Knocking About

<p>American-born Gus Pierce arrived in Australia in 1860 and promptly deserted swimming ashore at Port Phillip. He worked as a photographer for Batchelders and painted scenery for the Lyceum theatre before hunting for snakes with Joe Shires - the inventor of a snake-bite cure. He compiled a strip map of the Murray River from Albury to Goolwa by navigating it in a canoe with an Aboriginal dancer and a tracker in 1863 eventually skippering several steamboats along the Murray between 1868 and 1876.</p><p>In 1869 in Echuca he began painting historical panoramas and toured scenes with musical accompaniment to Wagga Wagga and a further series showing at his Hill End Tent Theatre in 1872 in a musical recue with William Gill who went on to write the first Broadway musical. His Mirror of Australia panoramas were toured to Geelong and Castlemaine - where he added the male impersonator Ellen Tremayne in 1881. Impresario navigator photographer and artist of Austral scenes - here is his confounded life with his own illustrations.</p>