Since this is not a work of fiction, there is no miracle waiting to happen. The life of Alf and Vera does not suddenly turn around to give a fairytale ending. What awaited the Silvesters in the Depression years, and until Alf’s retirement in the 1940s, was unrelenting hard work and struggle in the face of social upheaval and the decline of live theatre.

As the Great Depression started to take hold, Alf was performing in an 80-foot long canvas tent theatre as “Allan’s Bellringers and Entertainers” and was still working in Queensland where, by 1931 the company had again morphed, this time into the “Sill Family” (or sometimes the Sils family), which name would stay with them for most of the remaining years. The canvas theatre did good service until around 1933, but was eventually damaged beyond repair when it had to be brought down rapidly in a storm. Alf appeared on the bill with several other magical performers including the hypnotist Philip Hartley ‘The Great’ McEwen, and American card magic specialist DeForrest. Young Ida had finally thrown off the shackles of ‘Baby Ida’ and was now ‘Miss Ida’, her slack wire performances forming a major part of the show’s attraction. As a growing teenager she was closely guarded from the local male populace by an ever-vigilant Alf, and was starting to flex her own independence.

Ida’s recollections make clear that, gradually, the touring life was becoming more and more difficult. She spends numerous pages relating the trials of being on the road, now unable to afford even the humble boarding houses in which they previously stayed; not infrequently the company would bed down overnight in the same hall where they had performed. Even when a hotel room was available, the outdoor “dunnies” (toilets), the bed bugs, and the frequently inebriated fellow guests made for an uncomfortable existence.

Alf and Vera had their first child, Eric Ronald Silvester, in 1930, and with Vera frequently ill, care of the baby often fell to Ida. By 1934 Queensland had been played out, or the family wanted to make their way back home, and a move was made gradually back down into New South Wales where, for a long stay, they settled at Inverell but made side-trips to perform at surrounding towns. In mid-March, 1935 a second child, Shirley Silvester, was born at Inverell. Both children would be, to some degree, inducted into the family business (Baby Eric at the tender age of four as a singer – “he can’t speak too plainly, but oh boy, how he can sing”) but they do not appear to have been as fully involved as Ida and Ernie – and in any case they were still only youngsters by the time Alf decided to retire.

Ida, for the first time, plucked up the courage to tell Alf that she wanted to leave the show. “I wanted to get away from the non-stop travelling and camping-out, and the living and sleeping in halls. Both Ernie and I would have given anything to be able to lead young, normal lives. Well, didn't AIf hit the roof! He was lying down resting when I approached him, and he heard my news he leapt to his feet, grabbing hold of his walking stick as he did so, shouting to me, "If you ever talk of leaving the show again, I'll give you some of this"! He waved the stick at me and frightened me so much that I didn't dare raise the subject again until I had turned 21 and could legally do as I pleased. - Ida

There was a brief return into Queensland, but by 1936 the family had travelled back to Western Australia via South Australia, and in December the Sils Family appeared at the Luxor Theatre, Perth.

It must have been an enormous relief to be settled in (more or less) in one place. Ida had been through all manner of adventures and trials; she remembered a particular tour to Normanton, in the far north of Queensland on the fringe of the Gulf of Carpentaria:

This particular tour to Queensland was certainly a memorable one. We lost Cara, the monkeys demolished a fruit and vegetable shop and, later, died, and we lost the tent. We had some exciting times as well. On this particular trip we went as far north as Normanton. To get there in those days you had to catch a motor rail-car from the little town of Croydon. As far as I know this motor rail service is still operating, even after all these year although I think it is now mainly a tourist attraction. [It is … the Gulflander railway, promoted as ‘a journey from nowhere to nowhere’.] There was a road to Normanton but it was too rough to travel over if the journey wasn't absolutely necessary. Because of this we ladies travelled in style on the rail car, while the men drove the loaded trucks.

Bounded by Stirling, Beaufort and James streets in Perth, the Luxor Theatre had undergone a series of developments and name changes since being opened as an open-air picture theatre (Shaftesbury Gardens 1911), gradually being enclosed until it became the Shaftesbury Theatre, then the Luxor (1925), and in later years the New Hollywood Theatre (1938-1941), described as the “Hollywood late Luxor” to 1944, Tivoli (1944) then Ice Palais skating rink and Canterbury Court. On arrival back in Perth, the Silvesters had performed as artists at the Luxor, then under the direction of popular dancer, Billy Heaton. By June 1937, Alf Silvester became the sole Lessee and Director of the Luxor, “Perth’s Recognised Home of Vaudeville” and began hiring variety acts to appear. The theatre, however, was not in good shape, with old wiring, no cross-aisles in the gallery, and shaky brickwork under the stage.

