G'day again,

jacko@nz: Just a passing thought, keeping all queries tidy ... Alberts was an old-established music firm, started by a Swiss luthier who did well in 19th century Australia. In gratitude, he adopted a number of distinctively Australian brand names for his instruments (admittedly, most imprted from Germany ... or, occasionally Switzerland).

The best known of these is Boomerang, which was a brand for a line of mouthorgans (made, mostly, by Siedel & Sohne, in E. Saxony), acordions and concertinas. He named his mansion, in the posh eastern suburbs of Sydney, "Boomerang" and it was a social mecca in its day.

Now he is long gone ... the music business seems to have closed ... and his descendants have sold the mansion for millions and invested all the music business profits into real estate ...

A friend of mine, Ray Grieve, wrote A Band in a Waistcoat Pocket, a history of the mouthorgan in Australia (poor beggar plays flute ... but used to share a microphone with me when I played mouthorgan in Selectors bush Band, back in the 1970s ... must have bend his poor brain ...).

When was researching the Alberts/Boomerang history, quite important to the Australian mouthorgan story, the current generation didn't want to know about it ... would not approve the use of any company advertisements or literature ... didn't want anyone to mention that Grandfather had been involved in anything as vulgar as music ... in case it affected the credibilty of their real estate dealings!

Regards,

Bob Bolton