Local historian Rob Willis is always researching for the National Library of Australia’s oral history and folklore collections … and he is uncovering information about some of our local identities, colourful characters and those we might forget had a local connection.
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“It is my firm belief that the intangibles (stories, myths, characters, songs etc) of a town or area are as important, if not more important, than the ‘tangibles’ (built ),” he said.
“Forbes has plenty of íntangibles.”
In coming weeks and months the Advocate will feature some of these - starting with a childhood memory of Rob’s own of one of the world’s finest high-wire artists performing right here at the Christmas carnival in 1956 …
CON COLLEANO
Con Colleano enjoyed top billing with the world’s largest circus of the 1920s and 30s, but when he retired from Ringling’s he was - for a brief time - the owner of Forbes’ Albion Hotel.
Con was born Cornelius Sullivan in Lismore on Boxing Day 1899, the third of 10 children to showman Cornelius Sullivan and his wife Vittorine Julia (nee Robinson).
He and his siblings learned circus skills as children in Lightning Ridge, where they went to school.
By Con’s teenage years they regularly travelled as a family circus - performing with other circuses during the tough years of war and depression.
In these years he honed his skills, perfecting his trademark forward somersault - considered almost impossible - and meeting the trapeze artist he later married.
Con went abroad in the early 1920s with his then fiance, Winifred Stanley.
With dark good looks inherited from his mother’s West Indian and Aboriginal descent, he began performing his act as a Spanish Toreador (bullfighter) and this became his trademark.
Entering the centre ring, he made the traditional passes of a bullfighter.
On mounting the wire he gracefully performed tangos, jotas and fandangos, concluding his 12-minute act with the dangerous forward somersault.
After a successful debut in New York he was soon engaged by Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Combined Circus.
Billed as “the Australian wizard of the wire”, Colleano remained Ringlings’ principal star into the 1930s, reputedly drawing a salary of $US1000 a week. That made him the highest paid circus star of the day.
In the winter months Con and Winnie toured and performed in Europe where he was very well received.
One of his biggest fans was Adolf Hitler, who gave him a lifetime travel permit to enter and travel in Germany.
The Colleanos owned a farm in Pensylvania and became American citizens in 1950.
But in 1956 the couple returned to Australia, purchasing the Albion Hotel and settling in Forbes.
The Advocate headlines read “world famous tight-wire wizard now businessman of Forbes”.
The article hinted that there was a “strong possibility of his accepting engagements with the Tivoli theatres in Sydney and Melbourne, necessitating only temporary absences from his home and business”.
Local Rob Willis “just” remembers the Christmas - new year carnival of that year, an annual fundraiser for the local ambulance service.
There was much excitement as Con set up his tight-wire in Harold Street for the celebrations.
“I was only a kid, but I remember he put up his tight-wire and people saying ‘Con Colleano’s going to do his act!’ and people saying he was famous,” Mr Willis said.
A further Australian career was not to be.
Mark St Leon’s book Wizard of the Wire records that Con was invited to perform when the big Australian circus Wirth’s visited Forbes in June 1957, but declined.
If you want to see him perform …
A number of Con Colleano’s home films of his performances are online, search his name on youtube to view some.
If you remember Colleano’s street performance, we’d love to hear about it.
Or if you’d like to nominate another colourful local character for this series, email renee.powell@fairfaxmedia.com.au or phone the Advocate on 6852 1800.
Information for this story came from the Australian Dictionary of Biography, article written by Mark Valentine St Leon and Mr St Leon’s book “Wizard of the Wire: the story of Con Colleano”.