Internet histories of the Luxor Theatre repeat a standard phrase which can be traced to a comment made in 1939 by the then-lessee of the building:- “From about 1935 on—when the Shafto boys gave it up—the theatre degenerated into a low-class vaudeville theatre featuring strip-tease acts and leg shows.” (1) The evidence for this claim does not stack up. All the programmes, advertising and newspaper commentaries show that under Alf Silvester’s direction, the Luxor was a variety/vaudeville theatre presenting respectable acts, no strip tease noted, with a usual “beauty ballet” of dancers which was neither new nor risqué; they were simply attractive girls from Peggy and Rene Esler’s local dance school. What Alf was doing at the time was attempting to keep variety theatre afloat, in the face of the inevitable decline. The fact that his own family continued to provide the core of the show indicates that Alf was providing the usual mix of musical, novelty, singing, dancing and magic routines.

Being the director of the Luxor did not prevent Alf from roaming far and wide, whenever the opportunity to perform was available. He went out as far as Geraldton, Bunbury and Fremantle. In November, ‘Zodiac’s 20^th Century Entertainers featuring the Wonderful Sils Family’ travelled down south to Bridgetown, Manjimup, Greenbushes, Pemberton, Nannup and Kirup in the course of a single week. Into 1938 the Sils Family was seen far and wide; as far north as Port Hedland, at least 1600 kilometres from Perth – Alf had the misfortune to be bitten by a snake he had captured at the ‘De Grey’ region. Patched up by a local doctor, he still managed to perform the same evening. (5)

In September 1938 the Geraldton Guardian had referred to Alf as “late lessee of the Luxor Theatre”; however on June 17, 1939 the Luxor rebranded as the “New Hollywood Theatre” with a production titled The Follies of 1939, and Alf was named as the sole director. It was a bold move for Alf to be presenting his ‘Night in Wonderland’ because across at His Majesty’s Theatre the grand illusionist Nicola (William Mozart Nicol) was presenting an array of fancy illusions such as the Indian Rope Trick, Million Dollar Mystery and the Iron Maiden. Nicola little knew that within months his entire show would lie at the bottom of Singapore harbour. (2)

For Alf Silvester, this must have been his warning that his career was reaching an end. In 1937 he was sixty-two years old, still determinedly working and travelling, but the almost inevitable departure of both his step-children from the show was the beginning of the end.

The old cliché is that ‘old performers never die, they simply fade away’. From 1940, Alf and Vera Silvester gently fade away from the newspapers and public records. Alf was then 65 years old. If, as Ida recalls, he continued to tour, nothing more has been located.

Having married in 1938 (see below), Ida was later living in Walpole on the far south-east coast. She relates:

Alfred William Silvester, in retirement, did not exactly go ‘gentle into that good night.’ He was noted providing a performance for the Childrens’ Hospital in 1944. In March 1945 (3) he advertised in the Melbourne ‘Age’ – “Wanted: Side Show attractions for Patriotic Entertainments – live snakes including carpet and diamond snakes; magical illusions, look and laugh mirrors &c. State particulars and price by air mail – Chas. Allan 175 Barker Road Subiaco, W.A.” In 1948 he advertised again as “Mr. Ree [mystery]” – “Several wonderful stage illusions, cheap, easy to work. Mr. Ree, 175 Barker-Rd Subiaco”

The Sydney Morning Herald reported the death of Alfred William Silvester, on February 13, 1956. He was 81 years old. There was no fanfare, no glowing tributes. Alf was buried at Karrakatta cemetery where, on her death some years later (February 21, 1970), he was joined by Vera Silvester.

With a last wave of the wand, all the magicians of the Silvester clan in Australia from 1874 had taken their final bow. There would be no more Fakirs of Oolu.

Although the last of the Silvester magicians were now departed, it would be an injustice to finish the history of the family there. The performing history of the fourth and fifth generations extends right up to the present day. (4)

Ernie Silvester retained the ‘Silvester’ family name. After departing the show before the start of World War II, he worked with an airline service flying between Perth and Rottnest Island, before signing up to the army in 1940 (10^th Armed Regiment, Northam camp). Although the war drew to a close before he was posted away, he remained with the army for more than thirty years with the Royal Australian Army Ordnance Corps, and was posted to Nungarin. He was awarded a meritorious service medal in 1964, and finally retired in 1973. Ernie had married his first wife, Nell, in 1946, and on retirement he moved to North Queensland, continuing to play music with a local dance band and being known as a useful snake catcher, ‘the snake man of Tinaroo’. Ernie passed away in Queensland on July 22, 2005.

