Maitland residents will be wishing Maitland Regional Art Gallery officials good luck this weekend as they venture to Sydney to try to secure some pieces of this city’s history.
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Almost 50 items that belonged to Maitland’s favourite son, Les Darcy, will be auctioned at the Sydney Rare Books Auctions on Saturday and MRAG director Brigitte Uren hopes to bring some pieces back to be kept in the city gallery.
Darcy, an Australian middleweight and heavyweight champion by the age of 19, has been a national sporting icon for almost a century – and it’s well known that he was a Maitland boy, born here in the Lower Hunter.
He died at the height of his fame and success, tragically of pneumonia in the USA when he was only 24.
Ms Uren has the chance to bid on his possessions to add to the city’s collection.
A pair of his boxing gloves, fight cards, original photos, newspaper and magazine clippings from the 1910s will be on offer to the highest bidder.
It comes after Maitland’s collection received another boost this week, when the Darcy family generously donated some of the boxer’s items that his younger brother, the late Joe Darcy, had kept safe.
The donations will be on show at MRAG from Saturday and Maitland residents should make the effort to enjoy this latest glimpse at the city’s history.
Just as the western NSW town of Cootamundra is proud of being the birthplace of Australia’s greatest cricketer, Sir Donald Bradman, so should we be proud of being home to the nation’s greatest boxer.
Whichever artefacts Ms Uren manages to get for the city on Saturday, we should be excited that a few more pieces of our history will be coming home to Maitland.