mentor. This combination paid off; under Farmer's guidance, Wickham equalled the national 100 yard record in 1903.
The following year, he broke the world record for a swim over 50 yards and, over the next few years, would break still more state and national records. Alongside his sporting achievements, Wickham made a living performing stunts and tricks at swimming carnivals and other public events.
Born in Collingwood in 1871, John Wren endured a rough start in life.
Son of a knockabout Irish labourer, Wren left school at 12 and took a number of menial jobs, mostly labouring or construction. A keen amateur sportsman, Wren supplemented his modest wages by working as an independent bookie, taking bets on the local sporting competitions that he followed avidly.
In 1890, Wren bet his life savings on 'Carbine' in the Melbourne Cup.
When the Kiwi horse got up, he found himself flush for the first time in his life, with enough money to go into business for himself. Wren opened a licensed betting agency on Johnston Street, near where he grew up, which he quickly grew into a chain.
As the money came in, Wren's notoriety grew.
He maintained links with Melbourne's criminal underground, running illegal totes alongside his legitimate businesses.
A number of ex-cons were members of his staff; as bookies, as errand boys, and as muscle. Local underground identity Squizzy Taylor was rumoured to be a friend, and the pair were accused of conspiring on a number of crimes.
Wren was also accused of fixing races and flouting Victoria's gambling laws, but each time charges were laid against him, he was able to beat the case.
Wren also gave money to charities, and the Catholic Church, and fashioned his public image as the champion of the underdog. A man of the people. His support for local sporting teams, Collingwood chief among them, and outspoken patriotism, meant that he remained popular, as well as infamous.
Among Wren's many interests was the Deep Rock Swimming Club.
Nestled on a gentle bend in the Yarra, near Wren's house in Kew, Deep Rock was a popular swimming hole for inner city residents. After Wren assumed the Presidency of the club, he expanded its activities; overseeing the construction of a concrete swimming pool for kids, and arranging carnivals and competitive swim meets.
After the outbreak of World War I, Wren decided to use the swimming club for a show of patriotic support. He conceived a swimming carnival, capped with a world record high dive into the Yarra from the cliffs opposite the club, with all proceeds going to the Returned Soldiers Fund.
This remarkable event was set for March 23, 1918.
By 1918, Alick Wickham's days as a national sporting champion were over.
No longer a competitive swimmer, he was still able to make a modest living at one off swim meets and exhibitons. But pickings had become slimmer.
Perhaps this is what motivated him to accept the unusual proposal John Wren put forward; one final turn in the spotlight for an athlete, whose prime was now past. Or maybe he was simply motivated by the thought of helping the war effort; Wickham's younger brother Ted had been killed in action in France.
Whatever the reason, Wickham agreed to a one-off high dive into the Yarra from an elevated platform.
To add an extra element of spice, he also agreed to be billed as 'Prince Wikyama,' a visiting member of the Solomon Islands Royal family. The local press lapped up this exotic angle and this, along with the patriotic theme of the day, meant a big crowd was a certainty.
An estimated 60 000 spectators crammed into the park to watch the death defying feat, paying 6 shillings each, and raising a considerable sum.
The first part of the carnival proceeded without incident; the swim meet was competitive, with the feature 100 yard race being won by a local swimmer ahead of Wickham (who had provided a sporting head start). The crowd built during the day, and by the time of the dive they were spread along both sides of the river. People even climbed trees to get a clearer view.
Around 5pm, Wickham was rowed across the river in a canoe, and then walked up a dirt track to the clifftop. He then mounted several flights of stairs, to the top of the wooden platform that had been erected there.
'I felt rattled. I walked to the edge of the platform and looked down again. Ugh! I literally shook.
Somebody cried out 'Don't do it!' I was on the verge of collapse.'
- Alick Wickham
Wickham climbed back down again.
He spoke to officials.
The crowd waited anxiously, a number now convinced that if he dived he would be killed, or seriously injured.
But after a few minutes he climbed up again, and took position on the edge of the platform.
A bugler on loan from the local barracks played one long note, which silenced the crowd.
'I screwed myself up into a do-or-die tension, and the leaped out into space!
The velocity was terrific as long as I was conscious. My ears ached badly. I was in a terrible state.'
- Alick Wickham
Wickham survived his jump.
He emerged from the Yarra, more or less unscathed (some reports say his ears were bleeding, some not). Wren, who viewed the day as a great success, rewarded him with a hundred pounds.
Wickham's feat was celebrated by the press across Australia, and the successful jumper found himself a minor celebrity again.
Wren also claimed that the dive platform was 205 feet (62 metres) above the water, and so 'Prince Wikyama' had set a new world record, for the highest ever free dive.
This almost immediately came in for scepticism. Many eyewitnesses felt that the tower had been much lower than this.
But Wren was able to produce Sgt F. Smith of the Melbourne War Council, who had erected the platform for the event. Sgt Smith swore that the height of the tower was 205ft, 9inch, which seemed to set the matter firmly in the record.
Alick Wickham, Prince Wikyama, had set a new world's record.
And there the matter seemed to have rested.
After the war, Wren's eventful life continued much as it had beforehand.
His business interests were wide and varied, and he remained wealthy for the rest of his life. As he grew older, he became more involved in the Victorian Labor Party, and eventually positioned himself as one of the state's most influential political operators.
Wren was the subject of Frank Hardy's classic local novel, 'Power Without Glory,' (given the pseudonym 'John West'), where he was depicted as a thoroughly amoral individual, corrupted by his thirst for power. Wren sued Hardy for libel but the court, swayed by Wren's seedy reputation, the judge dismissed the case.
A sports fanatic to the end, Wren suffered a heart attack while trying to get behind the goals in the final moments of Collingwood's grand final win of 1953. He died a few days later, on the 26th October 1953.
Alick Wickham's fate was more melancholy.
Too old for competitive swimming of any kind, Wickham was eventually reduced to driving a cab in Sydney to make ends meet. In the 1920's he returned to the Soloman Islands to live, where he was married three times, and worked a variety of jobs.
Meanwhile, debate continued about the height Wickham had jumped from in 1918.
To settle the argument, in 1965 the Yarra Bend Park Trust had the Yarra cliffs surveyed. This established their height as 106 feet and this, combined with an estimated tower height of about 30 feet, meant that Wickham's jump was more like 135 feet overall.
Still considerable, and still an Australian record for that time, but not the world mark that had been claimed. Record books that previously carried the story of Wickham's jump now swiftly removed it.
Wickham himself passed away, penniless, of natural causes on August 10, 1967.
The Deep Rock Swimming Club continued to thrive after World War I, but fate seemed to conspire against it.
A flood in 1934 washed away the pedestrian bridge that provided easy access to the club grounds, and the clubhouse itself burned down the following year. And most of the remaining club members enlisted during World War II, many set never to return. New members never materialised, to take their place.
By the 1950s the Deep Rock section of the river had gained a seedy reputation, as it was used as a discrete drinking and partying spot after hours. Finally, as pollution of the Yarra increased during the 20th century, people simply began finding alternate places to swim.
The club was finally abandoned at the end of the 1950s.
A metal plaque, and stone memorial, are all that remain of the club today, small reminders of a former local institution, that once laid claim to an astonishing world record.