Charles Ernest Silvester (Vera’s brother) had served from 1916 in the Australian Imperial Force (Field Company Engineers). He divorced his first wife, May Alice, in 1919 before marrying Mary Elizabeth Grist (singer) in 1925 and became step-father to Melvin. He passed away on September 16, 1946 in Perth.

Alf and Vera’s son, Eric Silvester worked for the Post-Master General, married in 1954 and had three daughters. He died in 2010. Shirley Silvester was noted in 1951 as a teenage place-getter in a Perth bathing beauty competition. Her later history is elusive, presumably because of a marriage and name change.

Doug's family and mine couldn't have been more different if we had deliberately chosen them to be so. My life had been a wandering, almost hand-to-mouth affair, while Doug came from a solid, reliable family with a business background. His father was the manager of one of the big insurance companies in Perth [he was manager of Royal Exchange Assurance, W.A.], while mine ran a struggling Vaudeville show. Doug had attended Hale and Wesley Schools, while I had dropped in to hundreds of class rooms across the country. Well, at least I had the quantity of education if not the quality. At the time of our wedding Doug was working at Vetters’ garage, near the Royal Perth Hospital in Wellington Street, another old landmark that has disappeared with progress.

Finally the family returned to Perth, setting up in Barker Road, Subiaco opposite Vera Silvester’s home, and a business was commenced, “ABC Carriers”, quickly growing to a small fleet of furniture vans and a party-hire service supplying tables and dance floors. Almost without realising it, the party business led Ida and Doug to start polishing up their performing routines and start to take on engagements.

The family entertainment group grew larger with the arrival of two sons; Leo and Ross. Now there was another family of variety artists, and Ida was kept busy with participation in all sorts of local activities at Subiaco, and having the enjoyment of watching their children grow in a pleasant suburban environment.

So Ida returned once more to the entertainment business, and if her travels were not as arduous as previously, they were certainly extensive. The Harwood children involved themselves with the show in many ways – Robin was a regular singer, Leo was a drummer, juggled, and balanced on the teeter board, while Ross (1950 - 2015) played guitar and went touring with his parents for over ten years. Lynette (Lyn) would become a versatile entertainer in her own right, and will be mentioned shortly.

As the entertainment field gradually changed, so the Harwoods evolved to find new audiences. The onset of Australia television in 1956 was initially seen by variety artists as a new source of employment, and the Harwoods appeared numerous times in the 1960s, with their acts as known, and on Channel 7 with a ‘circus’ themed routine in which the performers created animal costumes to wear.

(Sadly, it is almost certain that this programme is no longer available, as the ABC would re-record over their video tapes)

In 1967 the Harwood trio (Ida, Doug and Ross) departed on a tour up to Carnarvon, leaving Leo to run the business. Ross learned the essentials of slack-wire walking and would develop a comic routine with Ida playing the role of a suburban housewife pegging her washing on the ‘line’ before walking the wire, and Ross interrupting in the character of a drunkard before staggering across the line, losing his coat and break-away trousers, and lying along the line for a drink and a sleep. It was a good tour, encouraging Doug to give up the truck business by 1968, and soon they were away again up the coast of Western Australia to Darwin (N.T.) and Alice springs, travelling in a caravan with a pair of Kombi vans. Ida wrote, “I was determined that this was going to be a comfortable trip - a far cry from my childhood travels - there was to be no sleeping in halls, and no pitching tents by the road-side either. That may have been so, but it did not save them from the trials of driving up north through driving rain and dry creeks that became raging torrents in the course of a single day. A broken axle put them out of action just outside Alice Springs.

Finally, the world of cruise ships was made for the varied talents of the Harwoods. Travelling to Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and any number of visits to Suva, it was a life which suited Ida and Doug, with the possible exception of a 1977 accident when the ‘Fairsky’ ran across a submerged object near Jakarta and tore a huge hole down the side. The captain had enough sense to run the ship aground on a sand bank and there were no casualties.

Before this, Ida became the first of the Silvester descendants to ‘return’ to the United Kingdom, travelling in 1972 aboard the Arcadia via the Panama Canal. A working tour of England, Ireland, Scandinavia and South Africa eventually brought them back to Australia.

It was in 1977 that Ida and Doug retired from seafaring, and drove home from Sydney across the Nullarbor Plain, to form a dance band which kept them active in Perth. In 1981, after 43 years of marriage, Ida was confronted with the trauma of Doug’s sudden death from heart failure. She wrote that, for her, the best therapy was to continue working. As the years passed, she had finally given away the wire walking, and gradually moved into retirement, if it could really be called that. Professional work gave way to retirement home entertaining and appearances for social groups, playing all her musical instruments, simple ventriloquial and puppetry routines, and joining in with daughter Lyn’s shows. In her seventies, Ida set about creating the invaluable memoir of her life, of which extracts have been given through these last two chapters.

Ida Harwood passed away on September 12, 2004 and is buried at Karrakatta Cemetery. In a tribute it was said that “she attended 580 schools in six states during her childhood... Her friends included the dispossessed aboriginal, the poor blighter swaggie on his last legs, the country parson with his home-sick wife, and the city urchin; the immigrant newly arrived was welcome at Ida’s table … when Ida entered the room the lights went on … [she] had no time for the dishonest … none could stand the heat when Ida entered the kitchen.”

The entertainment history of the Silvester line was still not over, and as of the time of writing, continues. Ida’s daughter, Lynette (Lyn) grew to be a performer of scarcely less versatility than her mother. Her talents encompass puppetry and puppet making, ventriloquism, oil painting, cartoon sketches, keyboard and banjo playing, and singing. She became Lyn Myers after marrying Tony Myers, a jazz trumpet player whose father was sports broadcaster Lew Myers, and the grandson of ABC military band leader and champion trumpet player, Harry Shugg. Working professionally both as entertainers and for the I.B.M. company, Lyn and Tony have had a fifty-year performing career as the “Myers Variety Show”, entertaining across thousands of performances in Perth and its region, in shopping centres, many schools, country shows, for UNICEF and mining companies in the north of Western Australia, and nightclubs, restaurants and many cruise ships. With brother Leo, Lyn is the custodian of many family artefacts and is proud to share the story of the Silvesters in Australia; Leo compiles the ancestry of the Silvester and Harwood families.

As with the entire Silvester line, Lyn and Tony have adapted to whatever new entertainment medium arises, and today they continue to produce brand new content for their YouTube channel, “Banjolyn1”, where several hundred videos can be found with the couple playing their instruments, singing jazz standards and classics including the songs of Fats Waller, Lyn displaying her many abilities – and by browsing, videos can be found of their cruise ship and jazz band performances; not to mention several videos of Doug and Ida Harwood performing in former years.

It is in the nature of things that history, unless re-told and passed along, tends to fade from memory. In the literature of magic, until now, Alfred Silvester’s life story has been summed up in little more than a few paragraphs, in connection with Pepper’s Ghost and the Suspended Lady. His history as a photographer in the 1850s is more complete, but ends as soon as he leaves the stereoscope business. It cannot be said that the name “Silvester” nowadays evokes a familiar response from lovers of magic or theatre in Australia. Certainly this is the first time that his entire life span, and that of his descendants, has been fully pieced together, and some sense made of the tangled family tree of magicians.

We do not know exactly why Dr. Silvester came to Australia. It was probably a speculative tour, hoping to pick up some good money and to use the country as a jumping-off point for visits to other countries; but, as is the case with a good many international performers, Silvester found something in this country which appealed to him enough to settle for life with his entire family. The magicians of Australia have been the beneficiaries of his inventive nature, the skill and mentoring of the Silvester sons (Alfred2 in particular), the introduction of major scripted stage illusions to our theatre, and the establishment of a lengthy and respected reputation under the name Silvester, or the ‘Fakir of Oolu’ which benefited all magicians. Some of the supporting acts who travelled with the Silvesters took away with them skills which would support them professionally for the rest of their lives. More than that, audiences in the largest city theatres and the smallest country halls were entertained and amazed for decades.

Evident across the entire story there is a sense of a passionate, almost obsessive, drive to get on the road and perform. The four male magicians who toured here, in New Zealand, and as far away as Singapore, never rested on their laurels. Each of their lives was a series of successes, failures, tragedies, adventures and determined resilience. No less so, their wives and daughters, who toured without respite, rebuilt their own lives against the disasters and calamities that befell them, spent interminable hours suspended in the air, and became performers of variety, song and dance with some of our best theatrical companies.

The Silvester family tree has now expanded in a thousand different directions. Perhaps somewhere within that line there awaits a new magician who will be able to trace his ancestry back to Alfred Silvester, the Fakir of Oolu.

(1) The Daily News (Perth), November 21, 1949 page 6. Commentary by Bruce Carroll, lessee.

(2) William Mozart Nicol (1880 – 1946) soon faced disaster of his own, when in November 1939, on the outbreak of war, the SS Sirdhana struck a mine and sank, along with the vast majority of Nicola’s magnificent illusions.

(3) The Age (Melbourne), March 7, 1945 page 8, The West Australian March 6, 1948 page 25, and February 17, 1951 page 29.

(4) We have, however, discontinued the family tree (see Chapter 1) with the living descendants. There are of course many offshoots of the family, but not related to the “magic” focus of this story.

(5) The West Australian, September 22, 1938